[380] Was it a disqualification that he was the near kinsman of the Princesses of Orange and Denmark?
Or was it a disqualification that he was unalterably attached to the Church of England?
The cry of the whole nation was that an imposture bad been practised.
Papists had, during some months, been predicting, from, the pulpit and through the press, in prose and verse, in English and Latin, that a Prince of Wales would be given to the prayers of the Church; and they had now accomplished their own prophecy.

Every witness who could not be corrupted or deceived had been studiously excluded.

Anne had been tricked into visiting Bath.

The Primate had, on the very day preceding that which had been fixed for the villainy, been sent to prison in defiance of the rules of law and of the privileges of peerage.

Not a single man or woman who had the smallest interest in detecting the fraud had been suffered to be present.