Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/96

88 upon the levity and ambition of William the king's son. They urged the indignity he had received in being deprived of his birthright; offered to support his title by their valour, as they had done that of his father; and as an earnest of their intentions, to remove the chief impediment by dispatching his rival out of the world. The young prince was easily wrought upon to be at the head of this conspiracy: time and place were fixed; when, upon the day appointed, William broke his leg by a fall from his horse; and the conspirators wanting their leader immediately dispersed. This disappointment and delay, as it usually happens among conspirators, were soon followed by a discovery of the whole plot; whereof the duke, with great discretion, made no other use than to consult his own safety; therefore, without any show of suspicion or displeasure, he took leave of the king, and returned to Normandy.

1154. Stephen lived not above a year to share the happiness of this peace with his people; in which time he made a progress through most parts of the kingdom, where he gained universal love and veneration, by a most affable and courteous behaviour to all men. A few months after his return he went to Dover, to have an interview with the earl of Flanders; where, after a short sickness, he died of the iliac passion, together with his old distemper the hemorrhoids, upon the twenty-fifth day of October, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the nineteenth of his reign.

He was a prince of wonderful endowments, both in body and mind: in his person tall and graceful, of great strength as well as vigour: he had a large portion of most virtues that can be useful in a king toward