HIGH STREET, ROCHESTER: EASTGATE HOUSE.
Twenty-one years after this date came James the Second on two hurried visits to Rochester within a few days of one another. If he had had time, and had been in a sufficiently calm frame of mind, he might have reflected on the vicissitudes of Kings in general, and of his own Royal House in particular; but being shockingly upset, and in a mortal terror lest he should lose his head as thoroughly in a physical sense as he had already done in a figurative way of speaking, he lost that opportunity of coolly reviewing his position which, had it but been seized, would have led him to return to London and stay there. It is not a little sad to reflect that, had the gloomy and morose James not been a coward, the House of Stuart might still have ruled England. At any rate, men did not love the taciturn Prince of Orange and his Dutchmen so well but what they would have gladly done without him and have taken back their King, if that King had only shown a little more spirit and a little less of religious bigotry. William could not but perceive that his principles and not his person were acclaimed, and when he gave the King leave to retire to Rochester, he both knew that James desired an opportunity to escape from the kingdom, and hoped he would use it. And he did use the chance so gladly given him, secretly departing from Rochester in the small hours of a December morning, and making for Ambleteuse on the French coast in a fishing-smack.
JACK IN HIS GLORY.
From a painting by Julius Cæsar Ibbetson.
XXIV
This was the last romantic event that befell at Rochester, and it fitly closed a stirring history.