Urged by the remonstrances and clamour of the people, Charles entered into an alliance with William, Prince of Orange, who married the Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of James, the young lady being used, like so much of the cement distinguished as "Poo-Loo's," for the purpose of mending the breakages that had occurred on both sides. William was as deep as Charles, and soon began to pooh! pooh! the idea of having cemented, à la Poo-Loo, a rupture of such long standing, and he positively refused to fall into Charles's projects.
The state of Scotland was not more satisfactory than that of England at this time, for the Covenanters were striving vigorously against the constituted authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical. Lauderdale, who represented the king, enrolled twenty thousand militiamen; but had he enrolled, or rolled up in old coats, as many scarecrows, they would have been quite as serviceable as the new soldiery.
Charles is informed of a plot against his precious life.
The recent regicide having caused a reaction in favour of royalty, it became a common trick with the king's party to get up a report of the intended assassination of Charles the Second, whenever the stock of popularity was running rather short, and the people seemed to be getting dissatisfied with the Government.
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In the absence of real objects of suspicion, there is never any difficulty among Englishmen in drawing upon their inventive resources for materials to make a panic, whether monetary, political, or otherwise; and about the year 1670 rumour was very busy in manufacturing all sorts of plots against the life of the sovereign. On the morning of the 13th of August, which happened to be one of the dog days, Charles was walking with his dogs in the park, when Kirby, the chemist—a highly respectable man, but an egregious blockhead—drew to the monarch's side, and whispered in the royal ear, "Keep within the company; your enemies have a design upon your life, and you may be shot in this very walk." Charles, who was a little flurried, desired to know the meaning of this warning, when Kirby the chemist offered to produce one Doctor Tongue, a weak-minded and credulous old parson, who said he had heard that two fellows, named Grove and Pickering, were making arrangements for smashing Charles on the very first opportunity. This tongue was so exceedingly slippery that he could not be believed; but to keep himself out of a pickle, he brought a pile of papers, containing a copious account of the alleged conspiracy. He alleged that he had found them pushed under his door; but we cannot very easily believe that any conspirators would have been so foolish as to go about, dropping promiscuously into letter-boxes, or thrusting under street doors, the proofs of their designs on the sovereign.