About Midsummer there came another batch of papers for the Secretary’s examination, supplying the names of ministers in the Borough of Southwark, their respective meeting-houses and the number of their hearers.[100] The illness from which the King just then was suffering, it is said, produced a great excitement amongst Dissenters, and a few days after the arrival of the last of these despatches at the Secretary’s office, the Lord Mayor of London issued a proclamation, in which he alluded to tumults occasioned by putting the law into execution against Conventicles.[101] CHAPTER V. [Sidenote: DUKE OF MONMOUTH.] Readers of English history will remember the important political part played in the last years of Charles’ reign, by his illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth. When public feeling ran so high against the Duke of York, and so many Protestants were zealous for the Exclusion Bill, some amongst the latter favoured certain pretensions to the crown which had been put forward on behalf of his nephew. The pretensions were founded upon the alleged existence of a black box containing a contract of marriage between the King and the Duke’s mother, Lucy Walters, which black box made no small stir throughout the country in the year 1680.[102] Two years afterwards, when the Popish plot had ceased to alarm the public, and when the Duke of York’s prospects had begun to brighten, Monmouth endeavoured to revive his popularity, and to reinforce his claims by a progress in the North of England, during which journey he assumed a degree of state proper only to an heir apparent. Attended by a hundred horsemen,--fifty of whom rode before and fifty behind--he occupied a space in the midst of the cavalcade, mounted on a noble charger, and bowing with royal condescension to the crowds, who rent the air with shouts, “A Monmouth, a Monmouth, and no York!” Bells fired from the church steeples, and musketry roared from gates and ramparts, as the gay procession entered town after town. He might be found at fairs and races, rousing the men and wooing the women, and in town halls dining with the burgesses; always affecting royal etiquette, and actually going so far as to touch for the King’s evil. His movements closely watched, were duly reported to the Secretary of State by persons ill-affected towards the bold aspirant, including Shakerley, Governor of Chester Castle, who industriously wrote, day after day, minute descriptions of all Monmouth did in that old city,--a city in which, it may be recollected, Nonconformists had been found to be very numerous some years before.[103] [Sidenote: 1682.]