Note 114 — CAVALIER SONGS AND BALLADS. (continued 3)

There was a story that Charles II. was really married to Lucy Walters, the mother of the Duke of Monmouth, and that the contract of marriage was in existence in a “black box,” in the custody of the Bishop of Durham, suggested apparently by the endeavours of that Bishop to change the succession to the crown in favour of the Duke of Monmouth, to the exclusion of James II.