King Charles II

“ They destroyed each other's peace by petty disputes and jars about things of little consequence, in which they each had scarcely any interest except a desire to carry the point and triumph over the other. King Charles himself preserved a record of one of these disputes. The queen had received, at the time of her marriage, certain estates, consisting of houses and lands, the income of which was to be at her disposal, and she wished to appoint certain treasurers to take charge of this property. She had made out a list of these officers in consultation with her mother. ”

“ Money as well as rank is very essentially necessary to make a relative a welcome guest, for any long time, in aristocratic circles. Charles concluded, therefore, that, all things considered, it was best for him to make a desperate effort to recover his kingdoms.
His kingdoms were three, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Ireland was a conquered kingdom, Scotland, like England, had descended to him from his ancestors; for his grandfather, James VI., was king of Scotland, and being on his mothers side a descendant of an English king, he was, of course, one of the heirs of the English crown ”

“ Had Charles the First broken the fundamental laws of England?
No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions of the king himself. If there be any truth in any historian of any party who has related the events of that reign, the conduct of Charles, from his accession to the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a continued course of oppression and treachery. ”

“ Though her heart was thus set upon having the emperor for her husband, she did not like, in the mean time, quite to give up her younger and more agreeable beau. Besides, her plans of marrying the emperor might fail, and Charles might succeed in recovering his kingdom. It was best, therefore, not to bring the negotiation with him to too absolute a close. When the time arrived, therefore, for Charles to take his departure, she thought she would just ride out to St. Germain's and pay her respects to Queen Henrietta, and bid the young king good-by. ”

“ Long negotiations and debates ensued, each party becoming more and more irritated against the other. At last, on one occasion, Charles lost his patience entirely, and made his escape into the mountains, in hopes to raise an army there among the clans of wild Highlanders, who, accustomed from infancy to the most implicit obedience to their chieftains, are always very loyal to their king. ”

“ Since the King was bent on emancipating himself from the control of Parliament, and since, in such an enterprise, he could not hope for effectual aid at home, it followed that he must look for aid abroad. The power and wealth of the King of France might be equal to the arduous task of establishing absolute monarchy in England. Such an ally would undoubtedly expect substantial proofs of gratitude for such a service. Charles must descend to the rank of a great vassal, and must make peace and war according to the directions of the government which protected him. ”

“ This table stands in need of no remarks: it speaks loud enough of itself, that our people increase in a very rapid manner. All I shall take the liberty of observing from it is, that all the registers I have looked over seem to resent the wretched policy of King Charles II. who submitted himself and kingdom too much to a powerful neighbour: and that our civil war had no effect upon our numbers, in comparison to our foreign wars. ”

“ Among the other events which occurred during the reign of King Charles the Second, and which tended to connect unfavorable associations with the recollection of it in the minds of men, was a very extraordinary affair, which is known in history by the name of Titus Oates's Popish Plot. It was the story of a plot, said to have been formed by the Catholics, to put King Charles to death, and place his brother James, who, it will be recollected, was a Catholic, upon the throne in his stead. ”

“ Charles found himself sovereign of Spain, and America, of Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, the Low Countries, Franche Comté, Austria, and the duchies associated with it. The same year (1519) he was chosen King of Germany and Emperor-elect, after a keen contest over the imperial crown, in which Francis I. of France and Henry VIII. of England were his competitors. On attaining this dignity, he conferred the Austrian possessions on his brother Ferdinand. But he remained the most potent and imposing monarch that Europe had seen since Charlemagne. ”

“ How Charles the First was governed by ill advisers; how he made the people pay taxes without the consent of Parliament; how the Earl of Strafford behaved very cruelly, and was beheaded; and how the King’s evil government caused a Civil War. When Charles the First came to be king, all the people were in hopes that he would be a better king than his father, as they believed he was a better man, and so he really was. ”

“ If he was unaware that the king’s life was aimed at directly and indirectly, it was because he had deliberately shut his eyes to the tendency of his own schemes and those of his associates.651 This must be the test of the value of such declarations. The unbounded immorality with which the politics of the reign of Charles II were stamped so clouded the minds of men that truth became for them almost indistinguishable from falsehood. ”

“ After a hard game of tennis the king took a chill in walking by the river-side at Windsor. Fever ensued, and a horrible fear that Charles lay on his death-bed struck at men’s hearts. The cry rose everywhere that he had been poisoned. The Duchess of Portsmouth was accused of having done the black deed. Amazement and horror were universal. People looked upon any ill that should happen to the king, said Sir William Temple, as though it were the end of the world. The privy council was obliged to take action to prevent an overwhelming rush of inquirers into the royal bedchamber. ”

“ Returning to rule over a nation which, during his absence, had been distracted by civil strife, King Charles, young in years, brave in deeds, and surrounded by that halo of romance which misfortune lends its victims, entirely gained the hearts of his subjects. Nature had endowed him with gifts adapted to display qualities that fascinated, and fitted to hide blemishes which repelled. ”

“ They are not the graces and accomplishments of a Sovereign, but of a lord of the bedchamber. They do not shew a great mind, bent on great objects, and swayed by lofty views. They are rather foibles and blemishes in the character of a ruler, for they imply that his attention has been turned as much upon adorning his own person as upon advancing the State. Charles II. was a King, such as we have here described; amiable, witty, and accomplished, and yet his memory is equally despised and detested. Charles was without strength of mind, or public principle. ”

“ At last, one afternoon, the king, happening to come into that part of the palace at Whitehall where the queen's apartments were situated, and which was called "the queen's side", found there a number of her gentlemen and lady attendants in a great frolic, capering and dancing in a way which the gay Frenchmen probably considered nothing extraordinary, but which King Charles regarded as very irreverent and unsuitable conduct to be witnessed in the presence of an English queen. ”

“ Her father, being brother of the late king, and uncle of the present one, was made lieutenant general of the kingdom, having thus the second place, that is, the place next to the queen, in the management of the affairs of the realm. Thus the little king commenced his reign by having in his court his mother as queen regent, his uncle lieutenant general, and his aunt, an exiled queen from a sister realm, his guest. He had also in his household his brother Philip, younger than himself, his cousin the young Duchess of Montpensier, and his cousin the Prince Charles. ”

“ It is not only still ready, but greedy to receive more. This King Charles found in as many Instances as any Prince that ever reigned, because the Easiness of Access introducing the good Success of their first Request, they were the more encouraged to repeat those Importunities, which had been more effectually stopt in the Beginning by a short and resolute Denial. ”

“ Charles the Fourth, by favour of the divine mercy emperor of the Romans, always august, and king of, Bohemia; as a perpetual memorial of this matter. Every kingdom divided against itself shall be desolated. For its princes have become the companions of thieves. Wherefore God has mingled among them the spirit of dizziness, that they may grope in midday as if in darkness; and He has removed their candlestick from out of His place, that they may be blind and leaders of the blind. And those who walk in darkness stumble ”

“ Blewer looked sharply round upon us, saying, with that evil smile of his,—
"Why, that is but a sorry shout for a new-made King; but perchance your loyal hearts are too full yet of grief for our noble King Charles to give a right royal welcome to his successor!"
"Ay, sir," said my uncle; "that is the case with us. We can scarce yet rejoice in the thought that any other sits in the place of good King Charles, be he never so great and good a prince. Prosperous and peaceful has England been beneath his fatherly sway ”

“ After a long and stormy passage, the squadron arrived off the Isle of Wight; the Duke of York came out to meet it there, with five other ships, and they all entered the harbor of Portsmouth together. As soon as Catharine landed, she wrote immediately to Charles to notify him of her arrival. The news produced universal excitement in London. The bells were rung, bonfires were made in the streets, and houses were illuminated. Every body seemed full of joy and pleasure except the king himself. ”

“ They express throughout Charles I’s resolution not to let himself be degraded to the position of a king who may follow neither his reason nor his conscience: he believes himself to merit more gratitude from the people of England by the resistance he is now offering, than by the concessions which he had formerly allowed to be extorted. ”

“ This association has since become one of the most celebrated learned societies in the world, and its establishment is one of the very few transactions of King Charles's reign which have been since remembered with pleasure. ”

“ CHAPTER XVIII. THE HOUSE OF BOURBON.
“The king is dead; long live the king!” Before Charles II passed away, weak and vacillating as he was, he bequeathed to his subjects a legacy of woe in the unfruitful “Wars of the Succession.” Finally, on his deathbed, through the influence of his confessor, and at the recommendation of Pope Innocent II, Charles made a will in favour of Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France. When he received the news of this triumph, for which he had long been scheming, the French king joyfully exclaimed, “The Pyrenees no longer exist!” ”

“ Houses, and Charles was determined to remain on good terms with the Parliament till he was strong enough to pick a quarrel to his profit. At no time has party strife raged more fiercely; in no reign has the temper of the Parliament been more threatening to the Crown. But the cynicism of Charles enabled him to ride out storms which would have wrecked a better and a nobler king. He treated the Lords with an easy familiarity which robbed opposition of its seriousness. ”

“ The Privy Council, of course, would have its meetings, its officers, its records, its rules of proceeding, and its various usages, and these grew, in time, to be laws and rights; but still it was, in theory, only a sort of expansion of the king, as if to make a kind of artificial being, with one soul, but many heads and hands, because no natural human being could possibly have capacities and powers extensive and multifarious enough for the exigencies of reigning. Charles thus had a council who took charge of every thing, except so far as he chose to interpose. ”

“ King Charles! King Charles!" was the cry that seemed to burst out simultaneously and irresistibly over all the British Islands. Men had been long drinking his health secretly or half-secretly, and singing songs of the old Cavalier kind in their own houses, or in convivial meetings with their neighbours; openly Royalist pamphlets had been frequent since the abolition of Richard's Protectorate; and, since the appearance of the Presbyterian Parliament of the secluded members, there had been hardly a pretence of suppressing any Royalist demonstrations whatever. ”

“ On the outbreak of the civil war he took up arms for the king at Oxford, and obtained the rank of captain, but on the capitulation of the city to the parliament in 1646 appears to have resumed his studies. After Charles I's execution he was employed by Charles II in various negotiations, and finally received a commission to raise troops in England for the new king at the time of Charles's Scottish expedition in 1650. ”

“ The extreme unction is the last rite. This being performed, the dying Catholic feels that all is well. His sins have been atoned for and forgiven, and he has himself been purified and sanctified, soul and body. The services in Charles's case occupied three quarters of an hour, and then the doors were opened and the attendants and company were admitted again.
The night passed on, and though the king's mind was relieved, he suffered much bodily agony. In the morning, when he perceived that it was light, he asked the attendants to open the curtains, that he might see the sun for the last time. ”