"Very good, Will Wiseman, very good. It will not be the fault of Nicholas Blewer if thou dost not taste the discipline of the hangman's whip before he has done with thee."
"O Will, why didst thou do it?" I asked, in an access of fear and trembling. "My uncle ever teaches us to speak with respect of dignitaries, even though they be none of the best. I fear me we were wrong in this, and shall suffer for it. Mr. Blewer is not a man who forgives or forgets."
"Let him remember an he pleases—I care not," answered Will, who had a much higher courage than I, and far more of that reckless daring which I read of with envy and admiration, but never attained to myself. It was one of the things I most admired in him, though it sometimes made me fear that he would get into trouble sooner or later.
We walked back to his home together, talking eagerly of the great news of the day. Personally, we had no especial regrets for his late Majesty, and could not but rejoice in the prospect of the coming strife; for that England would calmly accept James Duke of York as her King was a thing incomprehensible to us, owing to the element of faction in which we had been living. We ourselves so thoroughly believed in the rights of the exiled Monmouth, that we could not credit or understand that these had never been greatly believed in by the mass of the nation, and that the King's brother was likely to obtain all the support of the lovers of established monarchy, as well as of those who, whilst personally regretting the character of the man, would not be a party to a measure of exclusion which should keep the true heir from the throne, or favour a possible usurper.
As days went by the excitement did not lessen. All manner of wild rumours were flying about; but from my lord the Viscount, who came daily into Taunton on one errand or another—in hopes, as I knew, of getting sight or speech of Mistress Mary—I heard the truest tidings.
King James had declared, immediately on succeeding to his new estate, that he would guard the established religion of the country as the choicest treasure of his crown; and a thrill of joy and triumph ran through the country, whilst men swore that the Prince had been sorely maligned, and that whatever his wife might be, he was no Papist at heart.
But then, on the very heels of the first good news, came tidings that the King was going openly to Mass with his wife, that the oratory chapel fitted up for her was to be thrown open for public worship, that the Papists all over the country were rejoicing, and that banished priests and Jesuits were beginning to creep back, certain that good days were in store for them at last.
Then still more ugly whispers (as some thought) got abroad. The King had consented to summon a Parliament, having indeed but small choice in the matter; but it was known in many circles that he had received a large sum of money from the French King in order to make him almost independent of that body, and to bribe and corrupt its members when chosen, that it might be merely an engine for the oppression of the people at the will of a tyrannical monarch.