gh, but
exceedingly irrational. The Earl of Kildare, the governor of Ireland,
declared that he believed the boy to be what the priest represented; and
the boy, who had been well tutored by the priest, told them such things
of his childhood, and gave them so many descriptions of the Royal Family,
that they were perpetually shouting and hurrahing, and drinking his
health, and making all kinds of noisy and thirsty demonstrations, to
express their belief in him. Nor was this feeling confined to Ireland
alone, for the Earl of Lincoln--whom the late usurper had named as his
successor--went over to the young Pretender; and, after holding a secret
correspondence with the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy--the sister of Edward
the Fourth, who detested the present King and all his race--sailed to
Dublin with two thousand German soldiers of her providing. In this
promising state of the boy's fortunes, he was crowned there, with a crown
taken off the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary; and was then,
according to the Irish custom of those days, carried home on the
shoulders of a big chieftain possessing a great deal more strength than
sense. Father Simons, you may be sure, was mighty busy at the
coronation.

Ten days afterwards, the Germans, and the Irish, and the priest, and the
boy, and the Earl of Lincoln, all landed in Lancashire to invade England.
The King, who had good intelligence of their movements, set up his
standard at Nottingham, where vast numbers resorted to him every day;
while the Earl of Lincoln could gain but very few. With his small force
he tried to make for the town of Newark; but the King's army getting
between him and that place, he had no choice but to risk a battle at
Stoke. It soon ended in the complete destruction of the Pretender's
forces, one half of whom were killed; among them, the Earl himself. The
priest and the baker's boy were taken prisoners. The priest, after
confessing the trick, was shut up in prison, where he afterwards
died--suddenly perhaps. The boy was taken into the King's kitchen and
made a turnspit. He was afterwards raised to the station of one of the
King's falconers; and so ended this strange imposition.

There seems reason to suspect that the Dowager Queen--always a restless
and busy woman--had had some share in tutoring the baker's son. The King
was very angry with her, whether or no. He seized upon her property, and
shut her up in a convent at Bermondsey.

One might suppo