The clamours of the wilder spirits, the country members who met at the October Club, began to be re-echoed even by those who were attached to the person of Harley, when, through an unexpected event, his popularity was restored at a bound. A French refugee, the former abbé La Bourlie (better known by the name of the Marquis de Guiscard), was being examined before the Privy Council of Great Britain on a charge of treason, when he stabbed Harley in the breast with a penknife (8 March 1711). Fortunately for Harley, he had a taste for fine clothes, and on that occasion was wearing an ornate gold brocade waistcoat: it seems that the knife stuck in one of the ornaments. Why Guiscard was allowed to enter the room carrying a weapon is still something of a mystery, but, as the Gregg affair demonstrated, Harley was notoriously lax in matters of security, and it is likely that Guiscard had not been properly searched. To a man in good health the wounds would not have been serious, but the minister had been suffering from ill health and Swift had penned the prayer, "Pray God preserve his health, everything depends upon it". The joy of the nation on his recovery knew no bounds. Both Houses presented an address to the crown, a suitable response came from the Queen, and on Harley's reappearance in the Lower House the Speaker made an oration which was spread by broadsheet through the country.