This statement is not accurate. A paper had been written by Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, who had avowed herself a Papist before her death. With this were published two papers found in the strong box of the late king, which it was pretended had been written by him, but which Burnet (History of his Own Time, ii. 292) declares could not have been written by the king,
' For he never read the Scriptures nor laid things together further than to turn them to jest.'
They are, however, now generally admitted to be the genuine work of the king: see Evelyn's Diary, October 2, 1685, and Pepys's statement there. These papers Stillingfleet attacked, and Dryden undertook the defence of that by the Duchess of York, the defence of the others being by quite a different hand. See Dryden's Introduction to the Hind and the Panther, where he says,
' I refer myself to the judgment of those who have read the "Answer to the Defence of the late King's Papers," and that of the Duchess (in which last I was concerned) how charitably I have been represented there.'