e was unworthy. The campaign in
the Netherlands was over. The session of Parliament was approaching.
The King was expected with the first fair wind. Shrewsbury left town and
retired to the Wolds of Gloucestershire. In that district, then one of
the wildest in the south of the island, he had a small country seat,
surrounded by pleasant gardens and fish-ponds. William had, in his
progress a year before, visited this dwelling, which lay far from the
nearest high road and from the nearest market town, and had been much
struck by the silence and loneliness of the retreat in which he found
the most graceful and splendid of English courtiers.

At one in the morning of the sixth of October, the King landed at
Margate. Late in the evening he reached Kensington. The following
morning a brilliant crowd of ministers and nobles pressed to kiss his
hand; but he missed one face which ought to have been there, and asked
where the Duke of Shrewsbury was, and when he was expected in town. The
next day came a letter from the Duke, averring that he had just had a
bad fall in hunting. His side had been bruised; his lungs had suffered;
he had spit blood, and could not venture to travel. [733] That he had
fallen and hurt himself was true; but even those who felt most kindly
towards him suspected, and not without strong reason, that he made the
most of his convenient misfortune, and, that if he had not shrunk from
appearing in public, he would have performed the journey with little
difficulty. His correspondents told him that, if he was really as ill
as he thought himself, he would do well to consult the physicians and
surgeons of the capital. Somers, especially, implored him in the most
earnest manner to come up to London. Every hour's delay was mischievous.
His Grace must conquer his sensibility. He had only to face calumny
courageously, and it would vanish. [734] The King, in a few kind lines,
expressed his sorrow for the accident. "You are much wanted here," he
wrote: "I am impatient to embrace you, and to assure you that my esteem
for you is undiminished." [735] Shrewsbury answered that he had resolved
to resign the seals. [736] Somers adjured him not to commit so fatal an
error. If at that moment His Grace should quit office, what could the
world think, except that he was condemned by his own conscience? He
would, in fact, plead guilty; he would put a stain on his own honour,
and on the honour of all who lay under the same accusation. It