he king, in the latter years of his
reign, began to regard him; his fear that James intended to degrade him;
and his hope that the great influence he possessed over the mind of the
heir-apparent would last through a new reign, if the old one were brought
to a close.

In the second volume of the _Harleian Miscellany_, there is a tract,
entitled the _Forerunner of Revenge_, written by George Eglisham, doctor
of medicine, and one of the physicians to King James. Harris, in quoting
it, says that it is full of rancour and prejudice. It is evidently
exaggerated, but forms nevertheless a link in the chain of evidence.
Eglisham says, "The king being sick of an ague, the duke took this
opportunity, when all the king's doctors of physic were at dinner, and
offered to him a white powder to take, the which he a long time refused;
but, overcome with his flattering importunity, he took it in wine, and
immediately became worse and worse, falling into many swoonings and pains,
and violent fluxes of the belly, so tormented, that his majesty cried out
aloud of this white powder, 'Would to God I had never taken it!'" He then
tells us "of the Countess of Buckingham (the duke's mother) applying the
plaister to the king's heart and breast, whereupon he grew faint and
short-breathed, and in agony; that the physicians exclaimed that the king
was poisoned; that Buckingham commanded them out of the room, and
committed one of them close prisoner to his own chamber, and another to be
removed from court; and that, after his majesty's death, his body and head
swelled above measure; his hair, with the skin of his head, stuck to his
pillow, and his nails became loose on his fingers and toes." Clarendon,
who, by the way, was a partisan of the duke's, gives a totally different
account of James's death. He says, "It was occasioned by an ague (after a
short indisposition by the gout), which, meeting many humours in a fat
unwieldy body of fifty-eight years old, in four or five fits carried him
out of the world,--after whose death many scandalous and libellous
discourses were raised, without the least colour or ground, as appeared
upon the strictest and most malicious examination that could be made, long
after, in a time of license, when nobody was afraid of offending majesty,
and when prosecuting the highest reproaches and contumelies against the
royal family was held very meritorious." Notwithstanding this confident
declaration, the world will hardly be pe