FOOTNOTES:
[41] Louis XIV.
[42] Take it off.
[43] This probably refers to the supposed murder, in 1678, of Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey, the magistrate before whom Titus Oates made his incredible depositions concerning the alleged Popish plot. Many believed it was a case of suicide. He was found pierced through with his own sword on Primrose Hill. But the infamous Bedloe, a convicted felon, and accomplice of Titus Oates, accused Queen Catharine's Catholic servants of murdering Godfrey in Somerset House, where the queen then resided, and so struck at the queen herself. Oates and he afterwards accused her of conspiring to murder the king. But Charles was not so mad and bad as to believe them. Godfrey had warned one of the denounced persons, Coleman, and the murder, if it was one, is now generally attributed to the Ultra-Protestant faction. At any rate, they used the incident to inflame the public mind against the Roman Catholics.
[44] Algiers.
[45] i.e. Drink to him.
[46] Sporting dogs used to be called "questing hounds" (see Malory, for instance), and a hound may run forward in pursuit at the wrong moment. This is evidently the allusion here.
[47] An allusion to the common superstition that if the murderer touched the dead body the wounds would commence to bleed afresh.
