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424 the country. The object was to obtain the death of more of the regicides. The commons fell readily into the snare. To make a spectacle of disaffected men, they ordered three eminent commonwealth men—lord Monson, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Sir Robert Wallop, to be drawn with ropes round their necks from the Tower to Tyburn and back again, to remain perpetual prisoners. But this did not satisfy them, they must have more blood, and though Charles had promised their lives to Sir Harry Vane and general Lambert, they demanded their trial and execution; and Charles, who had no more regard for his word than his father, complied. They were to be tried the next session. Parliament then proceeded to draw up a more stringent conformity bill, and it passed both houses. This bill enacted that every clergyman should publicly, before his congregation, declare his perfect assent to everything contained in the common prayer, and that every preacher who had not received episcopal ordination must do so before the next feast of St. Bartholomew. They added some new collects, in one of them they styled the lecherous monarch "our most religious king;" they made the 30th of January a holiday for ever, in memory of king Charles the martyr—of despotism; and voted the king a subsidy of one million two hundred thousand pounds, and a hearth tax for ever. The king then prorogued them on the 19th of May, 1662, with many professions of economy and reformation of manners, one of which he observed as much as the other.

Of the improvement of his morals he soon gave a striking example. The duke of York had married Anne Hyde, the daughter of the chancellor, though she had been his mistress, and was on the point of being delivered of an illegitimate child, which Charles Berkeley publicly claimed as his own, and brought forward the earls of Arran, Talbot, Jermyn, and others to testify to her loose conduct. Berkeley was afterwards brought to contradict his own statement, but these circumstances, and James's gloomy and bigoted temper, rendered it desirable that Charles should marry. Heirs and heiresses he had in abundance, had they been legitimate. Besides Lucy Walters or Barlow, by whom he had the duke of Monmouth, though the paternity of the child was generally awarded to the brother of Algernon Sidney, for Mrs. Walters or Barlow was very liberal of her favours, he had, on arriving in London, established a connection with the wife of a Mr. Palmer, whose maiden name was Barbara Villiers. The husband's connivance was purchased with the title of earl of Castlemaine, and the countess was afterwards advanced to the rank of the duchess of Cleveland.

As it was requisite for Charles, however, to marry, his ministers looked about for a suitable wife. Nothing could reconcile him to the idea of a German bride, and the catholic princesses of the south were regarded by the nation with suspicion, both from the memory of the last queen, and the suspected tendency of Charles himself to popery. Whilst Charles was in France, in 1659, he made an offer to the niece of cardinal Mazarine, which that shrewd politician, but no prophet, politely declined, for Charles was then a mere fugitive royalty, and the cardinal did not foresee so sudden a change.

On the recall of Charles to the throne, both Mazarine and his master, Louis XIV., saw their mistake, for they had not only treated Charles with as much indifference as if it were a moral certainty that he could never again reach the throne of England, but had even sent him out of the country at the demand of Cromwell. Mazarine now offered his niece, but the scene was changed, and Charles no longer stooped to the niece of a cardinal. Louis, who had no suitable princess of France to offer him, and who wanted to prevent Portugal falling into the power of Spain, strongly recommended to him Douna Catarina of Braganza, the Portuguese monarch's sister. Could he accomplish this match, Louis, who was bound by treaty with Spain to offer no aid to Portugal, might be able to do it under cover of the king of England. The king's ministers, after some apprehension on the score of the lady's religion, were of opinion that the match was desirable if it were only for the dowry offered—five hundred thousand pounds, the settlement of Tangiers, in Africa, and Bombay, in the East Indies, besides a free trade to all the Portuguese colonies. De Mello, the Portuguese ambassador in London, was informed that the proposal met the approbation of the king. To link the interests of France and England closer, the princess Henrietta, Charles's youngest sister, was married to the duke of Orleans, the only brother of the French king.

But like his father, Charles was still not unwilling to run from the engagement if anything more to his interest might offer. No sooner did Vatteville, the Spanish ambassador, become aware of the negotiations, than he alarmed his court, from which a speedy announcement was made to Charles that the king of Spam claimed Portugal as his right, and would not give up that claim. That Catherine was well known to be incapable of bearing children, and that his marriage with her would inevitably lead to a war, and compel Spain to prohibit its lucrative trade to the English. After these warnings, offers were made of either of the two princesses of Parma, with the dowry of a princess of Spain. Charles thought it as well to ascertain the attractions of these princesses, and despatched the earl of Bristol to take a private view of them; but though Bristol was strongly opposed to the Portuguese alliance, the sight of the ladies as they went to church, compelled him to forego all hope from that quarter, for one was so plain, and the other so fat, that even he could not recommend the connection.

Meantime Louis had zealously and adroitly pressed forward the choice of the Portuguese princess. He not only dwelt in a secret correspondence through his envoy, Bastide, on the many advantages of the Portuguese alliance, but offered to make it more so himself; to furnish him with money to buy up parliamentary votes, to lend him fifty thousand pounds whenever he might need it, and to furnish two millions of livres should a war with Spain actually occur. Thus was laid the foundation of Charles's disgraceful dependence on the artful French monarch, for which he sacrificed the honour and interests both of his own country and of all Europe. This species of eloquence prevailed, as it always did with this king. Montague, now lord Sandwich, was despatched with a fleet to bring the Portuguese princess to England, and the Spanish ambassador, enraged at the defeat, conceived a design which might be thought possible only in a barbarous age. He publicly avowed his intention to revive the old dispute of precedence betwixt the French and Spanish crowns.