Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/521

] This ceremony lasted three-quarters of an hour, and the excluded attendants passed the time in much wonder and significant guesses. They looked at one another in amazement, but spoke only with their eyes or in whispers. The lords Bath and Feversham being both protestants, however, seemed to disarm the fears of the bishops. But when Huddleston withdrew, the news was speedily spread. That night he was in much pain; the queen sent to excuse her absence, and to beg that he would pardon any offence that she might at any time have given him. "Alas! poor woman!" he replied, "she beg my pardon? I beg hers with all my heart; take back to her that answer." He then sent for his illegitimate sons, except Monmouth, whom he never mentioned, and recommended them to James, and taking each by the hand, gave them his blessing. The bishops, affected by this edifying sight, threw themselves on their knees, and begged he would bless them too; whereupon he was raised up and blessed them all. Perhaps they did not know at the moment that they were receiving the blessing of a king who had just broken his coronation oath of adherence to their faith, and were solacing themselves with the benediction of a catholic head of the church, having blessed the bishops, he next blessed the ladies of his harem, and particularly recommended to his successor the care of the duchess of Portsmouth, who had been pretty active for his exclusion, and also the duchess of Cleveland, hoping, moreover, that "poor Nelly"—Nell Gwynne, would not be left to starve. Three hours afterwards, in this pious, benedictory, paternal, and loverlike style, this strange monarch breathed his last.

Upon a naturally easy, pleasure-loving disposition, Charles, in his wandering youth on the continent, had engrafted all the vices of the age. He was blessed with abilities which might have made him one of the most brilliant monarchs of the time; but he was too indolent to use them, except to add éclat and piquancy to a most profligate life and court. No man succeeded more completely in dishonouring and degrading his kingdom in the eyes of foreign nations, nor of enslaving his people, nor ever saddled this country with such a troop of bastards. He had no issue by his wife, but his children by other women were a little host—James, duke of Monmouth, by Lucy Walters; Charlotte, countess of Yarmouth, by lady Shannon; Charles, duke of Southampton, Henry, duke of Grafton, George, duke of Northumberland, and Charlotte, countess of Lichfield, by the duchess of Cleveland; Charles, duke of St. Albans, by Nell Gwynne; Charles, duke of Richmond, by the duchess of Portsmouth; and Mary, countess of Dumbarton, by Mary Davies. His grandfather, James I., was styled the British Solomon, for his imagined wisdom; Charles was far better entitled to the name by the extent of his seraglio and the number of his progeny. His blood still flows far and wide through the high places of this nation. All these sons were furnished with large estates, and the duke of Grafton endowed with fourteen thousand pounds a year for ever, out of the post-office, excise, and king's bench. As the king's mistresses were as free in their turn as Charles, the nation has still probably to maintain, through his profligacy, other men's descendants under the name of his.

But the incumbrances fixed on the nation were nothing to the virus of vice and loose principle infused by his example into society. What this was at court to the last, Evelyn, in his diary, gives us a striking idea of:—"I can never forget," he says, "the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gambling and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulness of God, it being Sunday evening, which this day se'nnight I was witness of. The king sitting and toying with his concubines—Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarin, &c., a French boy singing love songs in that glorious gallery; whilst about twenty of the greatest courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset round a large table, a bank of at least two thousand pounds in gold before them. Six days after, all was dust."

This profligacy had spread from the court into every class and station, and poured such a flood of obscenity and vileness into our literature, especially that of the stage, as never cruelty any nation besides, except the French. But it had been well had the mischief stopped there; but to furnish the boundless demands of his harem, his pimps, and panders, and all their hangers-on, this in-English king sold himself, as we have seen, to the French monarch, avowing to the ambassador himself that this was the way for Louis "de mettre pour touie sa vie l'Angleterre dans sa dependence;" and so completely did it subject England to France, that while this country sunk in its influence, in its army, its navy, its power of asserting its rank amongst the nations, into utter insignificance, Louis had raised his navy from a force of small vessels to the finest fleet in Europe, manned by sixty thousand sailors, and with his army he lorded it over the continent from the Pyrenees to the frontier of Holland, across the Alps, and in the Mediterranean. He bombarded Genoa, and compelled the Italian princes to tremble at his name. We had thus a libidinous, utterly effeminate, and traitor king; a debauched court and aristocracy; a slavish parliament; a persecuting church; our arms used at home to destroy and enslave our countrymen; our fleets disgraced on the ocean—such was England under Charles II. of merry memory. Well did Rochester describe him in the impromptu epigram which he one day in sport wrote on his chamber-door, and at which, so far from resenting it, the king laughed, and said it was quite true:— Here lies our sovereign lord the king, Whose word no man relies on; Who never said a foolish thing-. And never did a wise one. 

CHAPTER XIII.

To the reign of merry cruelty now succeeded the reign of gloomy, ascetic, undisgvised ferocity. Charles could laugh 