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 sole remaining chance of liberty, security, and religion, a bill of divorce which by separating the king from Catherine might enable him to marry a protestant consort, and thus to leave the crown to his legitimate issue.' A warm debate ensued, but Shaftesbury gained so little support that, after several adjournments, he refused to persevere with his motion. Charles himself was very active against the bill, and it is recorded that 'on leaving the House of Lords he went straight to the queen, and to give a proof of his extraordinary affection for her he seated himself after dinner in her apartment, and slept there a long time, which he had been in the habit of doing only in the Duchess of Portsmouth's chamber' (Barillon's despatches in Life of Shaftesbury, ii. 378; cf. 380). Catherine, who had suffered from illness during the autumn, attended early in the winter the trial of Lord Stafford (30 Nov.-7 Dec.), during which the old accusations against her were freely bandied about, and may have had some share in his conviction. Next year Fitzharris's information also involved the queen. He declared that Dom Francisco de Mello had informed him that she was involved in a design for poisoning Charles. In March 1681 Catherine accompanied her husband to Oxford and was present during the turbulent scenes that resulted in the dissolution of the last parliament of Charles's reign. This brought her troubles to an end. Fitzharris was condemned to death, and just before his execution declared to the council that he had been persuaded to invent the stories involving the queen by the whig sheriffs of London, Cornish and Bethel, and Treby the recorder. The queen's good domestic fortune outlived—though not for long—her troubles. Catherine shared in Charles's renewed popularity, and with some magnanimity interceded for Monmouth's pardon, an office which seems to have led to some coolness between her and the Duke of York, with whom she had already been for trifling causes slightly at variance (Strickland, p. 667). Before long, however, the Duchess of Portsmouth returned to court, and the queen's absence from that scene of 'luxury, dissoluteness, and forgetfulness of God' which Evelyn so vividly pictured on the last Sunday of Charles's life indicates that her old difficulties had in nowise abated (1 Feb. 1680). On Charles's sudden illness Catherine, who may have known something of his religious position, without being, as her Portuguese panegyrists say, the chief cause of his conversion, displayed the greatest anxiety for his reconciliation with the catholic church before his death. She earnestly besought the Duchess of York to exhort the duke to take advantage of the king's 'good moments' with that object (, tom. 2, doc. cccciii). It was in her chamber, though she herself was senseless in the physician's hands, that James and Barillon made the final arrangements for the king's reconciliation, and one of her priests assisted Huddleston in the administration of the last rites to him. Her grief at his death was extreme. She received her visits of condolence in a bed of mourning in a darkened room hung with black, faintly illuminated by burning tapers (, 5 Feb.) Two months afterwards she left Whitehall for Somerset House, and there, or at her suburban residence at Hammersmith, where she had privately established a convent of nuns, she spent the first years of her widowhood. She lived in great privacy, amusing herself by cards and concerts. Her chamberlain Feversham governed her household, and her intimacy with him groundlessly excited scandalous gossip. She seems to have been on fair terms with the new king and queen. She interceded, however, in vain for Monmouth, who had addressed piteous supplications to her for help (, Life of Monmouth, ii. 112, 119; cf. Camden Miscellany, viii.) She was present at the birth of the Prince of Wales on 10 June 1688 (see her own account in a letter to her brother King Pedro in Egerton MS. 1534, f. 10), stood godmother for him, and gave evidence before the council that he was truly the son of Mary of Modena.

Catherine proposed to return to Portugal, and ships were prepared for her departure. She delayed, however, in England to carry on a tedious and rather vexatious lawsuit against Lord Clarendon, her former chamberlain, for some large sums asserted to have been lost by his negligence or peculation. Most people, shared King James's opinion, that she was a hard woman to deal with, and she seems to have become both greedy and litigious (full details of the suit in the State Letters and Diary of Henry, Earl of Clarendon, especially in the Diary, pp. 18. 23-5, 29, 41, 79).

The revolution found Catherine still in England. She received an early visit from the Prince of Orange, who did her a little service by releasing Feversham from custody (, p. 1136). But, despite her friendly relations with the new government, she was involved in the general attack on all catholics. In July 1689 a bill passed the commons limiting the number of her popish servants to eighteen, but it failed to get through the House of Lords. William himself requested her to leave Somerset House for a less public place