He told me he wished much he had been able to consult with me on the preceding morning, when he had the queen’s orders to write, in her majesty’s name, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to issue out public prayers for the poor king, for all the churches.
I assured him I fancied it might do very well without my aid. There was to be a privy council summoned, in consequence of the letter, to settle the mode of compliance.
How right a step in my ever-right royal mistress is this! If you hear less of her now, my dearest friends, and of the internal transactions, it is only because I now rarely saw her but alone, and all that passed, therefore, was in promised confidence. And, for the rest, the whole of my information concerning the princes, and the plans and the proceedings of the house, was told me in perfect reliance on my secrecy and honour.
I know this is saying enough to the most honourable of all confidants and friends to whom I am writing. All that passes with regard to myself is laid completely before them.
Nov. 13—This was the fairest day we have passed since the first seizure of the most beloved of monarchs. He was considerably better. O what a ray of joy lightened us, and how mildly did my poor queen receive it Nov. 14—Still all was greatly amended, and better spirits reigned throughout the house.
Mr. Fairly—I can write of no one else, for no one else did I see—called early, to tell me he had received an answer relative to the prayer for his majesty’s recovery, in consequence of which he had the queen’s commands for going to town the next day, to see the archbishop. This was an employment so suited to the religious cast of his character, that I rejoiced to see it fall into his hands.
He came again in the evening, and said he had now got the prayer. He did not entirely approve it, nor think it sufficiently warm and animated. I petitioned to hear it, and he readily complied, and read it with great reverence, but very unaffectedly and quietly. I was very, very much touched by It; yet not, I own, quite so much as once before by another, which was read to me by Mr. Cambridge, and composed by his son, for the sufferings of his excellent daughter Catherine. It was at once so devout, yet so concise—so fervent, yet so simple, and the many tender relations concerned in it—father, brother, sister,—so powerfully affected me, that I had no command over the feelings then excited, even though Mr. Cambridge almost reproved me for want of fortitude; but there was something so tender in a prayer of a brother for a sister.
Here, however, I was under better control for though my whole heart was filled with the calamitous state of this unhappy monarch, and with deepest affliction for all his family, I yet knew so well my reader was one to severely censure all failure in calmness and firmness, that I struggled, and not ineffectually, to hear him with a steadiness like his own. But, fortunately for the relief of this force, he left the room for a few minutes to see if he was wanted, and I made use of his absence to give a little vent to those tears which I had painfully restrained in his presence.
When he returned we had one of the best (on his part) conversations in which I have ever been engaged, upon the highest and most solemn of all subjects, prayers and supplications to heaven. He asked my opinion with earnestness, and gave his own with unbounded openness.
Nov. 15-This morning my poor royal mistress herself presented me with one of the prayers for the king. I shall always keep it—how—how fervently did I use it!