Orrery, who says, that our historians, in representing him as a good-natured man, have ignorantly, or rather wilfully, mistaken good-humour and affability for tenderness and good-nature, neither of which last are to be reckoned among this monarch's virtues." How far he is justly or at all entitled to the reputation of a virtue, for which royalty has not been usually found the most favourable soil, the following particulars of his conduct in the various relations of life, may serve to inform us.

"There was a lady," says Lord Clarendon, "of youth and beauty, with whom the king had lived in great and notorious familiarity from the time of his coming into England." This however underwent the less reproach from the king's being young and vigorous, and upon a full presumption, that when he should be married, he would confine himself within the bounds of virtue and innocence. He was "piously sensible, too, of the infinite obligations he had to God Almighty, and that he expected another kind of return from him in purity of mind and integrity of life. Moreover, he had been heard to speak of the excess which a neighbour king had permitted himself, in making his mistress live, at court, in the queen's presence, as a piece of ill nature that he himself could never be guilty of "that if he should ever act so ill as to keep a mistress, after he had a wife, which he hoped he never should, he would never add that to the vexation of which she would be sure to have enough."

Fair promises! and, at least, as faithfully observed as they were sincerely made. When the queen, who had wit and beauty enough to make herself agreeable to the king, came to Hampton Court, she brought with her the resolution never to suffer the lady, who was so much spoken of, to be in her presence. "Her mother," she said, "had enjoined her to do so." On the other hand, the king thought he had prepared matters so well, that within a day or two after her arrival, he himself led the lady into the presence chamber, and presented her to the queen, who received her with the same grace as she had done the rest. But whether her Majesty in the instant knew who she was, or upon recollection found it out afterwards, she was no sooner sat in her chair, but her colour changed, and tears gushed out of her eyes, and her nose bled, and she fainted.

The king was mightily indignant to have such an earnest of defiance given him in the face of the whole court, on the great question of nuptial supremacy, on which head he was understood to be the most positive man alive.

From that time he forebore her society, and sought ease and refreshment in that jolly company, to which he grew every day more addicted; and though never man's nature was more remote from roughness or hard heartedness," he was yet re

solved to vindicate his royal jurisdiction, and make it manifest to the world, that "he would not be governed."

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He had been lately reading too a book newly printed at Paris, called the Amours of Henry IV.; and resolved to make his grandfather's example the rule of his own conduct. One night, in particular, the fire flamed higher than ever: "the king reproached the queen with stubbornness and want of duty, and she him with tyranny and want of affection; he used threats and menaces, which he never intended to put in execution, and she talked loudly how ill she was treated, and that she would return again to Portugal. He replied, that she would do well first to know, whether her mother would receive her and he would give her a fit opportunity to know that, by sending to their home all her Portuguese servants." The noise of this contention was so loud, as to be overheard by many; and their mutual carriage next day confirmed all that had been heard or imagined. They spake not, hardly looked on one another. The queen sat melancholic in her chamber in tears,— and he sought his divertisements in that company, that said and did all things to please him; and there he spent all the nights." When they happened to be together, he did not address her, but amused himself with the conversation of people, who made it their "business to laugh at all the world, and who were as bold with God Almighty, as with any of his creatures." The Portuguese were shipped off without remorse, and without delay; only upon the queen's entreaty, "that she might not be wholly left in the hands of strangers," a certain old Countess Penalva, who scarce stirred out of her chamber from ill-health, was permitted to remain. All this time" the lady" came to court, -was lodged there,-was every day in the queen's presence,and the king in continual conference with her; whilst the queen sat unnoticed; "and if she rose at the indignity, and retired into her chamber, it may be one or two attended her, but all the company remained in the room she left, and too often said those things aloud, which nobody ought to have whispered." In the beginning of the conflict the king's face had been cloudy, and his countenance sad, as if he regretted its having proceeded so far; until now chafed with the reproach of being governed, he suppressed every appearance of concern, and appeared every day more gay and pleasant. Whether his good humour were affected or feigned, to the queen it appeared real, and made her only the more sensible "that she alone was left out in all jollities, and not suffered to have any part of those pleasant applications and caresses which she saw used to almost every body else." Mirth reigned in every company but in her's, and in all places but in her chamber. Her own servants showed more respect and more diligence to the person

VOL. VII. PART I.

of "the lady," than towards their own mistress; who, they found, could do them less good. All these mortifications were too heavy to be borne: so that, at last, she suddenly let herself fall, first to conversation-then to familiarity-and, finally, to a confidence with "the lady;" was merry with her in public, talked kindly of her, and in private behaved to no one else in a more friendly manner. Alas! poor lady-this change of behaviour and low demeanour, were so far from winning, as she had doubtless hoped, the king's good graces, that he concluded all her former aversion was merely feigned, and acted to the life, by a nature crafty and perverse. He congratulated his own illnatured perseverance, by which he had discovered what remedy to apply to all future indispositions. How bent the king was upon reducing the poor queen to the humiliation, for which, when it at length took place, he heartily despised her, may be seen from the following extract of a letter to Lord Clarendon, dated Hampton Court. It expresses any thing but good nature or kind feeling. "And now I am entered on this matter, I think it very necessary to give you a little good counsel in it, least you may think that, by making a farther stir in the business, you may divert me from my resolution; which all the world shall never do: and I wish I may be unhappy in this world, and in the world to come, if I fail in the least degree of what I have resolved, which is, of making my Lady Castlemaine of my wife's bed-chamber: and whosoever I find use any endeavours to hinder this resolution of mine, I will be his enemy to the last moment of my life." In such a way could this goodnatured monarch, at a time too, when neither age nor vexation could be alledged to have corroded his temper, treat a defenceless woman, whose only crime was a claim to conduct herself worthily of the character and station of his wife.

in

"Michal of royal blood, the crown did wear,

A soil ungrateful to the tiller's care;"

and though the good chancellor thought her agreeable enough person, yet, in the eyes of others, she was a woman of but a mean appearance, and no very pleasant temper; fond too of dancing to a ridiculous excess, and so bigotted, that at her marriage, she would neither repeat the words of matrimony, nor bear the sight of the archbishop. But, as the editor of Dryden (Sir Walter Scott) has justly observed, on the lines above quoted, loving a ball is not a capital sin, "even in a person, whose figure excluded her from the hopes of gracing it; that a

* Burnet.

*

princess of Portugal must be a catholic, if she had any religion at all; and finally, that to bear children, it is necessary some one should take the trouble of getting them."*

In justice, however, to Charles, it must be allowed, that after his wife had ceased to thwart or interfere with his own pleasures, he at least treated her with decent civility, if he could not, or cared not to command for her the respect of others. This, perhaps, the levity of her own conduct, more than his neglect of her, made impossible. She entered into all the extravagance of the court, and went about masqued with the king and others; going into houses unknown, and dancing there with a great deal of wild frolic. They were carried about in hackney chairs; and, on one occasion, her chairmen, ignorant who she was, having left her by herself, she was reduced to return to Whitehall in a hackney coach,-nay, some said, in a cart. The lord chamberlain told her it was neither decent nor safe to go about in such a manner; for the Duke of Buckingham, it seems, (who could conceal nothing) had let out, that he had proposed a mad scheme to the king about stealing her away, and sending her to a plantation.-But the king had said. "it was a wicked thing to make a poor lady miserable, only because she was his wife, and had no children by him, which was no fault of her's."+

But it was during the heat of the popish plot, that his conduct towards her was such as most nearly to compensate for that injurious treatment, which she experienced from him in the first year of their marriage. The most impudent villain that ever perjured himself in a court of justice,-Titus Oates, had had the audacity to accuse her of poisoning the king, and even to go to the bar of the House of Commons, and cry "Aye, Taitus Oates, accause Catherine, Quean of England, of haigh traison!" Upon this the king put him under confinement, and it might have gone worse with him, but that it gave umbrage to some, who were too considerable to be set at defiance. They think," said Charles, "I have a mind to a new wife, but, for all that, I will not see an innocent woman abused." In a conversation he had with Burnet, who used frequently, about this time, December of 1678, to wait upon him, at Chiffinch's, a page of the back stairs, and converse with him on the subject of the plot, he acquainted him with the whole affair. He said, "she was a weak woman, and had some disagreeable humours, but was not capable of a wicked thing, and considering his faultiness towards her in other things, he thought it a horrid thing to

* Scott's Dryden, vol. ix.

+ Burnet.

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abandon her. He said he looked on falsehood and cruelty as the greatest crimes in the sight of God; he knew he had led a bad life, but he was breaking himself of all his faults, and he would never do a base or wicked thing."

Burnet says, that he made no mention whatever of the queen on his death-bed; but, according to another account,* she sent a message, requesting he would pardon her, if she had ever given him offence. "Alas, poor lady! she never offended me; I have too often offended her,” was the dying man's reply. These are redeeming touches!

The right reverend historian, who has given his character such a dark and sanguinary aspect, declares, that though he had an appearance of gentleness in his outward deportment, he had no touch nor tenderness in his nature. But the very affecting account which he has himself given of Charles's dying requests to his brother, prove him mistaken, and makes one marvel not a little at the good bishop's obtuseness of feeling. "A little before he died, he gathered all his strength to speak his last words to the duke, to which every one hearkened with great attention. He expressed his kindness to him, and that he now delivered all over to

him with great joy. He recommended Lady Portsmouth over and over again to him. He said, he had always loved her, and he loved her now to the last; and besought the Duke, in as melting words as he could fetch out, to be very kind to her and her son. He recommended his other children to him, and concluded, Let not poor Nelly starve-that was, Mrs. Gwyn." This recommending his mistresses to his brother's care, has greatly scandalized the historian: “it would have been a strange conclusion," he adds, " to any other's life, but was well enough united to all the other parts of his." The observations of Mr. Fox on this subject, must be too well known to need repetition here;-in that most feeling and Christian passage, the illustrious statesman has taught a noble lesson of candour and charity to the reverend divine.

Charles was never seen so much troubled in his whole life, as he was on the occasion of his youngest brother's death, whom he most tenderly loved; and yet, says Burnet, "those who knew him best, thought it was because he had lost him by

* North's Examen.

† Dalrymple's Memoirs. And this account is confirmed by Evelyn, who says, "He entreated the queen to pardon him (not without cause) who, a little before, had sent a bishop to excuse her not more frequently visiting him, in regard of her excessive grief, and that his majesty would forgive her, if at any time she had offended him.