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established church. His mind had long oscillated between Hobbism and popery. When his health was good and his spirits high, he was a scoffer. In his few serious moments he was a Roman Catholic. The duke of York was aware of this, but was entirely occupied with the care of his own interests. He had ordered the outports to be closed. He had posted detachments of the guards in different parts of the city. He had also procured the feeble signature of the dying king to an instrument by which some duties, granted only till the demise of the crown, were let to farm for a term of three years. These things occupied the attention of James to such a degree that, though, on ordinary occasions, he was indiscreetly and unseasonably eager to bring over proselytes to his church, he never reflected that his brother was in danger of dying without the last sacraments.

A life of frivolity and vice had not extinguished in the duchess of Portsmouth all sentiments of religion. The French ambassador Barillon, found her in an agony of sorrow. She took him into a secret room, and poured out her whole heart to him. "I have," she said, "a thing of great moment to tell you. If it were known, my head would be in danger. The king is really and truly a Catholic; but he will die without being reconciled to the church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant clergymen. I cannot enter it without giving scandal. The duke is thinking only of himself. Speak to him. Remind him that there is a soul at stake. He is master now. He can clear the room. Go this instant, or it will be too late."

Barillon hastened to the bedchamber, took the duke aside, and delivered the message of the mistress. The conscience of James smote him. The duke commanded the crowd to stand aloof, went to the bed, stooped down, and whispered something which none of the spectators could hear, but which they supposed to be some question about affairs of state. Charles answered in an audible voice, "Yes, yes, with all my heart." None of the bystanders, except the French ambassador, guessed that the king was declaring his wish to be admitted into the bosom of the church of Rome.

"Shall I bring a priest?" said the duke. "Do, brother," replied the sick man. "For God's sake do, and lose no time. But no; you will get into trouble." "If it costs me my life," said the duke, "I will fetch a priest.'

To find a priest, however, for such a purpose, at a moment's notice, was not easy. They heard that a Benedictine monk, named John Huddleston, happened to be at Whitehall. This man had, with great risk to himself, saved the king's life after the battle of Worcester, and had, on that account, been, ever since the Restoration, a privileged person. In the sharpest proclamations which had been put forth against popish priests, when false witnesses had inflamed the nation to fury, Huddleston had been excepted by name. He readily consented to put his life a second time in peril for his prince; but there was still a difficulty. The honest monk was so illiterate that he did not know what he ought to say on an occasion of such importance. He however obtained some hints from a Portuguese ecclesiastic, and, thus instructed, was brought up the back stairs by Chiffinch, a confidential servant, who, if the satires of that age are to be credited, had often introduced visitors of a very different description by the same entrance.

The duke's orders were obeyed, and even the physicians withdrew. The back door was then opened, and Father Huddleston entered. A cloak had been thrown over his sacred vestments, and his shaven crown was concealed by a flowing wig. "Sir," said the duke, "this good man once saved your life. He now comes to save your soul." Charles faintly answered, "He is welcome." Huddleston went through his part better than had been expected. He knelt

[1685 A.D.] by the bed, listened to the confession, pronounced the absolution, and administered extreme unction. He asked if the king wished to receive the Lord's Supper. "Surely," said Charles, "if I am not unworthy." The host was brought in. Charles feebly strove to rise and kneel before it. The priest bade him lie still, and assured him that God would accept the humiliation of the soul, and would not require the humiliation of the body. The king found so much difficulty in swallowing the bread that it was necessary to open the door and to procure a glass of water. This rite ended, the monk held up a crucifix before the penitent, charged him to fix his last thoughts on the sufferings of the Redeemer, and withdrew. The whole ceremony had occupied about three-quarters of an hour; and, during that time, the courtiers who filled the outer room had communicated their suspicions to each other by whispers and significant glances. The door was at length thrown open, and the crowd again filled the chamber of death.

It was now late in the evening. The king seemed much relieved by what had passed. His natural children were brought to his bedside, the dukes of Grafton, Southampton, and Northumberland, sons of the duchess of Cleveland, the duke of Saint Albans, son of Eleanor Gwyn, and the duke of Richmond, son of the duchess of Portsmouth. Charles blessed them all, but spoke with peculiar tenderness to Richmond. One face which should have been there was wanting. Monmouth, the eldest and best beloved child was an exile and a wanderer. His name was not once mentioned by his father.

During the night Charles earnestly recommended the duchess of Portsmouth and her boy to the care of James; "And do not," he good-naturedly added, "let poor Nelly starve." The queen sent her excuses for her absence by Halifax. She said that she was too much disordered to resume her post by the couch, and implored pardon for any offence which she might unwittingly have given. "She ask my pardon, poor woman!" cried Charles; "I ask hers with all my heart."

The morning light began to peep through the windows of Whitehall; and Charles desired the attendants to pull aside the curtains, that he might have one more look at the day. He remarked that it was time to wind up a clock which stood near his bed. These little circumstances were long remembered, because they proved beyond dispute that, when he declared himself a Roman Catholic, he was in full possession of his faculties. He apologised to those who had stood round him all night for the trouble which he had caused. He had been, he said, a most unconscionable time dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it. This was the last glimpse of that exquisite urbanity, so often found potent to charm away the resentment of a justly incensed nation. Soon after dawn the speech of the dying man failed. Before ten his senses were gone. Great numbers had repaired to the churches at the hour of morning service. When the prayer for the king was read, loud groans and sobs showed how deeply his people felt for him. At noon on Friday, the 6th of February, he passed away without a struggle.c

BUCKLE'S WEIGHING OF THE GOOD AND EVIL OF THE REIGN

If we look only at the characters of the rulers, and at their foreign policy we must pronounce the reign of Charles II to be the worst that has ever been seen in England. If, on the other hand, we confine our observations to the laws which were passed, and to the principles which were established, we shall be obliged to confess that this same reign forms one of the brightest epochs in our national annals.

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Politically and morally, there were to be found in the government all the elements of confusion, of weakness, and of crime. The king himself was a mean and spiritless voluptuary, without the morals of a Christian, and almost without the feelings of a man. His ministers, with the exception of Clarendon, whom he hated for his virtues, had not one of the attributes of statesmen, and nearly all of them were pensioned by the crown of France. The weight of taxation was increased, while the security of the kingdom was diminished." By the forced surrender of the charters of the towns, our municipal rights were endangered. By shutting the exchequer, our national credit was destroyed. Though immense sums were spent in maintaining our naval and military power, we were left so defenceless, that when a war broke out, which had long been preparing, we seemed suddenly to be taken by surprise. Such was the miserable incapacity of the government, that the fleets of Holland were able, not only to ride triumphant round our coasts, but to sail up the Thames, attack our arsenals, burn our ships and insult the metropolis of England.

Yet, notwithstanding all these things, it is an undoubted fact, that in this same reign of Charles II more steps were taken in the right direction than had been taken, in any period of equal length, during the twelve centuries we had occupied the soil of Britain. By the mere force of that intellectual movement, which was unwittingly supported by the crown, there were effected, in the course of a few years, reforms which changed the face of society. The most important of these reforms were carried, as is nearly always the case, in opposition to the real wishes of the ruling classes. Charles II and James II often said of the Habeas Corpus Act, "that a government could not subsist with such a law." The two great obstacles by which the nation had long been embarrassed, consisted of a spiritual tyranny and a territorial tyranny: the tyranny of the church and the tyranny of the nobles. An attempt was now made to remedy these evils; not by palliatives, but by striking at the power of the classes who did the mischief. For now it was that a law was placed on the statute-book, taking away that celebrated writ, which enabled the bishops or their delegates to cause those men to be burned whose religion was different to their own. This destruction of the writ De Hæretico comburendo was in 1667. Now it was that the clergy were deprived of the privilege of taxing themselves, and were forced to submit to an assessment made by the ordinary legislature. Now, too, there was enacted a law forbidding any bishop, or any ecclesiastical court, to tender the ex-officio oath, by which the church had hitherto enjoyed the power of compelling a suspected person to criminate himself. In regard to the nobles, it was also during the reign of Charles II that the house of lords, after a sharp struggle, was obliged to abandon its pretensions to an original jurisdiction in civil suits, and thus lost for ever an important resource for extending its own influence.

It was in the same reign that there was settled the right of the people to be taxed entirely by their representatives; the house of commons having ever since retained the sole power of proposing money bills, and regulating the amount of imposts, merely leaving to the peers the form of consenting to what

His treatment of his young wife immediately after marriage is perhaps the worst thing recorded of this base and contemptible prince.

'Immediately after the Restoration, the custom began of appointing to naval commands incompetent youths of birth, to the discouragement of those able officers who had been employed under Cromwell.

The court was so bent on abrogating the charter of the city of London, that Saunders was made chief-justice for the express purpose.

The panic caused by this scandalous robbery is described by De Foe.

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has been already determined. These were the attempts which were made to bridle the clergy and the nobles. But there were also effected other things of equal importance.

By the destruction of the scandalous prerogatives of purveyance and preemption, a limit was set to the power of the sovereign to vex his refractory subjects. By the Habeas Corpus Act, the liberty of every Englishman was made as certain as law could make it; it being guaranteed to him, that if accused of crime, he, instead of languishing in prison, as had often been the case, should be brought to a fair and speedy trial. By the Statute of Frauds and Perjuries, a security hitherto unknown was conferred upon private property. By the abolition of general impeachments, an end was put to a great engine of tyranny, with which powerful and unscrupulous men had frequently ruined their political adversaries.

By the cessation of those laws which restricted the liberty of printing, there was laid the foundation of that great public press, which, more than any other single cause, has diffused among the people a knowledge of their own power, and has thus, to an almost incredible extent, aided the progress of English civilisation. And, to complete this noble picture, there were finally destroyed those feudal incidents, which our Norman conquerors had imposed the military tenures; the court of wards; the fines for alienation; the right of forfeiture for marriage by reason of tenure; the aids, the homages, the escuages, the primer seisins, and all those mischievous subtleties, of which the mere names sound in modern ears as a wild and barbarous jargon, but which pressed upon our ancestor as real and serious evils.

These were the things which were done in the reign of Charles II; and if we consider the miserable incompetence of the king, the idle profligacy of his court, the unblushing venality of his ministers, the constant conspiracies to which the country was exposed from within, and the unprecedented insults to which it was subjected from without; if we, moreover, consider that to all this there were added two natural calamities of the most grievous description a great plague, which thinned society in all its ranks, and scattered confusion through the kingdom, and a great fire, which, besides increasing the mortality from the pestilence, destroyed in a moment those accumulations of industry by which industry itself is nourished-if we put all these things together, how can we reconcile inconsistencies apparently so gross? How could so wonderful a progress be made in the face of these unparalleled disasters? How could such men, under such circumstances, effect such improvements? These are questions which our political compilers are unable to answer; because they look too much at the peculiarities of individuals, and too little at the temper of the age in which those individuals live.

Such writers do not perceive that the history of every civilised country is the history of its intellectual development, which kings, statesmen, and legislators are more likely to retard than to hasten; because, however great their power may be, they are at best the accidental and insufficient representatives of the spirit of their time; and because, so far from being able to regulate the movements of the national mind, they themselves form the smallest part of it, and, in a general view of the progress of man, are only to be regarded as the puppets who strut and fret their hour upon a little stage; while, beyond them, and on every side of them, are forming opinions and principles which they can scarcely perceive, but by which alone the whole course of human affairs is ultimately governed.

The truth is, that the vast legislative reforms, for which the reign of Charles II is so remarkable, merely form a part of that movement, which,

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though traceable to a much earlier period, had only for three generations been in undisguised operation. These important improvements were the result of that bold, sceptical, inquiring, and reforming spirit, which had now seized the three great departments of theology, of science, and of politics. The old principles of tradition, of authority, and of dogma, were gradually becoming weaker; and of course, in the same proportion, there was diminished the influence of the classes by whom those principles were chiefly upheld. As the power of particular sections of society thus declined, the power of the people at large increased. The real interests of the nation began to be perceived, so soon as the superstitions were dispersed by which those interests had long been obscured. This, I believe, is the real solution of what at first seems a curious problem — namely, how it was that such comprehensive reforms should have been accomplished in so bad, and in many respects so infamous, a reign.

It is, no doubt, true, that those reforms were essentially the result of the intellectual march of the age; but, so far from being made in spite of the vices of the sovereign, they were actually aided by them. With the exception of the needy profligates who thronged his court, all classes of men soon learned to despise a king who was a drunkard, a libertine, and a hypocrite; who had neither shame nor sensibility; and who, in point of honour, was unworthy to enter the presence of the meanest of his subjects. To have the throne filled for a quarter of a century by such a man as this, was the surest way of weakening that ignorant and indiscriminate loyalty, to which the people have often sacrificed their dearest rights. Thus, the character of the king, merely considered from this point of view, was eminently favourable to the growth of national liberty.1

But the advantage did not stop there. The reckless debaucheries of Charles made him abhor everything approaching to restraint; and this gave him a dislike to a class, whose profession, at least, pre-supposes a conduct of more than ordinary purity. The consequence was, that he, not from views of enlightened policy, but merely from a love of vicious indulgence, always had a distaste for the clergy; and, so far from advancing their power, frequently expressed for them an open contempt. His most intimate friends directed against them those coarse and profligate jokes which are preserved in the literature of the time; and which, in the opinion of the courtiers, were to be ranked among the noblest specimens of human wit. From men of this sort the church had, indeed, little to apprehend; but their language, and the favour with which it was received, are part of the symptoms by which we may study the temper of that age. Many other illustrations will occur to most readers; I may, however, mention one, which is interesting on account of the eminence of the philosopher concerned in it.

The most dangerous opponent of the clergy in the seventeenth century, was certainly Hobbes, the subtlest dialectician of his time; a writer, too, of singular clearness, and among British metaphysicians, inferior only to Berkeley. This profound thinker published several speculations very unfavourable to the church, and directly opposed to principles which are essential to ecclesiastical authority. As a natural consequence, he was hated by the clergy;

'Mr. Hallam has a noble passage on the services rendered to English civilisation by the vices of the English court: "We are, however, much indebted to the memory of Barbara duchess of Cleveland, Louisa duchess of Portsmouth, and Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn. We owe a tribute of gratitude to the Mays, the Killigrews, the Chiffinches, and the Grammonts. They played a serviceable part in ridding the kingdom of its besotted loyalty. They saved our forefathers from the Star Chamber and the High-commission court; they laboured in their vocation against standing armies and corruption; they pressed forward the great ultimate security of English freedom-the expulsion of the House of Stuart."