iam came in state on that day to Westminster. The attendance of
members of both Houses was large. When the Clerk of the Crown read the
words, "A Bill for the frequent Calling and Meeting of Parliaments," the
anxiety was great. When the Clerk of the Parliament made answer, "Le roy
et la royne le veulent," a loud and long hum of delight and exultation
rose from the benches and the bar. [548] William had resolved many
months before not to refuse his assent a second time to so popular a
law. [549] There was some however who thought that he would not have
made so great a concession if he had on that day been quite himself.
It was plain indeed that he was strangely agitated and unnerved. It
had been announced that he would dine in public at Whitehall. But he
disappointed the curiosity of the multitude which on such occasions
flocked to the Court, and hurried back to Kensington. [550]

He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, during two or
three days, been poorly; and on the preceding evening grave symptoms had
appeared. Sir Thomas Millington, who was physician in ordinary to the
King, thought that she had the measles. But Radcliffe, who, with coarse
manners and little book learning, had raised himself to the first
practice in London chiefly by his rare skill in diagnostics, uttered
the more alarming words, small pox. That disease, over which science has
since achieved a succession of glorious and beneficient victories, was
then the most terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the
plague had been far more rapid; but the plague had visited our shores
only once or twice within living memory; and the small pox was always
present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant
fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives
it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a
changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks
of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover. Towards the
end of the year 1694, this pestilence was more than usually severe. At
length the infection spread to the palace, and reached the young and
blooming Queen. She received the intimation of her danger with true
greatness of soul. She gave orders that every lady of her bedchamber,
every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not had the
small pox, should instantly leave Kensington House. She locked herself
up during a short time in her c