circumstances which had attended
the Queen's confinement were not put prominently forward among his
reasons for taking arms. [422]

This paper was signed in cipher by the seven chiefs of the conspiracy,
Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, Lumley, Compton, Russell and Sidney.
Herbert undertook to be their messenger. His errand was one of no
ordinary peril. He assumed the garb of a common sailor, and in this
disguise reached the Dutch coast in safety, on the Friday after the
trial of the Bishops. He instantly hastened to the Prince. Bentinck and
Dykvelt were summoned, and several days were passed in deliberation. The
first result of this deliberation was that the prayer for the Prince of
Wales ceased to be read in the Princess's chapel. [423]

From his wife William had no opposition to apprehend. Her understanding
had been completely subjugated by his; and, what is more extraordinary,
he had won her entire affection. He was to her in the place of the
parents whom she had lost by death and by estrangement, of the children
who had been denied to her prayers, and of the country from which she
was banished. His empire over her heart was divided only with her God.
To her father she had probably never been attached: she had quitted him
young: many years had elapsed since she had seen him; and no part of
his conduct to her, since her marriage, had indicated tenderness on his
part, or had been calculated to call forth tenderness on hers. He
had done all in his power to disturb her domestic happiness, and had
established a system of spying, eavesdropping, and talebearing under her
roof. He had a far greater revenue than any of his predecessors had ever
possessed, and regularly allowed to her younger sister forty thousand
pounds a year: [424] but the heiress presumptive of his throne had never
received from him the smallest pecuniary assistance, and was scarcely
able to make that appearance which became her high rank among European
princesses. She had ventured to intercede with him on behalf of her
old friend and preceptor Compton, who, for refusing to commit an act of
flagitious injustice, had been suspended from his episcopal functions;
but she had been ungraciously repulsed. [425] From the day on which
it had become clear that she and her husband were determined not to be
parties to the subversion of the English constitution, one chief object
of the politics of James had been to injure them both. He had recalled
the British regiment