is not given to them that suffer by their own demerits. Nor is a crown of gold his due, who cannot first wear a crown of lead; not only for the weight of that great office, but for the compliance which it ought to have with them who are to counsel him, which here he terms in scorn, "an imbased flexibleness to the various and oft contrary dictates of any factions," meaning his parliament; for the question hath been all this while between them two. And to his parliament, though a numerous and choice assembly of whom the land thought wisest, he imputes, rather than to himself, "want of reason, neglect of the public, interest of parties, and particularity of private will and passion;" but with what modesty or likelihood of truth, it will be wearisome to repeat so often. 112. He concludes with a sentence fair in seeming, but fallacious. For if the conscience be ill edified, the resolution may more befit a foolish than a Christian king, to prefer a self-willed conscience before a kingdom's good; especially in the denial of that, which law and his regal office by oath bids him grant to his parliament and whole kingdom rightfully demanding. For we may observe him throughout the discourse to assert his negative power against the whole kingdom; now under the specious plea of his conscience and his reason, but heretofore in a louder note: Without us, or against our consent, the votes of either or of both houses together, must not, cannot, shall not.” (Declar. May 4, 1642.) With these and the like deceivable doctrines he leavens also his prayer, 66 CHAPTER VII. Upon the Queen's Departure. 113. To this argument we shall soon have said; for what concerns it us to hear a husband divulge his household, privacies, extolling to others the virtues of his wife? an infirmity not seldom incident to those who have least cause. (49) But how good she was a wife, was to himself, and be it left to his own fancy; how bad a subject, is not much disputed. And being such, it need be made no wonder, though she left a protestant (49) Had the "Eikon Basilikè” been the work of Charles I., no man could have read the seventh chapter, in which a character of his wife is pretended to be given, without a mixture of pity and contempt. To be united by marriage to such a creature was calamity enough; but to be so far blinded by his uxoriousness as to think her a noble, affectionate, and loyal mate, argued a degree of stupidity scarcely credible. But that Dr. Gauden, who must have known her character, should have heightened the wickedness of his imposture by talking of the "noble and peaceful soul" of Henrietta Maria, can excite nothing less than indignation and disgust. The following are among the words which he puts into the king's mouth. ""Tis pity so noble and peaceful a soul should see, much more suffer, the rudeness of those who must make up their want of justice with inhumanity and impudence. Her sympathy with me in my afflictions will make her virtues shine with greater lustre, as stars in the darkest nights, and assure the envious world that she loves me, not my fortunes.” (p. 40. edit. of 1681.) And again, in the next page, he says, his enemies had driven her from the kingdom, "lest by the influ kingdom with as little honour as her mother left a popish. 114. That this "is the first example of any Protestant subjects, that have taken up arms against their king, a Protestant," can be to Protestants no dishonour; when it shall be heard, that he first levied war on them, and to the interest of papists more than of Protestants. He might have given yet the precedence of making war upon him to the subjects of his own nation, who had twice opposed him in the open field long ere the English found it necessary to do the like. And how groundless, how dissembled is that fear, lest she, who for so many years had been averse from the religion of her husband, and every year more and more, before these disturbances broke out, should for them be now the more alienated from that, to which we ence of her example, eminent for love as a wife, and loyalty as a subject, she should have converted to, or retained in, their love and loyalty, all those whom they had a purpose to pervert." Alas! this affectionate wife is known to have dissuaded him from attempting his escape from Carisbrooke castle, lest by coming into France, he should interrupt her adulterous intrigue with Jermyn. (Clarendon, vi. 80, 192.) The circumstance is darkly hinted at by the historian, who assigns another motive; but Warburton explains. "The queen dreaded his coming to Paris. She was unwilling the king should interrupt her commerce with Jermyn." (Clarendon's History, vii. 624, 627.) Reresby, who followed the fortunes of the queen and prince into France, (the name in Clarendon is misspelt Hereby,) and "who wrote the Memoirs of his own Times, not long since published, acknowledges, that he was very certain that the queen had a child by Jermyn." (Warburton, Notes to Clarendon, vii. 622.) These Memoirs were some years ago made the subject of an article in the Retrospective Review. never heard she was inclined? But if the fear of her delinquency, and that justice which the Protestants demanded on her, was any cause of her alienating the more, to have gained her by indirect means had been no advantage to religion, much less then was the detriment to lose her further off. It had been happy if his own actions had not given cause of more scandal to the Protestants, than what they did against her could justly scandalize any papist. 115. Them who accused her, well enough known to be the parliament, he censures for " men yet to seek their religion, whether doctrine, discipline, or good manners;" the rest he soothes with the name of true English Protestants, a mere schismatical name, yet he so great an enemy of schism. He ascribes rudeness and barbarity, worse than Indian," to the English parliament; and "all virtue" to his wife, in strains that come almost to sonnetting how fit to govern men, undervaluing and aspersing the great council of his kingdom, in comparison of one woman! Examples are not far to seek, how great mischief and dishonour hath befallen nations under the government of effeminate and uxorious magistrates; who being themselves governed and overswayed at home under a feminine usurpation, cannot but be far short of spirit and authority without doors, to govern a whole nation. 116. "Her tarrying here he could not think safe among them, who were shaking hands with allegiance, to lay faster hold on religion; and taxes them of a duty rather than a crime, it being just to obey God rather than man, and impossible to serve two masters: I would they had quite shaken off what they stood shaking hands with; the fault was in their courage, not in their cause. In his prayer he prays that the disloyalty of his Protestant subjects may not be a hinderance to her love of the true religion; and never prays, that the dissoluteness of his court, the scandals of his clergy, the unsoundness of his own judgment, the lukewarmness of his life, his letter of compliance to the pope, his permitting agents at Rome, the pope's nuncio, and her jesuited mother here, may not be found in the sight of God far greater hinderances to her conversion. 117. But this had been a subtle prayer indeed, and well prayed, though as duly as a Paternoster, if it could have charmed us to sit still, and have religion and our liberties one by one snatched from us, for fear lest rising to defend ourselves we should fright the queen, a stiff papist, from turning Protestant! As if the way to make his queen a Protestant, had been to make his subjects more than halfway papists. He prays next, " that his constancy may be an antidote against the poison of other men's example." His constancy in what? Not in religion, for it is openly known, that her religion wrought more upon him, than his religion upon her; and his open favouring of papists, and his hatred of them called puritans, (the ministers also that prayed in churches for her conversion, being checked from court,) made most men suspect she had quite perverted him. But what is it, that VOL. II. I |