Page:Diary of the times of Charles II Vol. I.djvu/55

Rh of quiet and refinement, often creep through stormy revolutions without being crushed.

"Like the best and most prudent of his class, he appears not to have betrayed the secrets of his friends whom he abandoned; and never to have complied with more evil than was necessary to keep his power. His temper was without rancour; he must be acquitted of prompting or even preferring the cruel acts which were perpetrated under his administration; deep designs and premeditated treachery were irreconcileable both with his indolence and his impetuosity; and there is some reason to believe that, in the midst of total indifference about religious opinions, he retained to the end some degree of that preference for civil liberty, which he might have derived from the example of his ancestors and the sentiments of some of his early connexions."

Such is the character, and it is a very favourable one, drawn by a master hand, of this nobleman who, by the adoption of measures involving a total want of either religious or political principle, combined with great talents, made himself almost essential as Minister to three successive Kings. The charge which presses most heavily against