The affront was not only brutal, but cowardly.

For the law had provided no punishment for mere impertinence, however gross; and the King was the only gentleman and soldier in the kingdom who could not protect his wife from contumely with his sword.
All that the Queen could do was to order the parkkeepers not to admit Sir John again within the gates.

But, long after her death, a day came when he had reason to wish that he had restrained his insolence.

He found, by terrible proof, that of all the Jacobites, the most desperate assassins not excepted, he was the only one for whom William felt an intense personal aversion.

[43] A few days after this event the rage of the malecontents began to flame more fiercely than ever.