[69] The Treasurer soon found that, in using scandalous means for the purpose of obtaining a laudable end, he had committed, not only a crime, but a folly.

The Queen was now his enemy.

She affected, indeed, to listen with civility while the Hydes excused their recent conduct as well as they could; and she occasionally pretended to use her influence in their favour: but she must have been more or less than woman if she had really forgiven the conspiracy which had been formed against her dignity and her domestic happiness by the family of her husband's first wife.

The Jesuits strongly represented to the King the danger which he had so narrowly escaped.

His reputation, they said, his peace, his soul, had been put in peril by the machinations of his prime minister.