omen from Wapping
and Rotherhithe besieged Whitehall, clamouring for what was due to their
husbands. Mary had the good sense and good nature to order four of
those importunate petitioners to be admitted into the room where she was
holding a Council. She heard their complaints, and herself assured them
that the rumour which had alarmed them was unfounded. [462] By this
time Saint Bartholomew's day drew near; and the great annual fair, the
delight of idle apprentices and the horror of Puritanical Aldermen,
was opened in Smithfield with the usual display of dwarfs, giants, and
dancing dogs, the man that ate fire, and the elephant that loaded and
fired a musket. But of all the shows none proved so attractive as a
dramatic performance which, in conception, though doubtless not in
execution, seems to have borne much resemblance to those immortal
masterpieces of humour in which Aristophanes held up Cleon and Lamachus
to derision. Two strollers personated Killegrew and Delaval. The
Admirals were represented as flying with their whole fleet before a few
French privateers, and taking shelter under the grins of the Tower.
The office of Chorus was performed by a Jackpudding who expressed very
freely his opinion of the naval administration. Immense crowds flocked
to see this strange farce. The applauses were loud; the receipts were
great; and the mountebanks, who had at first ventured to attack only the
unlucky and unpopular Board of Admiralty, now, emboldened by impunity
and success, and probably prompted and rewarded by persons of much
higher station than their own, began to cast reflections on other
departments of the government. This attempt to revive the license of the
Attic Stage was soon brought to a close by the appearance of a strong
body of constables who carried off the actors to prison. [463] Meanwhile
the streets of London were every night strewn with seditious handbills.
At all the taverns the zealots of hereditary right were limping about
with glasses of wine and punch at their lips. This fashion had just come
in; and the uninitiated wondered much that so great a number of jolly
gentlemen should have suddenly become lame. But, those who were in the
secret knew that the word Limp was a consecrated word, that every one
of the four letters which composed it was the initial of an august name,
and that the loyal subject who limped while he drank was taking off his
bumper to Lewis, James, Mary, and the Prince. [464]

It was