The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 87: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER IX THE SEARCH AFTER A SON — HORROR EARLY on the ensuing morning the court removed from London to Windsor Castle; and George III, who had ex- hibited symptoms of alarming restlessness and irritability from the moment of his interview with Meagles and Lady Lade, shut himself up in his own apartment under pretence of having several state documents to examine. The unhappy monarch now experienced a deep and irre- sistible yearning to behold his son; not either of those sons whom his wife Queen Charlotte had borne him, but that son who had owed his existence to the amour with Hannah Lightfoot. The reader may have seen from the terms in which Meagles explained the nature of the correspondence and other papers in his possession, that the king had all along been aware of the substitution of his own child by the beauteous Quakeress. for the dead offspring of Sir William and Lady Stamford. Such was indeed the case. From the very first the monarch knew of the circumstance; but as years and years rolled on, he had thought less and less of the fact that he had an ‘unacknowledged son in the world. Hannah Lightfoot carried the secret with her to the grave; and Sir William and Lady Stamford died also without breathing that secret to a soul. Thus when the present Sir Richard succeeded to the title and estates, it was under the impression that he really and truly was the son of the deceased baronet and his lady; and King George III, perceiving how religiously the secret had been kept, never felt the least inclination to en- lighten Sir Richard upon the point. When Sir Richard’s misfortunes commenced and he was accused of the fearful crimes recorded in the previous chap- 65 Gon iG 0)@O) SS CO)