I at least did not undertake to do it, when he left
the room in some heat. The bishop told me this was his usual
discourse, and that he had checked him formerly for taking so
indecent a liberty, but he found it was to no purpose."
The impostor's conversation on this occasion furnishes the key-
note of a vile plot now contrived to intercept the lawful
succession, either by effectually removing the queen, and thereby
enabling the king to marry again; or otherwise excluding the Duke
of York by act of parliament from lawful right to the crown.
Though Shaftesbury's hand was not plainly seen, there can be no
doubt it was busily employed in working out his favourite design.
The blow was first aimed at her majesty by Bedlow, who, on the
25th of November, accused her of conspiring to kill her husband.
About eighteen months previously, he said, there had been a
consultation in the chapel gallery at Somerset House, which had
been attended by Lord Bellasis, Mr. Coleman, La Faire, Pritchard,
Latham, and Sheldon, four Jesuits, and two Frenchmen whom he took
to be abbots, two persons of quality whose faces he did not see,
and lastly by her majesty. The Jesuits afterwards confided in
him as a person of trust, that the queen wept at a proposal to
murder the king which had been made, but subsequently yielding to
arguments of the French abbots, had consented to the design.
Indeed, Bedlow, who was in the sacristy when her majesty passed
through at the termination of this meeting, noticed her face had
much changed.
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