Ellis’s Original Letters, 2nd series, vol. iii., p. 245-46. There are nineteen volumes in the Sloane MSS., British Museum, consisting of notes in Latin, in the handwriting of Mayerne, forming a journal of the cases which he attended from 1611 to 1649. “These,” says Sir Henry Ellis, “may be styled, for the period they embrace, ‘Medical Annals of the Court of England.’”
But it appears that the nation, pleased that the heir-apparent of Great Britain should have an opportunity of seeing two great kingdoms, and proud of his discretion and princely demeanour, were far from regretting that the journey had taken place, but rejoiced that he had returned in health, and without any change in his religious opinions.[117]
State Papers. Letter from Edward Herbert to James I., p. 168.
The Prince, it was now said, disliked a Dutch match, and refused a Spanish one, until full restoration of the Palatinate and Electorals. “A lady,” Dudley Carleton remarked, “wise in these matters, declared she saw no symptom of his being in love.”[118] The talk of the Spanish match became daily cooler, and another was said to be under consideration at Vienna; whilst the Princes’s safe return was, as many thought, a “marvel to all;” and a great man told him that he might thank God and his sister for it.[119]
In the course of these discussions an accident occurred, which too plainly showed the temper of the times. A house had been hired by the Roman Catholics, next to that of the French ambassador, in order to celebrate mass, and to hear Father Drury, a famous Jesuit preacher. The day chosen for the opening of the tenement was the fifth of November. That day the roof fell in, whilst these worshippers were assembled, and ninety-five people, Drury among the number, were killed. It seems difficult, in the present state of public feeling, to believe that, as the crashing ruins entombed the victims beneath them, the barbarous multitude, who might term themselves Protestants, but were not to be called Christians, “rather railed and taunted the sufferers, than helped them.” Nor did the bitterness of persecution end there, for the Bishop of London refused to allow these unfortunate people to be interred in any churchyard in the City; the dead were therefore buried in two pits behind the houses which had fallen in, and black crosses were placed above their graves. This event made a deep impression. It was the first solemn meeting of recusants for sixty years; the Puritans styled it a judgment; the Romanists declared that it could not be such, for that those dying in that way escape purgatory. The preachers in the churches, however, treated the question “charitably and temperately.”[120] Masses for the sufferers were said at Ely House, in the presence of all the Spanish Legation, Sir Tobie Mathew appearing as chief mourner.[121]