Moreover, as their first information was no other than common fame,
the public clamour occasioned by the separation might inspire such
as were strangers to the family affairs with a mistaken notion of
the child's having been born about or after the time of that event.
The hurry and bustle occasioned by the arrival of the lord-lieutenant
about this period, the reports industriously propagated of the
claimant's death, the obscurity and concealment in which the boy
was obliged to live, in order to elude the wicked attempts of his
uncle, might also contribute to his peaceable enjoyment of an empty
title. And lastly, Lord Chancellor W--, whose immediate province
it was to issue writs for parliament, was an utter stranger in
Ireland, unacquainted with the descents of families, and consequently
did not examine farther than the certificate enrolled in the books
of the king-at-arms. Over and above these circumstances, which
naturally account for the success of the imposture, it may be
observed, that the hapless youth had not one relation alive, on
the side of his father, whose interest it was not to forward or
connive at his destruction; that his grandfather, the duke of B--,
was dead; and that his mother was then in England, in a forlorn,
destitute, dying condition, secreted from the world, and even from
her own relations, by her woman Mary H--, who had a particular
interest to secrete her, and altogether dependent upon a miserable
and precarious allowance from the duchess of B--, to whose caprice
she was moreover a most wretched slave.
Pages:
1380
1381
1382
1383
1384
1385
1386
1387
1388
1389
1390
1391
1392
1393
1394
1395
1396
1397
1398
1399
1400
1401
1402
1403
1404