through the press, in prose and verse, in English and Latin, that a
Prince of Wales would be given to the prayers of the Church; and they
had now accomplished their own prophecy. Every witness who could not
be corrupted or deceived had been studiously excluded. Anne had been
tricked into visiting Bath. The Primate had, on the very day preceding
that which had been fixed for the villainy, been sent to prison in
defiance of the rules of law and of the privileges of peerage. Not a
single man or woman who had the smallest interest in detecting the fraud
had been suffered to be present. The Queen had been removed suddenly and
at the dead of night to St. James's Palace, because that building,
less commodious for honest purposes than Whitehall, had some rooms and
passages well suited for the purpose of the Jesuits. There, amidst a
circle of zealots who thought nothing a crime that tended to promote the
interests of their Church, and of courtiers who thought nothing a crime
that tended to enrich and aggrandise themselves, a new born child had
been introduced into the royal bed, and then handed round in triumph,
as heir of the three kingdoms. Heated by such suspicions, suspicions
unjust, it is true, but not altogether unnatural, men thronged more
eagerly than ever to pay their homage to the saintly victims of the
tyrant who, having long foully injured his people, had now filled up the
measure of his iniquities by more foully injuring his children. [381]

The Prince of Orange, not himself suspecting any trick, and not aware of
the state of public feeling in England, ordered prayers to be said under
his own roof for his little brother in law, and sent Zulestein to London
with a formal message of congratulation. Zulestein, to his amazement,
found all the people whom he met open mouthed about the infamous fraud
just committed by the Jesuits, and saw every hour some fresh pasquinade
on the pregnancy and the delivery. He soon wrote to the Hague that not
one person in ten believed the child to have been born of the Queen.
[382]

The demeanour of the seven prelates meanwhile strengthened the interest
which their situation excited. On the evening of the Black Friday, as it
was called, on which they were committed, they reached their prison just
at the hour of divine service. They instantly hastened to the chapel.
It chanced that in the second lesson were these words: "In all things
approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much p