Trying To Change A Sovereign.

meeting with him ) " at last she met with the king , as he came out of the park going into the gallery , where she presented him with the paper which , on the backside was endorsed , The humble request of Elizabeth James , ' acquainting him also b y word who she was , to whom he held up his finger and said , ' Oh ! Mr . James , he is a sweet gentleman ! ' " ( the affabilit y of Royal irony , ) "but , following him for some further answerthe door was shut against herwhich

, , was all she could obtain at that time . The next morning she came again to the same place , where she had not long been but the king came out of the gallery to go into the park , whom she followed down the stairs , imploring his answer to her request , who then replied , ' That he was a rogue , and should be hanged . ' One of the lords attending him asked him of whom he spake ; whereunto the king answered' Of John James ! that he shall be

, rogue , hanged ; yea , he shall be hanged . ' And ' so she came away , satisfied in conscience that what she had clone was but her duty . " * Talk of the amazing condescension of Messieurs Pike and Pluck ! Why , that was nothing to the affable urbanity of England ' s merry monarch . Well ; they hanged John James , of course . Squire Dun don't seem to have got even his five pounds , and also appears to have been baulked of the

alternative gratification of torturing his victim " exceedingly , " for the Sheriffs , we read , allowed poor John to hang half-an-hour before having his carcase cut down for the usual legal evisceration , ancl , I believe , even ordered the supreme executive to jump from the gallows on to the shoulders of the suspended body , and supreme executive ' s lieutenant to hang on to the dangling legs in order to assist dissolution . But then , probably , the Sheriffs were Cockney Covenanters , ancl knew no better ; at all events , they seem to have thought it no such great sin to combine loyalty ancl duty with humanity .

Exit Mrs . James . Did she live , and wash ancl "do chores "—I mean , do charing , for Rosemary Lane ancl Knockfergus tradesmen ' s wives until all the Puritan world went screaming mad for " King Monmouth , " I wonder ? Was she earning her ninepence a clay ancl glass of strong waters from the ladies of Aldgate carcase butchers when Mrs . Gaunt ( burnt for it , however ) was harbouring the fugitives from Sedgmoor in her neighbourhood ? Above all , did she survive to point out to John James the secondwhen the Dutch deliverer

, was blown over by a Protestant wind , that his mangled father ' s " good old cause " was triumphant after all ? Awajr , saunterer ! I have no patience to examine your subsequent perils . Awfully tedious and intricate are the details of the R ye House affair , with its " main "—in which , probably , Russell and Sydney were implicated , as Somers and Halifax evolved a similar design subsequently—and its "b" with

ye , involved assassination , with which , let us have the happiness of thinking , our English patriots hacl nought to do . The main and the bye adjectives reappearing in this miserable Broxbourne scare as they had figured in Babington ' s conspiracy a hundred—in Raleigh ' s affair ancl the Gunpowder Plot eighty—years before . Away , trifler ! Well might you apologise for the unconscionable'long time you were in dingdawdling minion of Ludovicus Magnus .

y , You did harm , but you did good . Your foul quarter-of-a-century of mischievous laziness brought to a head a social fester that took but three years of fierce inflammation to burst ancl discharge . You ancl your dull , " duffing " brother ! Nearly a generation were we Englishmen—though , thank God , very , very few of us by the foul device of assassination—feverishl y "trying to change a

sovereign . "