for Monmouth to be formally sent out of the kingdom by order in council (Life of James II, i. 579; but see Luttrell, i. 26, 27). He refused to see the letter which Monmouth wrote in reply, or to be moved by Nell Gwyn's description of the wan, pale looks of his unhappy son (1 Dec. 1679; Verney MSS. u.s. 478). Monmouth in his turn courageously held his own, quitting Whitehall for his house in Hedge Lane, and declaring that he would live on his wife's fortune (Life of James II, u. s.). In the meantime he made the most of his opportunities, worshipping in St. Martin's Church so as to provoke a demonstration of sympathy (Verney MSS.), and paying his court to Nell Gwyn (Sidney, i. 207) and others of his father's mistresses (ib. p. 298). About the same time (30 Jan. 1680) he was said to be involved in two guilty intrigues, one with Lady Grey, the other with Lady Wentworth (ib. i. 263–4).
Faction now raged among ‘Addressers’ and ‘Abhorrers,’ and in February 1680 the Duke of York returned from Scotland. London playhouse audiences clamoured against him, and vowed to be ‘for his highness the Duke of Monmouth against the world’ (ib. i. 237), and in ‘An Appeal from the Country to the City,’ attributed to Robert Ferguson [q. v.] (Ferguson the Plotter, p. 42), which one Harris was unsuccessfully prosecuted for publishing, the succession of Monmouth was advocated on the ground that ‘he who has the worst title makes the best king,’ and that ‘God and my People’ would in his case make a good substitute for ‘God and my Right’ (Life of Lord William Russell, i. 173). A design in which the Duchess of Portsmouth co-operated was talked of, to empower the king to name his successor (Burnet, ii. 260–1; cf. Sidney, i. 15). But bolder projects were discussed in the secret meetings by the chief leaders of the opposition (Reresby, p. 182), and it was determined to place the claims of Monmouth on a legal basis.
Not a tittle of real evidence exists in favour of the supposed marriage between Charles II and Lucy Walters. Monmouth is said by Sir Patrick Hume (Marchmont Papers, vol. iii.) to have informed him, when about to start on the expedition of 1685, that he possessed proofs of his mother's marriage, and Sir Patrick Hume may have told the truth. Nor can any significance be attached to the fact that in 1655, writing to her brother about Lucy Walters, the Princess of Orange twice referred to her as his wife (see Hallam's note to Const. History, c. xii.). A story which obtained wide acceptance was to the effect that the contract of marriage between Charles and Lucy Walters was contained in a black box entrusted by Cosin, afterwards bishop of Durham, to his son-in-law, Sir Gilbert Gerard. No proof of the existence of the box was given. The king remembered a report that Ross, Monmouth's tutor, had actually, though in vain, sought to induce Cosin, whose ‘penitent’ Lucy Walters pretended to be at Paris, to sign a certificate of the marriage (Life of James II, i. 491). Sir Gilbert Gerard was on 26 April summoned before the privy council, where he denied any knowledge of box or marriage contract (Luttrell, i. 42). Monmouth's partisans issued a pamphlet called ‘The Perplexed Prince,’ and under the fashionable disguise of a romantic narrative which asserted the facts of the marriage Ferguson maintained the truth of the marriage story in able pamphlets [see Ferguson, Robert, (d. 1714)]. Monmouth is said to have given Ferguson an annuity of fifty guineas. Ferguson's first pamphlet produced a new declaration from Charles embodying the preceding two.
In August of the same year Monmouth started on an expedition among his friends in Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Devonshire. Besides several smaller towns, Ilchester, Ilminster, Chard, &c., he visited Exeter, where he was greeted by about one thousand ‘stout young men.’ Once in the course of this journey he touched for the evil. Dryden (Absalom and Achitophel, pt. i. l. 741) cannot be wrong in supposing Shaftesbury to have suggested this quasi-royal progress, on which Monmouth was received with the utmost enthusiasm. In October he was back in London, where he still abstained from attending court (Luttrell, i. 56); on lord mayor's day he was received with loud acclamations in the city (Verney MSS. u.s. p. 479); in December he was present at Lord Stafford's trial (Heroick Life, p. 105).
The Exclusion Bill had now passed the commons, but had been rejected by the lords. Just before the prorogation (10 Jan. 1681) the former house, among a series of defiant resolutions, voted one demanding the restoration to Monmouth of his offices, of which he had been deprived through the influence of the Duke of York (Life of Lord Russell, i. 253). When a new parliament was summoned to Oxford, Monmouth's name headed the petition against its being held anywhere but at Westminster. At Oxford he appeared with a numerous following, and, like the other whig chiefs, kept open table, and did his best to secure the goodwill of the commons (Lord Grey, Secret History, p. 10). Shaftesbury's attempt to make the Exclusion Bill unnecessary, by inducing the king to name Monmouth his successor, having failed
