Suspecting that things were now taking an unfavorable turn, he began privately to censure the measures of the court, and to insinuate that the king had acted against his advice, saying, "It will be found that I have done the part of an honest man, but as for the judges they are most of them rogues." About this time he was present at an event which was considered more than a counterpoise to recent discomfitures, but which greatly precipitated the crisis by taking away the hope of relief by the rightful succession of a Protestant heir. Being suddenly summoned to Whitehall, he immediately repaired thither, and found that the queen had been taken in labor. Other councillors and many ladies of quality soon arrived, and they were all admitted into her bedchamber. Her majesty seems to have been much annoyed by the presence of the lord chancellor. The king calling for him, he came forward and stood on the step of the bed to show that he was there. She then begged her consort to cover her face with his head and periwig; for she declared "she could not be brought to bed, and have so many men look on her." However, the fright may have shortened her sufferings; for James III., or "the old pretender," very speedily made his appearance, and the midwife having made the concerted signal that the child was of the wished-for sex, the company retreated. Considering the surmises which had been propagated ever since the queen's pregnancy was announced, that it was feigned, and that a suppositious child was to be palmed upon the world, Jeffreys was lamentably deficient in duty to the king in not having recommended steps to convince the public from the beginning, beyond all possibility of controversy, of the genuineness of the birth. When the story of the "warming-pan" had taken hold of the public mind, many witnesses were examined before the Privy Council to disprove it, but it continued an article of faith with thorough anti-Jacobites during the two succeeding reigns.[145]