London In The Jacobite Times Vol II (ePub)

Excerpt: On the last morning of Queen Anne?s life, a man, deep in thought, was slowly crossing Smithfield. The eyes of a clergyman passing in a carriage were bent upon him. The carriage stopped, the wayfarer looked up, and the two men knew each other. The one on foot was the dissenting preacher, whom Queen Anne used to call ?bold Bradbury.? The other was Bishop Burnet. ?On what were you so deeply thinking?? asked the bishop. ?On the men who died here at the stake,? replied Bradbury. ?Evil times, like theirs, are at hand. I am thinking whether I should be as brave as they were, if I were called upon to bear the fire as they bore it.? Burnet gave him hope. A good time, he said, was coming. The queen was mortally ill. Burnet was then, he said, on his way from Clerkenwell to the Court, and he undertook to send a messenger to Bradbury, to let him know how it fared with Anne. If he were in his chapel, a token should tell him that the queen was dead. A few hours later, Bradbury was half-way through his sermon, when he saw a handkerchief drop from the hand of a stranger in the gallery. This is said to have been the sign agreed upon. The preacher went quietly on to the end of his discourse; but, in the prayer which followed, he moved the pulses of his hearers? hearts, by giving thanks to God for saving the kingdom from the doings of its enemies; and he asked for God?s blessing on the King of England, George I., Elector of Hanover. About the same time Bishop Atterbury had offered to go down in front of St. James?s Palace, in full episcopal dress, and proclaim James III.?the late Queen?s brother. The Tory Ministry wavered, and Atterbury, with words unseemly for a bishop?s lips, deplored that they had let slip the finest opportunity that had ever been vouchsafed to mortal men.