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 Rh No doubt Charles's clerical-musical friend, badly shaken up and unnecessarily alarmed, probably received little consolation from the Merry Monarch and his rollicking companions. The anthem, it appears, was "set to music so deep that hardly any person but himself (Gostling), then or since, has been able to sing it." It was never printed, although well known. The King died before it was completed. Accordingly, this was one of the last—if not the very last—yachting cruises of King Charles. The Fubbs was then, as we have seen, one of the last Royal yachts built during his reign; and she survived for some ninety years, having been rebuilt in 1724. Not till 1770 did she disappear from the Navy List. She was then broken up.

According to Gramont, the King usually slept during sermons, but was fond of hearing anthems sung in his chapel, and of keeping time to the music with his head and hands. In his last illness King Charles suffered great pain, but his cheerfulness and kindly thought for the feelings of others remained with him to the end. Even in his last moments he apologized to those that had stood near him through the night, for the trouble he had caused. He had been, he said, "a most unconsionable time dying, but he hoped they would excuse him." His last words were his best: "Let not poor Nellie starve!"

And so died the first of England's yachtsmen, on February 6, 1685, in his fifty-fifth year, and in the twenty-fifth of his reign.