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] from office, and Halifax that the duke should be sent to Scotland. In public he affected implacable resentment against Monmouth, and in private conveyed to Monmouth assurances of unalterable affection. How long, if the king's life had been protracted, his hesitation would have lasted, and what would have been his resolve, can only be conjectured."

James II.

But his time was come. It was not likely that a man who had led the dissipated life that Charles had, would live to a very old age. He was now in his fiftieth year, and the twenty-fifth of his reign, that is, reckoning from the restoration, and not from the death of his father, as the royalists, who would never admit that a king could be unkinged, did. His health, or, more visibly, his spirits, had lately much failed—no doubt the consequence of that giving way of his debilitated system, which was soon to carry him off. His gaiety had quite forsaken him; he was gloomy, depressed, finding no pleasure in anything, and only at any degree of ease in sauntering away his time amongst his women. It was thought that his conscience began to trouble him for the profligacy of his life, and the blood that had been shed under his rule; but Charles was not a man much troubled with a conscience; he was sinking without being aware of it, and the heaviness of death was lying on him. On Monday, the 2nd of February, 1685, he rose at an early hour from a restless couch. Dr. King, a surgeon and chemist, who had been employed by him in experiments, perceived that he walked heavily, and with an unsteady gait. His face was ghastly, his head drooping, and his hand retained on his stomach. When spoken to he returned no answer, or a very incoherent one. King hastened out, and informed the earl of Peterborough that the king was in a strange state, and did not speak one word of sense. They returned instantly to the king's apartment, and had scarcely entered it, when he fell on the floor in an apoplectic fit. As no time was to be lost, Dr. King, on his own responsibility, bled him. The blood flowed freely, and he recovered his consciousness. When the physicians arrived,