ad of the traitor,
who was for treating with Agag. Conspiracies were formed. Threats of
impeachment were loudly uttered. A mutiny broke out, which all the vigor
and resolution of Oliver could hardly quell. And though, by a judicious
mixture of severity and kindness, he succeeded in restoring order, he
saw that it would be in the highest degree difficult and perilous to
contend against the rage of warriors, who regarded the fallen tyrant as
their foe and as the foe of their God. At the same time it became more
evident than ever that the King could not be trusted. The vices of
Charles had grown upon him. They were, indeed, vices which difficulties
and perplexities generally bring out in the strongest light. Cunning is
the natural defence of the weak. A prince, therefore, who is habitually
a deceiver when at the height of power, is not likely to learn frankness
in the midst of embarrassments and distresses.

Charles was not only a most unscrupulous but a most unlucky dissembler.
There never was a politician to whom so many frauds and falsehoods were
brought home by undeniable evidence. He publicly recognized the Houses
at Westminster as a legal Parliament, and at the same time made a
private minute in council declaring the recognition null. He publicly
disclaimed all thought of calling in foreign aid against his people; he
privately solicited aid from France, from Denmark, and from Lorraine. He
publicly denied that he employed papists: at the same time he privately
sent to his generals directions to employ every papist that would serve.
He publicly took the sacrament at Oxford as a pledge that he never would
even connive at popery. He privately assured his wife that he intended
to tolerate popery in England; and he authorized Lord Glamorgan to
promise that popery should be established in Ireland. Then he attempted
to clear himself at his agent's expense.

Glamorgan received, in the royal handwriting, reprimands intended to be
read by others, and eulogies which were to be seen only by himself. To
such an extent, indeed, had insincerity now tainted the King's whole
nature, that his most devoted friends could not refrain from complaining
to each other, with bitter grief and shame, of his crooked politics. His
defeats, they said, gave them less pain than his intrigues. Since he had
been a prisoner, there was no section of the victorious party which had
not been the object both of his flatteries and of his machinations; but
ne