Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 11.djvu/400

388 nine, they told me she was just expiring. That account continued above three hours, and a report was carried to town, that she was actually dead. She was not prayed for, even at her own chapel at St. made such a motion against me. God knows my will to do her majesty any service has ever got the start of my ability; and I have nothing that gives me greater anxiety and trouble than the death of that great and glorious princess. I must do that justice to the physicians that attended her in her illness, from a sight of the method that was taken for her preservation by Dr. Mead, as to declare nothing was omitted for her preservation; but the people about her, the plagues of Egypt fall on them, put it out of the power of physick to be of any benefit to her. I know the nature of attending crowned heads in their last moments too well to be fond of waiting upon them, without being sent for by a proper authority. You have heard of pardons being signed for physicians, before a sovereign's demise; however, ill as I was, I would have went to the queen in a horselitter, had either her majesty, or those in commission next to her, commanded me so to do. You may tell sir John as much, and assure him, from me, that his zeal for her majesty will not excuse his ill usage of a friend, who has drank many a hundred bottles with him; and cannot, even after this breach of a good understanding that ever was preserved between us, but have a very good esteem for him. I must also desire you to thank Tom Chapman for his speech in my behalf, since I hear it is the first he ever made, which is taken more kindly; and to acquaint him, that I should be glad to see him at Carshalton, since I fear (for so the gout tells me) that we shall never more sit in the house of commons together. I am, &c. "JOHN RADCLIFFE." But whatever credit may now be paid to this letter, or however it may now be thought to justify the doctor's refusal to attend her majesty, he became at that time so much the object of popular resentment, that he was apprehensive of being assassinated; as appears by the following letter directed to Dr. Mead, at Child's coffeehouse in St. Paul's Churchyard. James's;

"DEAR