crown, and consequently the resignation void, it not signifying an iota
whether the child was born alive or dead: it was alive, said he, when
it was conceived--here he was called to order by Dr. O'Flaharty, the
queen-mother's man-midwife and member for the borough of Corbelly, who
entered into a learned dissertation on embrios; but he was interrupted
by the young queen's crying for her supper, the previous question for
which was carried without a negative; and then the house being resumed,
the debate was cut short by the impatience of the majority to go and
drink her majesty's health. This seeming violence gave occasion to a
very long protest, drawn up by sir Archee Mac Sarcasm, in which he
contrived to state the claim of the departed foetus so artfully, that
it produced a civil war, and gave rise to those bloody ravages and
massacres which so long laid waste the ancient kingdom of Kilkenny, and
which were at last terminated by a lucky accident, well known, says my
author, to every body, but which he thinks it his duty to relate for the
sake of those who never may have heard it. These are his words:

It happened that the archbishop of Tuum (anciently called Meum by
the Roman catholic clergy) the great wit of those times, was in the
queen-mother's closet, who had the young queen in her lap. [5] His
grace was suddenly seized with a violent fit of the cholic, which
made him make such wry faces, that the queen-mother thought he was
going to die, and ran out of the room to send for a physician, for
she was a pattern of goodness, and void of pride. While she was
stepped into the servant's hall to call somebody, according to the
simplicity of those times, the archbishop's pains encreased, when
perceiving something on the mantle-piece, which he took for a peach
in brandy, he gulped it all down at once without saying grace, God
forgive him, and found great comfort from it. He had not done
licking his lips before the queen-mother returned, when queen Grata