CHAPTER IX
EXIT HIS HIGHNESS
From that day he sickened rapidly; his strength fell from him with a suddenness that amazed those about him. He attended business as usual, wearing the purple of royal mourning, but the heaviness of his spirit was noticed by all.
Towards the end of August, George Fox, the Quaker, came to Hampton Court to see His Highness about the persecution of the Friends; he went by river, and soon after he stepped ashore at Hampton he saw His Highness riding at the head of his Lifeguards, going towards the Palace under the shade of the riverside trees.
George Fox waited until the cavalcade, which was coming slowly towards him, into Hampton Court Park, had reached him, gazing steadily the while at that figure of His Highness, drooping a little in the saddle and looking ahead of him, with an extraordinary air of stillness.
"I felt and saw," wrote Fox afterwards, when he was back in his cobbler's shop in London, "a waft of death go forth against him, and when I came to him he looked like a dead man."
His Highness was very courteous; he checked his horse when he saw the patient figure, russet-clad, with the broad-brimmed hat, waiting for him, and welcomed Fox as warmly as he had done two years before when the Quaker saw him at Hyde Park Corner among his Guards, and pressed to his carriage window, and spoke to him gravely—as he spoke to him now, warning him, and laying before him the sufferings of the Friends, even as the spirit moved him to do.
His Highness listened; the stillness of his demeanour, remarkable in one naturally so full of energy and eloquence, did not alter; he said very little, only kindly bade Fox come and see him at his house next day.
And so he rode on slowly towards the red palace, "and I," wrote Fox in his Journal, "never saw him more."
For the following day, when he came from Kingston to Hampton again, the doctors would let no one see His Highness, who was fallen worse—of a tertian ague, they said—and would never ride at the head of his famous Guard again, either through Hampton Court Park or anywhere else. George Fox had been the last to see the Lord-Protector on horseback, girt with a sword.
Soon after he was moved by coach to London, where the air was thought to be better for his complaint; St. James's Palace, that he intended to lodge at, not being immediately ready, he was taken to Whitehall, and on the Wednesday following half the nation was praying for him, and half waiting breathlessly, "for a great deliverance."