and
cassock, a long scarf, a broad hat with satin band and rose, and called
himself a doctor of divinity. No man dared contradict or oppose him,
lest he should be denounced as a conniver of the plot, and arrested as a
traitor. "Whoever he pointed at was taken up and committed," says North.
"So that many people got out of his way as from a blast, and glad they
could prove their last two years' conversation. The very breath of him
was pestilential, and if it brought not imprisonment, it surely poisoned
reputation." Sir John, speaking of him at the bishop's dinner-table,
says "he was blown up with the hopes of running down the Duke of York,
and spoke of him and his family after a manner which showed himself both
a fool and a knave. He reflected not only on him personally, but upon
her majesty; nobody daring to contradict him, for fear of being made a
party to the plot. I at least did not undertake to do it, when he left
the room in some heat. The bishop told me this was his usual discourse,
and that he had checked him formerly for taking so indecent a liberty,
but he found it was to no purpose."

The impostor's conversation on this occasion furnishes the key-note of
a vile plot now contrived to intercept the lawful succession, either by
effectually removing the queen, and thereby enabling the king to marry
again; or otherwise excluding the Duke of York by act of parliament from
lawful right to the crown. Though Shaftesbury's hand was not plainly
seen, there can be no doubt it was busily employed in working out his
favourite design.

The blow was first aimed at her majesty by Bedlow, who, on the 25th of
November, accused her of conspiring to kill her husband. About eighteen
months previously, he said, there had been a consultation in the chapel
gallery at Somerset House, which had been attended by Lord Bellasis, Mr.
Coleman, La Faire, Pritchard, Latham, and Sheldon, four Jesuits, and two
Frenchmen whom he took to be abbots, two persons of quality whose
faces he did not see, and lastly by her majesty. The Jesuits afterwards
confided in him as a person of trust, that the queen wept at a proposal
to murder the king which had been made, but subsequently yielding to
arguments of the French abbots, had consented to the design. Indeed,
Bedlow, who was in the sacristy when her majesty passed through at the
termination of this meeting, noticed her face had much changed. Here
his story ended; but, as was now usual, it was taken up a