The Attorney-General, on behalf of the crown, after explaining the provisions of the Act, proceeded to tear the story of the petitioners to pieces, pronouncing its folly and absurdity equal to its audacity. The Polish princess and her charming daughter he pronounced pure myths--as entirely creatures of the imagination as Shakspeare's "Ferdinand and Miranda." As to the pretended marriage of George III. and Hannah Lightfoot, the tale was even more astonishing and incredible, for not only were wife and children denied by the king, and a second bigamous contract entered into, but the lady held her tongue, the children were content to live in obscurity, and Dr. Wilmot faithfully kept the secret, and preached sermons before the king and his second wife Queen Charlotte. Not that Dr. Wilmot did not feel these grave state secrets pressing him down, but the mode of revenge which he adopted was to write the "_Letters of Junius!_" Yet Dr. Wilmot died in 1807, apparently a common-place country parson. Surely there never was a more wonderful example of the possibility of keeping secrets. One would have imagined that the very walls would have spoken of such events; but although at least seven men and one woman (the wife of Robert Wilmot) must have been acquainted with them, the secret was kept as close as the grave for forty-three years, and was never even suspected before 1815, although all the actors in these extraordinary scenes seemed to have been occupied day and night in writing on little bits of paper, and telling the whole story. In 1815 the facts first came to the knowledge of Mrs. Serres; but, even then, they were not revealed, until the grave had closed over every individual who could vouch as to the handwriting.