d go to
court in solemn procession. Some persons on whose obedience the King
had counted showed, on this occasion, for the first time, signs of
a mutinous spirit. Among these the most conspicuous was the second
temporal peer of the realm, Charles Seymour, commonly called the proud
Duke of Somerset. He was in truth a man in whom the pride of birth and
rank amounted almost to a disease. The fortune which he had inherited
was not adequate to the high place which he held among the English
aristocracy: but he had become possessed of the greatest estate in
England by his marriage with the daughter and heiress of the last Percy
who wore the ancient coronet of Northumberland. Somerset was only in
his twenty-fifth year, and was very little known to the public, He was a
Lord of the King's Bedchamber, and colonel of one of the regiments which
had been raised at the time of the Western insurrection. He had not
scrupled to carry the sword of state into the royal chapel on days of
festival: but he now resolutely refused to swell the pomp of the Nuncio.
Some members of his family implored him not to draw on himself the royal
displeasure: but their intreaties produced no effect. The King himself
expostulated. "I thought, my Lord," said he, "that I was doing you a
great honour in appointing you to escort the minister of the first of
all crowned heads." "Sir," said the Duke, "I am advised that I cannot
obey your Majesty without breaking the law." "I will make you fear me as
well as the law," answered the King, insolently. "Do you not know that
I am above the law?" "Your Majesty may be above the law," replied
Somerset; "but I am not; and, while I obey the law, I fear nothing."
The King turned away in high displeasure, and Somerset was instantly
dismissed from his posts in the household and in the army. [279]

On one point, however, James showed some prudence. He did not venture
to parade the Papal Envoy in state before the vast population of the
capital. The ceremony was performed, on the third of July 1687, at
Windsor. Great multitudes flocked to the little town. The visitors were
so numerous that there was neither food nor lodging for them; and many
persons of quality sate the whole day in their carriages waiting for the
exhibition. At length, late in the afternoon, the Knight Marshal's men
appeared on horseback. Then came a long train of running footmen; and
then, in a royal coach, appeared Adda, robed in purple, with a brilliant
cross