ion that his soldiers were drinking the health of
the Bishops. He ordered his officers to see that it was done no more.
But the officers came back with a report that the thing could not be
prevented, and that no other health was drunk in the garrison. Nor was
it only by carousing that the troops showed their reverence for the
fathers of the Church. There was such a show of devotion throughout the
Tower that pious divines thanked God for bringing good out of evil, and
for making the persecution of His faithful servants the means of saving
many souls. All day the coaches and liveries of the first nobles
of England were seen round the prison gates. Thousands of humbler
spectators constantly covered Tower Hill. [375] But among the marks of
public respect and sympathy which the prelates received there was one
which more than all the rest enraged and alarmed the King. He learned
that a deputation of ten Nonconformist ministers had visited the Tower.
He sent for four of these persons, and himself upbraided them. They
courageously answered that they thought it their duty to forget past
quarrels, and to stand by the men who stood by the Protestant religion.
[376]

Scarcely had the gates of the Tower been closed on the prisoners when
an event took place which increased the public excitement. It had been
announced that the Queen did not expect to be delivered till July. But,
on the day after the Bishops had appeared before the Council, it was
observed that the King seemed to be anxious about her state. In
the evening, however, she sate playing cards at Whitehall till near
midnight. Then she was carried in a sedan to Saint James's Palace,
where apartments had been very hastily fitted up for her reception. Soon
messengers were running about in all directions to summon physicians and
priests, Lords of the Council, and Ladies of the Bedchamber. In a few
hours many public functionaries and women of rank were assembled in the
Queen's room. There, on the morning of Sunday, the tenth of June, a day
long kept sacred by the too faithful adherents of a bad cause, was born
the most unfortunate of princes, destined to seventy-seven years of
exile and wandering, of vain projects, of honours more galling than
insults, and of hopes such as make the heart sick.

The calamities of the poor child had begun before his birth. The nation
over which, according to the ordinary course of succession, he would
have reigned, was fully persuaded that his mot