squatted down to Wren's height, and creeping about in this ridiculous posture, "Ay," he said, "I think now, sir Christopher, they are high enough."

Charles enjoyed a practical joke. On one of his birthdays, a pickpocket had obtained admittance to the drawing-room, disguised in the dress of a gentleman, and commenced the practice of his profession by extracting a gold snuff-box from a nobleman's pocket. Scarcely had he done so when he saw the king looking at him; but knowing Charles's disposition, he had the consummate impudence to put his finger to his nose, and wink knowingly at his majesty to hold his tongue. A few moments afterwards, by which time the thief had made off, the king was exceedingly amused by perceiving the nobleman feeling his pockets for the box. At length he could resist no longer, and called out to the victim, "You need not trouble yourself, my lord; your box is gone, and I am an accomplice in the theft; the rascal made me his confidant !"

When Charles ascended the throne, one of his first acts of generosity was to send a grant of 10,000 acres of land to lord Clarendon, which the latter at first declined, on account of the envy it would excite. When the king was told of it he said, My lord chancellor is a fool for all his wise head; does he not know that it is better to be envied than pitied ?”

Lord keeper Guildford said, that Charles was better acquainted with foreign affairs than all his ministers put together; because, whether drunk or sober, he made a point of conversing with every eminent foreigner that visited England; and though notoriously unreserved himself, he could generally discover the secrets of others. The duke of Buckingham said, that "Charles could have been a great king if he would, and that James would if he could."

JAMES II.

EDITOR.

Great efforts were made during the life of Charles II. to keep James from succeeding to the throne, as his bigoted adherence to the church of Rome, and his excessive cruelties when ruling in Scotland, had made both nations dread and detest him. He had married, shortly after the Restoration, Anne Hyde, the daughter of the great lord Clarendon. Of the children of this marriage only two daughters— Mary, married to William prince of Orange, the son of the prince of Orange and a daughter of Charles I., and Anne, married to prince George of Denmark, survived. Both these daughters and their husbands were zealous protestants, and the people would have preferred either as sovereign to the duke. However, he succeeded the king unopposed, and his first speech to the privy council rather relieved the national fears. He promised to preserve the church of England, and to maintain the rights of the people, and as his word had, hitherto, been faithfully kept, men began to hope that he would prove a good king. But they were destined to find that his bigotry was greater than his integrity. On the second Sunday after his accession to the crown, he went openly to mass, and soon after sent an envoy (in spite of the act being illegal) to the Pope. Toleration was at that period still utterly unknown in England, and the national hatred of Popery, engendered by the cruelties of Mary's reign, still burned fiercely.

The first parliament of James (said to have been corruptly elected through the intrigues of the court) was devoted to the sovereign, and settled an income on him for life; everything tended, in fact, to make him believe that he would be able

But

to rule as despotically as Charles II. had during the latter years of his reign. trouble was near at hand. The duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of Charles II., and his father's favourite, having been engaged in the Rye house plot, had been compelled to retreat to Holland, where he had found an asylum with the prince and princess of Orange. This young man was the darling of the English people, being personally very handsome, and possessing a charming and affable manner. He was, also, a staunch protestant; but weak and utterly unfit to undertake the enterprise on which his friends at this time urged him to engage, i.e., to go to England, and raise a rebellion against the Roman catholic king James, who hating (and at one time fearing) his nephew, had been greatly displeased at the protection and favour shown to Monmouth by the prince and princess of Orange. William was well assured that James now king would at once demand either the expulsion of Monmouth from Holland or his surrender to England. He thought it prudent, therefore, at once to request Monmouth to leave the states. The duke complied, and proceeded to Brussels. In causing this banishment of Monmouth from the court of the prince of Orange, James showed his wonted shortsightedness. While with William, the duke would have been restrained from any attempts on the crown, to which the princess of Orange was next heir; but as soon as he was released from the restraint imposed by their favour and hospitality, he was led into the fatal course which brought on himself and many others so much misery. His adherents, and lady Henrietta Wentworth, who lived with him, persuaded him that by their abandonment of him the prince and princess of Orange had forfeited all claim on his gratitude and consideration, and that he ought to aim at the crown of England for himself. The earl of Argyle, who had also been in exile since the Rye house plot, proposed to him that he (Monmouth) should land in the west of England, while Argyle should invade that country from the north. For this purpose the earl said he would return secretly to Scotland, and raise his vassals; when, no doubt, the western clans, and the Scots, who hated James, would join his standard. The king's forces must thus be, necessarily, divided, and Monmouth might hope to win the crown as Henry VII. had, from the favour of the people. It is said that Monmouth saw the hopelessness of the enterprise and was very unwilling to enter into it; for he had neither money nor officers; and he knew how useless a mere undisciplined peasantry would be, opposed to the disciplined army of James; but he was over-persuaded, and entered on it against his own judgment.

Argyle reached Scotland in safety, and raised a small army of 2000 men, but he showed neither courage nor conduct was defeated, taken prisoner, and executed at Edinburgh.

Thus when Monmouth landed, James was able to send against him the troops he had in Scotland, as well as those in England, and the Dutch and English soldiers which William of Orange had, at his request, lent him. The king's army was under the earl of Feversham, a very incompetent general, but Monmouth was utterly unfit to control the circumstances in which he found himself. He had landed at Lyme in Dorsetshire, and crowds of country people had flocked at once to his standard, but very few of the gentry joined him. Instead of marching at once on Exeter or Bristol, he wasted precious time in drilling his raw recruits, and, meeting the royal army at Sedgemoor, was totally defeated, pursued, and made prisoner, and finally taken to London and beheaded as a traitor, James refusing to show any mercy to the unhappy young man.

The army under Feversham meantime treated the prisoners and all the defeated rebels with the most savage cruelty. People who were only suspected of having been out with Monmouth were hanged without trial; the infamous colonel Kirke and his officers treating their sufferings as matters of jest and brutal amusement.

**

T

His officers, seated at an entertainment, witnessed and ridiculed their tortures, and "at every fresh health," says bishop Burnet, "another prisoner was hanged with brutal jokes and revelry." Judge Jeffreys was sent on circuit to consummate these horrors, and the atrocities committed by this monster gained the name of the "Bloody Assize" for this period of shameful and most illegal tyranny. Even those who for humanity's sake gave shelter to the fugitive rebels, without having been adherents of Monmouth themselves, were condemned to death. Amongst these martyrs to charity were an aged lady named Lisle, and a poor woman (residing in London, and devoted to good works), called Elizabeth Gaunt. For these atrocities Jeffreys was rewarded with a peerage. James, convinced that he had by these terrible cruelties suppressed all possible opposition to his authority, proceeded to attempt more openly the restoration of Popery. He was urged on this course by his queen (a second wife, Mary Beatrice, of Este), and by his confessor, Father Peters. He admitted Roman catholics into the army and navy; he suspended the bishop of London, because he had refused to comply with the king's command to suspend Dr. Sharpe, who in a controversial sermon had (as James thought) insulted the king by preaching against his faith. He expelled the president and fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, and put a papist in the former's place.

The most clever of his schemes, however, was tempting the dissenters to become instrumental in the re-establishment of the old faith by admitting them to the same privileges as the Roman catholics. Apparent success attended these efforts. Addresses for a general indulgence were obtained from some of the nonconformist sects and from many dissenting officers and soldiers. The dissenters also stood aloof from the pulpit controversy which had begun between the church of England and the papists, and did not uphold the doctrines of the Reformation against the Romanists in their pulpits. Addresses in favour of the indulgence were also sent in from a few servile London companies; Southey says the cooks presented one! To crown these various attempts James issued a declaration for liberty of conscience; suspended all penal laws on the matter of religion; abolished all tests, and declared all his subjects equally capable of employment in his service whatever their belief. This declaration he ordered to be read in the churches. It was utterly opposed to the then existing laws, which were very intolerant certainly, but seemed at that period the only means of saving England from a persecuting church; and to yield to the declaration was to make the king (who thus strove by his mere will to set the law at defiance) absolute. Six of the bishops and the primate, Sancroft, presented a petition to James, begging to be excused from reading the declaration as against their conscience. These bold and honest men were-archbishop Sancroft; Lloyd, bishop of St. Asaph; Turner, of Ely; Lake, of Chichester; Ken, of Bath and Wells; White, of Peterborough; and Trelawney, of Bristol. The king, enraged, committed them to the Tower. A leading man among the dissenters, Lob, was one of the chief advisers of this impolitic act. As the bishops proceeded down the river to their prison, the banks were crowded with people who knelt and asked their blessing, praying also for a blessing on them and their cause. "The very soldiers who guarded them knelt in like manner and besought their benediction." The papists, however, were triumphant. Father Peters talked in a style worthy of Bonner, and Louis XIV. who had just stained the close of his reign by a cruel persecution of the Huguenots, called the Dragonades, applauded what was done, and assured the English ambassador that he was ready to help James in his good work. When the prelates were brought to trial, the same scene presented itself as on their progress to prison, and on their acquittal by the jury the verdict of "not guilty was received with a shout which seemed to shake the hall. Bonfires were lighted, and the bells were rung. The king, who kept up a standing army at Hounslow,

was there at the time.

The sounds of rejoicing from the soldiers reached his ears, and on asking what caused it he was told that it was nothing but the men rejoicing at the bishops' acquittal. call that nothing,” he said. "But so much the

worse for them."

Do you

In the June of this year, 1688, a son was born to the king, and James looked on the infant as a peculiar blessing from heaven. But its birth was destined to end his impolitic rule. Hitherto, the people had lived in the expectation that when the king's life ended, protestantism and freedom would be restored by the accession of Mary of Orange to the throne, and after her, Anne. Those two sisters were equally disappointed at their chances of the crown being thus frustrated. The princess Anne-the petted darling of her father-at once set herself to prove that the son born to him was a supposititious child, foisted into the royal family to exclude her sister and herself, and began intriguing with the princess of Orange against the king. Nothing could surpass the ingratitude of this conduct; even bishop Burnet, James's bitterest enemy, avouches that the king was most indulgent and kind to the princess Anne.

The nation had weightier and juster reasons for its alarms, however, and negotiations were entered into by many leading persons with the prince of Orange. Amongst these was lord Churchill (afterwards duke of Marlborough), whom James had raised to his present rank, and whose wife exercised a great ascendency over the princess Anne.

James was blind to his danger, purposely deceived probably by the courtiers who were betraying him; and when he received a missive telling him that he might soon expect an invasion from Holland, the letter dropped from his hand he was stunned by surprise and consternation. He endeavoured at once to calm the national discontent by re-instating the president and fellows of Magdalen College, and taking off the suspension of the bishop of London, but the people despised him for his manifest fears, and distrusted him too profoundly to be conciliated. They accused him indeed of acts he had never committed, and the rumour raised by the princess Anne and her adherents that the infant prince of Wales was a supposititious child introduced to deprive the princess of Orange of her right, spread through the kingdom.

On the following fifth of November, William of Orange, by the invitation of the upper classes of the people, landed at Torbay. At first the west countrymen— remembering the cruelties of Jeffreys' assize-held aloof from him. But in a few days the gentry and the nobles flocked to his standard, and every day, almost every hour, saw one or the other statesman or courtier go over from the king to the prince. When James heard that his favourite daughter the princess Anne and her husband had also deserted him, he was deeply and painfully affected; disheartened and hopeless, he made no effort to preserve his crown. Indeed, surrounded as he was by traitors, it must have seemed hopeless to make the attempt. The Jesuits and the queen urged him to fly, lest he should share the fate of his father, and he yielded to their advice. He sent the queen and the infant prince to France, under the care of the Count de Lauzun, and on the night of December 12th, he fled from London in a boat attended only by sir Edward Hales. He carried off the great seal, and dropped it in the Thames.

As soon as the people knew the king had fled, the mob rose, destroyed the mass houses, and finding judge Jeffreys in disguise dragged him before the magistrate with much ill-usage. At his own request the wicked judge was sent to the Tower, where soon after he died.

The peers and bishops at once assembled and begged the prince of Orange to come to London and act as regent of the kingdom. Meantime James was discovered

at Feversham, and brought back to town. The mob, with its usual fickleness pitying the sorrow of their dethroned monarch, received him with shouts of loyalty. William was dismayed. He entered at once into a sort of negotiation with James, and required him to go and reside at a little distance from London. James suggested Rochester, from whence he knew escape to France would be easy, and the prince was quite ready to assent to his wish. The king-still hopeless and irresolute-took advantage of this wise policy of the invader, and a second time fled.

On Christmas day, 1688, he landed at Ambleteuse in Picardy, and proceeded to St. Germain's, where Louis XIV. received him with great generosity and pity. Thus ended the three inglorious and troubled years of the reign of James II. James was twice married; first to Anne Hyde, daughter of lord Clarendon, and next to Mary Beatrice, of Modena. He had three daughters and one son living, i.e., Mary and Anne, daughters of Anne Hyde, and James Francis and Louisa, children of Mary Beatrice.

ACCESSION OF JAMES II.

JOHN EVELYN.

His majesty being dead, the duke, now king James II. went immediately to council, and before entering into any business, passionately declaring his sorrow, told their lordships that since the succession had fallen to him, he would endeavour to follow the example of his predecessor in his clemency and tenderness to his people; that, however he had been misrepresented as affecting arbitrary power, they should find the contrary, for that the laws of England had made the king as great a monarchi as he could desire; that he would endeavour to maintain the government both in church and state, as by law established, its principles being so firm for monarchy, and the members of it shewing themselves so good and loyal subjects; * and that as

*This is the substance and very nearly in the words given by king James II. in his MSS. printed in his Life; but in that MSS. are some words which Mr. Evelyn has omitted, viz., after speaking of the members of the church of England as good and loyal subjects, the king adds, and therefore I shall always take care to defend and support it. The king then goes on to say, that being desired by some present to allow copies to be taken, he said he had not committed it to writing; on which Mr. Finch (then solicitor general, afterwards earl of Aylesford) replied that what his majesty had said had made so deep an impression on him, that he believed he could repeat the very words, and if his majesty would permit him, he would write them down; which, the king agreeing to, he went to a table and wrote them down, and this being shewn to the king, he approved of it, and it was immediately published.

The king then goes on to say; No one can wonder that Mr. Finch should word the speech as strong as he could in favour of the established religion, nor that the king in such a hurry should pass it over without reflection: for though his majesty intended to promise both security to their religion and protection to their persons, he was afterwards convinced it had been better expressed by assuring them he never would endeavour to alter the established religion, rather than that he would endeavour to preserve it, and that he would rather support and defend the professors of it, rather than the religion itself; they could not expect he should make a conscience of supporting what in his conscience he thought erroneous; his engaging not to molest the professors of it, nor to deprive them or their successors of any spiritual dignity, revenue, or employment, but to suffer the ecclesiastical affairs to go on in the track they were in, was all they could wish or desire from a prince of a different persuasion; but having once approved that way of expressing it which Mr. Finch had made choice of, he thought it necessary not to vary from it in the declarations or speeches he made afterwards, not doubting but the world would understand it in the meaning he intended.-'Tis true afterwards it was pretended he kept not up to this engagement, but had they deviated no further from the duty and allegiance which both nature and repeated