Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/394

376 the country. He married, under very discreditable circumstances,, the daughter of , then the King's principal Minister—not at all a delicate minister either, but doing much of the dirty work of a very dirty palace. It became important now that the King himself should be married; and divers foreign Monarchs, not very particular about the character of their son-in-law, proposed their daughters to him. The offered his daughter,, and fifty thousands pounds: in addition to which, the French King, who was favorable to that match, offered a loan of another fifty thousand. The King of Spain, on the other hand, offered any one out of a dozen of Princesses, and other hopes of gain. But the ready money carried the day, and Catherine came over in state to her merry marriage.

The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of debauched men and shameless women; and Catherine's merry husband insulted and outraged her in every possible way, until she consented to receive those worthless creatures as her very good friends, and to degrade herself by their companionship. A whom the King made, and afterwards , was one of the most powerful of the bad women about the Court, and had great influence with the King nearly all through his reign. Another merry lady named, a dancer at the theatre, was afterwards her rival. So was, first an orange girl and then an actress, who really had good in her, and of whom one of the worst things I know is, that she actually does seem to have been fond of the King. The first was this orange girl's child. In like manner the son of a merry waiting-lady, whom the King created, became the. Upon the whole it is not so bad a thing to be a commoner.

The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among these merry ladies, and some equally merry (and equally infamous) lords and gentlemen, that he soon got through his hundred thousand pounds, and then, by way of raising a little pocket-money, made a merry bargain. He sold Dunkirk to the French King for five millions of livres. When I think of the dignity to which Oliver