he food of a young girl whom he
had no conceivable motive to injure. [221] A few years later, the rapid
decomposition of Cromwell's own corpse was ascribed by many to a deadly
potion administered in his medicine. The death of Charles the Second
could scarcely fail to occasion similar rumours. The public ear had been
repeatedly abused by stories of Popish plots against his life. There
was, therefore, in many minds, a strong predisposition to suspicion; and
there were some unlucky circumstances which, to minds so predisposed,
might seem to indicate that a crime had been perpetrated. The fourteen
Doctors who deliberated on the King's case contradicted each other and
themselves. Some of them thought that his fit was epileptic, and that
he should be suffered to have his doze out. The majority pronounced
him apoplectic, and tortured him during some hours like an Indian at
a stake. Then it was determined to call his complaint a fever, and to
administer doses of bark. One physician, however, protested against
this course, and assured the Queen that his brethren would kill the
King among them. Nothing better than dissension and vacillation could be
expected from such a multitude of advisers. But many of the vulgar not
unnaturally concluded, from the perplexity of the great masters of the
healing art, that the malady had some extraordinary origin. There is
reason to believe that a horrible suspicion did actually cross the mind
of Short, who, though skilful in his profession, seems to have been a
nervous and fanciful man, and whose perceptions were probably confused
by dread of the odious imputations to which he, as a Roman Catholic,
was peculiarly exposed. We cannot, therefore, wonder that wild stories
without number were repeated and believed by the common people. His
Majesty's tongue had swelled to the size of a neat's tongue. A cake of
deleterious powder had been found in his brain. There were blue spots on
his breast, There were black spots on his shoulder. Something had been,
put in his snuff-box. Something had been put into his broth. Something
had been put into his favourite dish of eggs and ambergrease. The
Duchess of Portsmouth had poisoned him in a cup of chocolate. The
Queen had poisoned him in a jar of dried pears. Such tales ought to be
preserved; for they furnish us with a measure of the intelligence and
virtue of the generation which eagerly devoured them. That no rumour of
the same kind has ever, in the present age,