Ultra-Protestant hope set on Monmouth. Britannia.-"Oh happy day! A Jubilee proclaim; There is a man, my Island's Hope and Grace, To free his Country from the Gallick Rage; And full-blown Vertue wak'd the Tyrant's fears; By's Sire rejected, but by Heaven call'd =Oceana. =Shaftesbury. Monmouth. =York. To break my Yoak, and rescue the Enthrall'd, Marpesia, Scotland. This, this is he who with a stretch'd-out hand And matchless might shall free my groaning Land. On Earth's proud Basilisks he'll justly fall, Like Moses' Rod, and prey upon them all: He'll guide my People through the raging Seas To Holy Wars and certain Victories. His spotless Fame, and his immense Desert Shall plead Love's cause, and storm the Virgin's heart. She like Egeria shall his breast inspire With Justice, Wisdom, and Celestial Fire: Like Numa, he her Dictates shall obey, And by her Oracles the World shall sway." Lady H.M.W. -Oceana and Britannia, 1679. "Ferrum est, quod amant.”—Juvenal, Sat. vi. 112. " It is most true. Full many a dame I've known -Sir Henry Taylor's Philip Van Artevelde, 1843. OR ONE who loved ease and sauntering lazily through Life's garden-walks, with as little consciousness of To-morrow or the sight of unhappy faces as possible, the lot of Charles the Second had become by 1681 far from pleasant. He was perpetually being rebuked, insulted, and disturbed by somebody. People still talk idly about his " Absolutism;' but he did not become obstinately selfassertive save as a final expedient, when every other course had failed. He had been often harassed by multitudinous small tyrants, collective or single, until his patience was exhausted. So long as they were content to leave him at peace, he was willing to be blind and deaf to anything that needed sharp investigation. Court Ladies, whom he had distinguished by his favour, were accustomed to yield their society with still greater freedom to their own special flatterers and reprobates; but his Majesty was the least intrusive or exacting of mortals. He took no notice of their infidelities, employed no spies, encouraged no bearers of evil report, but went his rounds with smiling forbearance of their well-known frailties, and only seemed to be annoyed when women failed to use the common decency of hiding their worst faults in his presence. Surely this was not too much to ask. Many of his courtiers had a passionate love of scandal, and in their total deficiency of reverence wrote bitter lampoons on him; as they did against his Mistresses and their own personal rivals. But Charles generally laughed the heartiest, if the jest were good,. and cherished no malicious desire of revenge against his assailants. In open raillery, with interchange of wit, he could hold his own against everybody. 4 In Defence of Charles the Second. It was only when the libellers descended to the use of foul scurrility that he contemptuously left them to their own devices. Rochester deserved the temporary banishment from Court, which his rancorous invective and bemired imagination brought on him. Rebels plotted assassination of the King, and wily politicians tried to use the evidence of conspiracy to further their own schemes; but the Merry Monarch was always the person most disinclined to believe that there was danger of being murdered, knowing that his brother's succession was undesired and unpopular. Not until the RyeHouse Plot was unravelled, in which both the Royal pair were threatened, did he willingly let punishment fall on their proclaimed enemies. His own personal wants were few, and no philosopher required less of pomp or splendour, of luxurious dainties, jewellery, and imposing costume than did "Old Rowley." While he yielded to an excess of generosity in squandering wealth on a set of brazen wantons, who deserved to be set to beat hemp in a penitentiary Spinning-House, his own wardrobe was reduced to a wretched condition, such as would have disgusted a Court-page. Sometimes a mild revel enlivened his evenings, as when in 1674 he goodhumouredly yielded to Sir Robert Vyner's hearty invitation, and stayed to "crack t'other bottle," reminding his Lord-Mayor host 'that "the man who is drunk is as great as a King:" both of them adding practice to precept in illustration. Sports at Newmarket or Winchester amused his noontide, since he enjoyed Races, and set them in fashion, but was usually unlucky in his horses; for his jockeys sold many a race at the bidding of noble Dukes and Earls, who had heavy bets against him. On four legs or on two, there were skittish jades to plunder him, and each new favourite repeated the tricks of the same old game. He had loved the freedom of theatres, and no man better enjoyed the witty comedies of Etherege, Congreve, Dryden, and Wycherley, or could relish more delightedly any lively song in them, to which he beat time responsively, while a pretty actress met his smile. But even the play-house began to pall on him, when in Prologues and Epilogues the dramatic poets spiced the verse with manifold allusions to the topics most in vogue; so that instead of being led "to fresh woods and pastures new," thoughts were flung back on the disquieting Shaftesbury, the perjuries of Oates, and the irritating factiousness of parliament-men or Nonconforming Sectaries. In his Royal Box at the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens, he had been accustomed to feel that none but friends were near. Court Masques had been a frequent amusement in his boyhood, before the Civil War; with poetry from Ben Jonson, music from Lawes, dresses and decorations designed by Inigo Jones. But these expensive luxuries were little to the taste of Charles the Second, although occasionally his Court-Beauties displayed their charms "A Man more sinned against than sinning." 5 in such entertainments as John Crowne's "Calista; or, The Chaste Nymph," with Lady Henrietta Maria Wentworth among them: the Duke of Monmouth being another of the dancers, who in later days became notoriously her lover. Year by year it had grown increasingly difficult for Charles to enjoy himself after his own fashion undisturbed. Alas, and well-a-day! Spiteful railers acted as spies on him, and their hired informers wrote libellous satires; not circulating stealthily, as of old in manuscript, through Courtly circles, but printed vilely on broadsides at seditious presses, to set the world against him. Many, who had flattered him to his face, nevertheless plundered and dishonoured him behind his back, to the utmost of their power. The traffic in patents and monopolies had grown to be nearly as scandalous as in the time of Kilvert; Tom Killigrew being an example of unprincipled rapacity. The demands of each peculator grew more exorbitant. The audacity and insolence of the Exclusionists increased in the same proportion. While under every the King became poorer fresh extortion of the harpies, he saw himself more humiliated by the sham-patriots who asserted their right to withhold necessary supplies. No wonder is it that with the coarse insults of the Commons in his ears, and the knowledge of their niggardliness in granting money, even at the price of unreasonable pro-rogue and concessions to their dictation, he had chosen to " re-prorogue the rogues," delaying the meeting of Parliament, to avoid collisions. He tried meanwhile to obtain renewal of secret subsidies from France, as being on easier terms than he could obtain from his own revolutionary subjects. It is not a pleasant thing for us to have had a reigning monarch in the pay of a foreign power, under obligation to perform many irksome things in accordance with the ambitious arrogance and encroachments of Louis le Grand. But we ought to remember two facts in extenuation. First, that all the so-called Whig "patriots" of the day yielded themselves to French bribes of Barillon from Louis; including Hampden, Buckingham, Armstrong, and Algernon Sydney. William Russell kept himself from inclusion in the corrupt practices simply through already possessing sufficient wealth to rise above the temptation, but never expressed any honest repugnance to hi chosen companions being thus treasonably paid as emissaries of ry. The Crisis of his fate, in the Oxford Parliament. foreign monarch to act against their sovereign. Second, that Charles had been familiarized with the receipt of similar foreign help to that which he now sought, from his early years of exile, when he depended for food on assistance from France, while kept penniless by the usurpers. He could not but hope to be now treated more generously by his French ally than he was by each factious parliament, every new one worse than its predecessor. His Duchess of Portsmouth was as greedy of gain as had been Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleaveland, in her early days of supremacy; and Louise would be perpetually reminding him that it was expedient to trust wholly to France, since she came thence as a decoy, and always acted under instructions from her former master. What has been already asserted (on p. 278 of our previous volume) is the simple truth, viz., that Charles II. indulged more in idle flirtation, wasting time in gossip, in dalliance, and in sauntering along his parks or galleries, than in absolute sensuality. This statement is supported by the contemporary evidence of John Sheffield, Lord Mulgrave, who was himself not a Scipio of ascetic virtue in such matters, and knew the delicate subject to its depths: There was as much of laziness as of love in all those hours he passed among his Mistresses; who, after all, only served to fill his Seraglio with a bewitching kind of pleasure called sauntering: and talking without any constraint was the true Sultana Queen he delighted in.-Sheffield's Short Character of Charles II. Again, the same shrewd observer declares of him, in relation to the double-dealing of King Louis, who subsidized the English Commons to sedition while he enforced on Charles the performance of such acts as would be resented by these very Whigs and "Good Old Cause" insurrectionists : He was so liberal as to ruin his affairs by it; for want in a King of England turns things upside down, and exposes a Prince to his people's mercy. It did yet worse in him, for it forced him to depend on his Great Neighbour of France who played the Broker with him sufficiently in all those times of extremity.—Ibid. There had been many warnings given to him in the recent years, but we believe the really decisive moment, above all others, was that of which we resume consideration at beginning of the present volume: when at Oxford, between the 21st and the 28th of March, 1681, the irreconcileable nature of the week-long Parliament displayed itself. For life or for death the game was being played: timidity or procrastination on his part would have been certain ruin. The doctrine of passive obedience to the will of the absolute sovereign, as set forth by the loyal Kentish cavalier Sir Robert Filmer, had made little impression amid the gloom of 1646; but when his Anarchy of Limited and Mixed Monarchy was succeeded by his posthumous work, Patriarcha, not issued until 1680, it found a more attentive auditory, among those who had recently seen the |