rer virtue and higher spirit than
Clarendon were prepared, before that memorable year ended, to do what
they would have pronounced wicked and infamous when it began.

The unhappy father composed himself as well as he could, and sent to ask
a private audience of the King. It was granted. James said, with more
than his usual graciousness, that he from his heart pitied Cornbury's
relations, and should not hold them at all accountable for the crime of
their unworthy kinsman. Clarendon went home, scarcely daring to look his
friends in the face. Soon, however, he learned with surprise that the
act, which had, as he at first thought, for ever dishonoured his family,
was applauded by some persons of high station. His niece, the Princess
of Denmark, asked him why he shut himself up. He answered that he had
been overwhelmed with confusion by his son's villany. Anne seemed not
at all to understand this feeling. "People," she said, "are very uneasy
about Popery. I believe that many of the army will do the same." [523]

And now the King, greatly disturbed, called together the principal
officers who were still in London. Churchill, who was about this time
promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General, made his appearance with
that bland serenity which neither peril nor infamy could ever disturb.
The meeting was attended by Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, whose
audacity and activity made him conspicuous among the natural children
of Charles the Second. Grafton was colonel of the first regiment of Foot
Guards. He seems to have been at this time completely under Churchill's
influence, and was prepared to desert the royal standard as soon as the
favourable moment should arrive. Two other traitors were in the circle,
Kirke and Trelawney, who commanded those two fierce and lawless bands
then known as the Tangier regiments. Both of them had, like the other
Protestant officers of the army, long seen with extreme displeasure the
partiality which the King had shown to members of his own Church; and
Trelawney remembered with bitter resentment the persecution of his
brother the Bishop of Bristol. James addressed the assembly in terms
worthy of a better man and of a better cause. It might be, he said, that
some of the officers had conscientious scruples about fighting for him.
If so he was willing to receive back their commissions. But he adjured
them as gentlemen and soldiers not to imitate the shameful example of
Cornbury. All seemed moved; and no