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the county maintained the good laws of the land, or stood up for any public interest, for good order or government, he was a Puritan: in short, all that crossed the views of the needy courtiers, the proud encroaching priests, the lewd nobility and gentry, whoever was zealous for God's glory and worship, could not endure blasphemous oaths, ribald conversation, profane scoffs, sabbath breach, derision of the word of God, and the like; whoever could endure a sermon, modest habit or conversation, or any thing good; all these were Puritans; and if Puritans, then enemies to the King and his government, seditious, factious hypocrites, ambitious disturbers of the public peace, and finally, the pest of the kingdom.

"The Puritan party (continues the same well-inform> ed and judicious writer,) being weak and oppressed, had not faith enough to disown all that adhered to them for worldly interests, and indeed it required more than human wisdom to discern at the least all of them, wherefore they, in their low condition, gladly accepted any that would come over to them, or incline towards them, and their enemies, through envy at them, augmented much their party, while with injuries and reproaches they drove many, that never intended it, to take that party, which in the end got nothing but confusion by those additions. While these parties were thus counterworking, the treasure of the kingdom being wasted by court-caterpillars, and Parliament called to supply the royal coffers, therein there wanted not some, that retained so much of the English spirit, as to represent the public grievances, and desired to call the corrupt ministers of state to account; but the King grudging that his people should dare to gainsay his pleasure, and correct his misgovernment in his favourites, broke up Parliaments, violated their privileges, imprisoned their members for things spoken in the House, and grew disaffected to them, and entertained other projects of supply by other grievances of the people. The prelates, in the mean time, finding they lost ground, meditated reunion with the popish faction, who began to be at a

pretty agreement with them; and now there was no more endeavour, in their public sermons, to confute the errors of that church, but to reduce our doctrines and theirs to an accommodation. The King, to bring it about, was deluded into the treaty of a match for his son with the infanta of Spain; and the Prince, with the Duke of Buckingham, were privately sent into Spain, from whence he with difficulty came back, but to the great rejoicing of the whole people in general, who were much afflicted at his going thither. During this treaty the Papists got many advantages of the King, to the prejudice of the Protestant interest at home and abroad, and the hearts of all but the Papists were very much saddened, and the people loth to lay the miscarriage at the King's own door, began to entertain an universal hatred of the Duke of Buckingham, raised from a Knight's fourth son to that pitch of glory, and enjoying great possessions acquired by the favour of the King, upon no merit but that of his beauty and prostitution. The Parliament had drawn up a charge against him, and though the King seemed to protect him, yet knowing the fearfulness of his nature, and doubting his constancy, it was believed he added some help to an ague that killed the King: however, King James died, the Duke continued as high in the favour of the next succeeding as of the deceased prince; whereupon one, not unaptly, says of him," he seemed as an unhappy exhalation, drawn up from the earth, not only to cloud the setting but the rising sun."

Sach is the portraiture which a most observing and penetrating writer draws of the government of James I. The seeds of civil dissension were deeply sown in his reign, but it was reserved for his son and successor, a prince of far greater virtues than his father, yet alloyed with many faults, to reap the bitter harvest of them. "The face of the court (observes Mrs. Hutchinson) was much changed in the change of the King; for King Charles was chaste, temperate, and serious; so that the fools and bawds, mimicks and catamites, of the former court, grew out of fashion; and the nobility and

courtiers, who did not quite abandon their debaucheries, had yet that reverence to the King to retire into corners to practice them: men of learning and ingenuity in all arts were in esteem, and received encouragement from the King, who was a most excellent judge and a great lover of paintings, carvings, gravings, and many other ingenuities, less offensive than the bawdry and profane abusive wit, which was the only exercise of the other court. But as, in the primitive times, it is observed, that the best emperors were some of them stirred by Satan to be the bitterest persecutors of the church, so this King was a worse encroacher upon the civil and spiritual liberties of the people by far than his father. He married a Papist, a French lady, of a haughty spirit, and a great wit and beauty, to whom he became a most uxorious husband. By this means the court was replenished with Papists, and many who hoped to advance themselves by the change, turned to that religion; all the Papists in the kingdom were favoured, and by the King's example matched into the best families: the Puritans were more than ever discountenanced and perse cuted, insomuch that many of them chose rather to abandon their native country, and leave their dearest relations, and retire into any foreign soil and plantation, where they might, amidst all outward inconveniences, enjoy the free exercise of God's worship. Such as could not flee were tormented in the bishop's courts, fined, whipt, pilloried, imprisoned, and suffered to enjoy no rest, so that death was better than life to them; and notwithstanding their patient sufferance of all these things, yet was not the King satisfied till the whole land were reduced to perfect slavery. The example of the French King was propounded to him, and he thought himself no monarch so long as his will was confined to the bounds of any law; but knowing that the people of England were not pliable to an arbitrary rule, he plotted to subdue them to his yoke by a foreign foe, and till he could effect it, made no conscience of granting any thing to the people, which he resolved should not oblige him longer than it served his turn;

he was a prince that had nothing of faith or truth, justice or generosity, in him: he was the most obstinate person in his self-will that ever was, and so bent upon being an absolute, uncontroulable sovereign, that he was resolved either to be such a king or none. His firm adherence to prelacy was not for conscience of one religion more than another, for it was his principle that an honest man might be saved in any profession; but he had a mistaken principle, that kingly government in the state could not stand without episcopal government in the church, and therefore, as the bishops flattered him by preaching up his sovereign prerogative, and inveighing against the Puritans as factious and disloyal, so he protected them in all their pomp and pride, and insolent practices, against all the godly and sober people of the land."

The character of Charles may be thought here to be too hardly drawn, particularly when it is remembered that it comes from one who was a rigid Puritan herself, and moreover the wife of one of the judges who sen tenced him to death. Yet, making due allowance for partiality for her own party, it will scarcely be found that she is guilty of any exaggeration. It is admitted, we believe, on all hands, that Charles came to the throne with very high notions of the regal authority; and as the prelates flattered him in that opinion, he thought himself bound both in conscience and honour to support them in their privileges. He lived at a period when the spirit of the people became too mighty for those restraints which the regal power derived from the constitution; and when the tide of fanaticism began to over-bear the religion of his country, to which he was conscienciously devoted, he suffered himself to be guided by counsellors who were not only inferior to himself in knowledge and judgment, but generally proud, partial, and inflexible: and from an excess of conjugal affection that bordered upon weakness, he paid too much deference to the advice and desires of his consort, who was superstitious

ly attached to the errors of popery, and importuned him incessantly in favour of the Roman Catholics.

But the misfortunes of Charles's reign were neither "imputable altogether to the episcopal predilections of the King, nor to his ready compliance with the wishes of the Queen. As a private individual, his character was in the highest degree amiable and praiseworthy; but as a monarch, in a turbulent period, he was utterly unfit for the station he occupied. He wanted resolu tion and vigour. The sacrifice of the Earl of Strafford, an event which he exceedingly lamented, and to which no extremity should have induced him to submit, rendered bim contemptible in the eyes both of his enemies and his friends. The giving up of Strafford was mean and cowardly; and far from the letter which that unfortu nate nobleman is said to have sent him, urging the King not to let his life stand as an obstacle to an agreement between him and his Parliament upon that occasion, being an excuse for him, it only aggravates the King's treachery and pusillanimity.

Dissimulation, one of the worst vices with which a monarch can be tinctured, seems to have been a prevailing feature in the character of this prince, and ultimately to have led him to the scaffold, if the following relation from Hume can be relied on.

"There prevails a story, that Cromwell intercepted a letter wrote to the Queen, where the King said, that he would first raise and then destroy Cromwell. It is first told by Roger Coke, a very passionate historian, who wrote so late as the revolution, and who mentions it only as a rumour. In the Memoirs of Lord Broghill, we meet with another story of an intercepted letter, which deserves some more attention, and is thus related by Mr. Mauirce, chaplain to Roger, Earl of Orrery. "Lord Orrery (says he), in the time of his greatness with Cromwell, just after he had so seasonably relieved him in his great distress at Clonmell, riding out to Yonghall one day with him and Ireton, they fell into discourse about the King's death. Cromwell

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