The pastry-cook was also a vintner. His tables were pretty well
crowded with men, mostly seafaring men, who were drinking wine
together, talking of politics. I knew nothing whatever about
politics, but hearing the Duke of Monmouth named I pricked up my
ears to listen. My father had told me, in his last illness, when
the news of the death of Charles the Second reached us, that
trouble would come to England through this Duke, because, he
said, "he will never agree with King James." Many people (the
Duke himself being one of them) believed that this James Scott,
Duke of Monmouth, was the son of a very beautiful woman by
Charles the Second, who (so the tale went) had married her in his
wanderings abroad, while Cromwell ruled in England here. I myself
shall ever believe this story. I am quite sure, now, in my own
mind, that Monmouth was our rightful King. I have heard accounts
of this marriage of Charles the Second from people who were with
him in his wanderings. When Charles the Second died (being
poisoned, some said, by his brother James, who wished to seize
the throne while Monmouth was abroad, unable to claim his rights)
James succeeded to the crown. At the time of which I write he had
been King for about two months. I did not know anything about his
merits as a King; but hearing the name of Monmouth I felt sure,
from the first, that I should hear more of what my father had
told me.

One of the seamen, a sour-looking, pale-faced man, was saying
that Holland was full of talk that the Duke was coming over, to
try for the Kingdom. Another said that it wasn't the Duke of
Monmouth but the Duke of Argyle that was coming, to try, not for
England, but for Scotland. A third said that all this was talk,
for how could a single man, without twenty friends in the world,