'I do not break the law, Your Majesty.' Since the law now required that meetings of religious dissenters must be five miles outside any chartered borough, and Albion House was only four from Lymington, this wasn't quite true.

But to her surprise the king now addressed her earnestly. 'I'd have you know', he said, 'that you will have no cause to fear trouble from me on that account. It is Parliament that makes these rules, not I. Indeed, within a year or two I hope, Madam, to give you and your good friends liberty to worship as you please, so long as all Christians may have equal dispensation.' He smiled. 'You may have meeting houses at Lymington, Ringwood, Fordingbridge and I shall be glad of it.'

'The Catholics, too, might worship?'

'Yes. But if all faiths are free, is that so bad?'

'Truly, Sire' - she hesitated - 'I do not know.'

'Think on it, Dame Alice,' he said and gave her a look which, at another time and place, might almost have charmed even her. 'You may trust me.'

In his desire for religious freedom, so that the Catholics might have their churches again, Charles II was entirely sincere. For the time being. That he had also, that very summer, signed a secret treaty with his cousin Louis XIV promising to adopt the Roman Catholic faith and enforce it in England as soon as possible was a fact of which neither Alice, nor Parliament, nor even the king's close council had the slightest inkling. In return for this Charles was to receive from Louis a handsome yearly income. Whether the king was serious and really meant to betray his Protestant English subjects, or whether he was duping his French cousin to get some more money will never be known, except to God. Since, like so many of the Stuarts, the merry monarch was a habitual liar, he probably didn't know himself.

So while the idea of trusting the king would have caused hilarity in any courtier, Alice had no reason to suppose that, for her dissenting friends, he might not be offering a genuine hope.

'And now, Dame Alice,' he said, 'do not forget that you came here to ask me for a favour.'

Alice was very brief and straightforward. She explained the lawsuit with the Duke of York and assured the king: 'I'm sure the duke believes I am hiding money and there is nothing I can say to persuade him otherwise. I come to you, Sire, with this little girl' - she indicated Betty - 'whose interests I am bound to protect, to ask for help. The matter is as simple and as plain as that.'

'You ask me to believe my brother is mistaken?'

'He is bound to hate me, Sire.'