st be classed with popular legends.

There was also one Catherine Peg, or Kep, whose son was afterward
made Earl of Plymouth. It must be confessed that in his attachments
to English women Charles showed little care for rank or station. Lucy
Walters and Catherine Peg were very illiterate creatures.

In a way it was precisely this sort of preference that made Charles
so popular among the people. He seemed to make rank of no account, but
would chat in the most familiar and friendly way with any one whom he
happened to meet. His easy, democratic manner, coupled with the grace
and prestige of royalty, made friends for him all over England. The
treasury might be nearly bankrupt; the navy might be routed by the
Dutch; the king himself might be too much given to dissipation; but his
people forgave him all, because everybody knew that Charles would clap
an honest citizen on the back and joke with all who came to see him feed
the swans in Regent's Park.

The popular name for him was "Rowley," or "Old Rowley"--a nickname
of mysterious origin, though it is said to have been given him from a
fancied resemblance to a famous hunter in his stables. Perhaps it is the
very final test of popularity that a ruler should have a nickname known
to every one.

Cromwell's death roused all England to a frenzy of king-worship. The
Roundhead, General Monk, and his soldiers proclaimed Charles King of
England and escorted him to London in splendid state. That was a day
when national feeling reached a point such as never has been before or
since. Oughtred, the famous mathematician, died of joy when the royal
emblems were restored. Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, died, it is
said, of laughter at the people's wild delight--a truly Rabelaisian end.

There was the king once more; and England, breaking through its long
period of Puritanism, laughed and danced with more vivacity than ever
the French had shown. All the pipers and the players and panderers to
vice, the mountebanks, the sensual men, and the lawless women poured
into the presence of the king, who had been too long deprived of the
pleasure that his nature craved. Parliament voted seventy thousand
pounds for a memorial to Charles's father, but the irresponsible king
spent the whole sum on the women who surrounded him. His severest
counselor, Lord Clarendon, sent him a remonstrance.

"How can I build such a memorial," asked Charles, "when I don't know
where my father's remains are buri