He soon wrote to the Hague that not one person in ten believed the child to have been born of the Queen.
[382] The demeanour of the seven prelates meanwhile strengthened the interest which their situation excited.

On the evening of the Black Friday, as it was called, on which they were committed, they reached their prison just at the hour of divine service.

They instantly hastened to the chapel.
It chanced that in the second lesson were these words: "In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments." All zealous Churchmen were delighted by this coincidence, and remembered how much comfort a similar coincidence had given, near forty years before, to Charles the First at the time of his death.
On the evening of the next day, Saturday the ninth, a letter came from Sunderland enjoining the chaplain of the Tower to read the Declaration during divine service on the following morning.

As the time fixed by the Order in Council for the reading in London had long expired, this proceeding of the government could be considered only as a personal insult of the meanest and most childish kind to the venerable prisoners.
The chaplain refused to comply: he was dismissed from his situation; and the chapel was shut up.

[383] The Bishops edified all who approached them by the firmness and cheerfulness with which they endured confinement, by the modesty and meekness with which they received the applauses and blessings of the whole nation, and by the loyal attachment which they professed for the persecutor who sought their destruction.