hind it was seen in the indifference with which measures such as the
union of the three kingdoms or the reform of parliamentary
representation were set aside as sharing in the general vice of the time
from which they sprang. It was seen as vividly at even a later time in
the instant ruin of Shaftesbury's popularity from the moment when he was
believed to be plotting the renewal of civil war. But if the Monarchy
was strengthened by its association with the tradition of constitutional
freedom it was henceforth inseparably bound to the freedom which
strengthened it. The Cavalier who had shouted for the king's return had
shouted also for the return of a free Parliament. The very Chief-Justice
who asserted at the trial of the Regicides the personal freedom of the
king from any responsibility to the nation asserted just as strongly
that doctrine of ministerial responsibility against which Charles the
First had struggled. "The law in all cases preserves the person of the
king to be authorized," said Sir Orlando Bridgeman, "but what is done by
his ministers unlawfully, there is a remedy against his ministers for
it." It was the desire of every Royalist to blot out the very memory of
the troubles in which monarchy and freedom had alike disappeared, to
take up again as if it had never been broken the thread of our political
history. But the point at which even Royalists took it up was not at the
moment of the Tyranny, but at the moment of the Long Parliament's first
triumph when that tyranny had been utterly undone. In his wish to
revive those older claims of the Crown which the Long Parliament had for
ever set aside the young king found himself alone. His closest
adherents, his warmest friends, were constitutional Royalists of the
temper of Falkland or Colepepper; partizans of an absolute monarchy, of
such a monarchy as his grandfather had dreamed of and his father for a
few years carried into practice, there now were none.

[Sidenote: Charles and English Religion.]

In his political aims therefore Charles could look for no help within
his realm. Nor did he stand less alone in his religious aims. In heart,
whether the story of his renunciation of Protestantism during his exile
be true or no, he had long ceased to be a Protestant. Whatever religious
feeling he had was on the side of Catholicism; he encouraged conversions
among his courtiers, and the last act of his life was to seek formal
admission into the Roman Church. But his