t to receive the address which requested him
to disgrace his dearest and most trusty friends. Indeed he would have
prevented the passing of that address by proroguing Parliament on the
preceding day, had not the Lords risen the moment after they had agreed
to the Resumption Bill. He had actually come from Kensington to the
Treasury for that purpose; and his robes and crown were in readiness.
He now took care to be at Westminster in good time. The Commons had
scarcely met when the knock of Black Rod was heard. They repaired to
the other House. The bills were passed; and Bridgewater, by the
royal command, prorogued the Parliament. For the first time since the
Revolution the session closed without a speech from the throne. William
was too angry to thank the Commons, and too prudent to reprimand them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The health of James had been during some years declining and he had at
length, on Good Friday, 1701, suffered a shock from which he had never
recovered. While he was listening in his chapel to the solemn service
of the day, he fell down in a fit, and remained long insensible. Some
people imagined that the words of the anthem which his choristers were
chanting had produced in him emotions too violent to be borne by an
enfeebled body and mind. For that anthem was taken from the plaintive
elegy in which a servant of the true God, chastened by many sorrows and
humiliations, banished, homesick, and living on the bounty of strangers,
bewailed the fallen throne and the desolate Temple of Sion: "Remember,
O Lord, what is come upon us; consider and behold our reproach. Our
inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens; the crown is
fallen from our head. Wherefore dose thou forget us for ever?"

The King's malady proved to be paralytic. Fagon, the first physician of
the French Court, and, on medical questions, the oracle of all Europe,
prescribed the waters of Bourbon. Lewis, with all his usual generosity,
sent to Saint Germains ten thousand crowns in gold for the charges
of the journey, and gave orders that every town along the road should
receive his good brother with all the honours due to royalty. [21]

James, after passing some time at Bourbon, returned to the neighbourhood
of Paris with health so far reestablished that he was able to take
exercise on horseback, but with judgment and memory evidently impaired.
On the thirteenth of September, he had a second fit in h