ing cruelties practised by the Earl of Lauderdale in Scotland, he remarked, "I perceive that Lauderdale has been guilty of many bad things towards the people of Scotland; but I cannot find that he has acted in anything contrary to my interest." Therefore all seemed passable with this cruel minister.

Notwithstanding these serious drawbacks in the character of Charles, he kept up his popularity with the multitude, chiefly from that rakish hilarity which, with the unreflecting, often wins affection, though it cannot procure esteem. Some good things, it may be added, emerged in his Sybarite reign; but the chief have been glanced at, and little remains for separate notice. Although so indifferent in conduct, the quick observance of the royal epicure, and his early experience in life, made him often shrewd and just in his aphoristic utterances.

Upon Lord Clarendon's hesitating to accept so large a gift as 10,000 acres of fen-land, the king told him he "had better be envied than pitied." His rejoinder to his royal brother, that "nobody would kill King Charles to make way for King James," was true enough. His rebuke of Penn was felicitous. "Friend Charles," said the future Pennsylvanian legislator, "why dost thou not keep on thy hat?" ""Tis the custom of this place," replied the king, "for only one person to remain covered at a time." When Leti told Charles that, were he as wise as Solomon, he feared he should not be able to write the history of the court without giving some offence, the king smartly answered, "Why, then, be as wise as Solomon; write proverbs, not histories." Upon Lord Keeper Guildford seeking to provide for a not very reputable person, the king observed, "It is strange that every one of my friends keeps a tame knave."

The hospitals of Greenwich and Chelsea were indebted

to the king for some pecuniary aid. The Royal Society, for experiments in natural philosophy, obtained letters patent in this reign; but it had its origin under the Commonwealth. Among its earliest members were Dr. Ward, Dr. Wallis, Sir William Petty, and Viscount Brounker. His lordship was the first president of the Society, and held the situation fifteen years, advancing its interests by his learning and profound mathematical knowledge.

There were some writers of intellectual eminence who lived within this period, whose names and principal works merit notice. Harvey, discoverer of the circulation of the blood, died in 1657. John Selden, author of the "History of Tythes," and of "Table Talk," the last a posthumous publication; Thomas Hobbes, the sage writer on politics, morals, and metaphysics; Isaac Barrow, eminent mathematician and divine; Jeremy Taylor, "Holy Living and Dying;" Algernon Sydney, "Discourses on Government;" Sir Thomas Browne, "Urn Burial," and "Vulgar Errors;" Thomas Fuller, "Church History," and "The Worthies of England." Among historians were Lord Clarendon, Whitelocke, Dugdale, and May. The works of the voluminous Prynne on law, records and antiquities amount to upwards of forty-three volumes in folio and quarto. Other contemporary writers were John Milton, Butler, Andrew Marvel, Isaac Walton, Walker, Shirley, Cowley, and Roscommon.

The style of costume changed with manners after the Restoration. Charles's beauties were the very reverse of their mother's in dress as in demeanour. The starched

ruff, steeple-crowned hat, and the stately fardingale were banished with the gravity and morality of their wearers. A studied negligence, or elegant déshabille was the prevailing taste, and which has been made familiar from the

portraits of the period. The costume of males did not improve. The most elegant and picturesque style of dress ever worn in England appears to have been under Charles I. from 1625 to 1648. It was the Vandyke dress, being the habit in which that artist painted, and is frequently seen on the stage. It degenerated into extravagance under Charles II., when the periwig and petticoat breeches were introduced; and the doublet, which at the beginning of his reign was very short, was greatly lengthened, and assumed the form of the modern

coat.

CHAPTER XIV.

JAMES II. TO HIS ABDICATION.

Royal Idiosyncracy.— Servility of the High Church, and the Opening afforded for Despotism. - Anti-Popery of the Nation. - Infatuated Measures of the King.—Secret Meetings of the Patriots; Invitation to the Prince of Orange from the Whigs; Arrival of the Prince in England. - Meeting of the Convention Parliament.— Differences of the two Houses; the Prince brings them to Terms. Wise Conduct of the Commons; the Bill of Rights. - Settlement of the Constitution. Triumph over the Conspiracy of Crowned Heads. - Exile and Death of James II.- Conclusion of the Stuart Era.

THE brief reign of James comprises little to be noted from its bearing on civilised progress. The most remarkable feature it offers is the royal idiosyncracy, of a prince quietly acceding to the throne of a powerful state, almost immediately after losing possession of it from inordinate

* History of British Costume.

PROTESTANTISM PARAMOUNT TO CIVIL LIBERTY. 257

zeal to impose his individual faith on an adverse community. It has a second feature of interest in the national unanimity with which this bigoted conceit was resisted, and the sovereignty of three kingdoms, without violence, transferred to an alien dynasty.

By the transfer of the crown to the Prince of Orange, chiefly on account of the Romish tendencies of his predecessor, the kingly office became identified with the future maintenance of the Protestant faith, and so far the long feud between the new and ancient religions was closed. It had subsisted, with different degrees of animosity, from the Reformation, and under the successive phases of Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Independency, had become associated with co-relative claims of freedom or despotism. The conflicting elements had varied in the proportion in which they had entered into the struggle in its earlier and later stages; but on the accession of James religion had become paramount to civil considerations. So indifferent or secondary had the public liberties become in general estimation, that it is probable had the designs of the king been limited to the establishment of secular absolutism he might have succeeded; for Charles II. had left the way open to him by the mastery he had obtained over the Whigs and municipalities, cooperating with the doctrine of passive obedience, which the high church party had diffused through the realm. One of the parliaments of Charles had all but accepted the yoke of slavery. The degraded House of Commons which met at Oxford in 1665, and passed the Five Mile Act, interdicting the approach of any nonconformist minister within five miles of any town unless he had previously taken the oath of non-resistance, was very near imposing the same oath on the entire nation. A bill for the purpose was introduced, and it

S

would have been carried, the House being equally divided, but for the accident of three new members having been chosen, who voted against it. But though the bill was lost, the bishops and parsons acted as if it had passed, and their sermons and pastoral letters sounded as loud a note as that which Laud and Manwaring had pealed on the divine right of kings.

A portion of this spirit survived in the new reign. Some of the bishops and peers were servile enough to take part in the ceremonies of the public introduction of the ambassador of the pope at the court of James. The judges, with the benchers and barristers of the Temple, sanctioned the dispensing power; and the Church might have given its aid in the establishment of arbitrary rule, had not their own rights been openly threatened by the king's mandate, requiring the clergy to read from their pulpits his new catholic indulgence. Against this outrage only seven bishops petitioned, but the parochial clergy evinced a more refractory spirit, not more than 200 out of 10,000 complying with the king's will. The body of the nation, too, was thoroughly anti-popish, and its conscience not to be coerced in the choice of a religion. Churchmen and Dissenters, Tories and Whigs perceived, by the undisguised measures of James; by his introduction of papists into the army, his councils, the magistracy, and on the bench; by the new modelling of confirmation; his forcible interference with the rights of the universities; his establishment of an ecclesiastical commission for the cognisance of spiritual offences; his embassy to the pope; his assumption of a dispensing power in respect of the penal statutes; and his insidious attempt to establish liberty of conscience; that is, liberty for his own sect first, and an intolerant ascendancy afterwards that Protestantism was imperilled. With this