all had
acquiesced in the act, is not certainly to be imputed as a crime to the
king, or to those of his advisers who were of the Cavalier party. The
passion of revenge, though properly condemned both by philosophy and
religion, yet when it is excited by injurious treatment of persons justly
dear to us, is among the most excusable of human frailties; and if
Charles, in his general conduct, had shown stronger feelings of gratitude
for services performed to his father, his character, in the eyes of many,
would be rather raised than lowered by this example of severity against
the regicides. Clarendon is said to have been privy to the king's
receiving money from Louis XIV.; but what proofs exist of this charge
(for a heavy charge it is) I know not. Southampton was one of the very
few of the Royalist party who preserved any just regard for the liberties
of the people; and the disgust which a person possessed of such
sentiments must unavoidably feel is said to have determined him to quit
the king's service, and to retire altogether from public affairs. Whether
he would have acted upon this determination, his death, which happened in
the year 1667, prevents us now from ascertaining.

After the fall of Clarendon, which soon followed, the king entered into
that career of misgovernment which, that he was able to pursue it to its
end, is a disgrace to the history of our country. If anything can add to
our disgust at the meanness with which he solicited a dependence upon
Louis XIV., it is, the hypocritical pretence upon which he was
continually pressing that monarch. After having passed a law, making it
penal to affirm (what was true) that he was a papist, he pretended (which
was certainly not true) to be a zealous and bigoted papist; and the
uneasiness of his conscience at so long delaying a public avowal of his
conversion, was more than once urged by him as an argument to increase
the pension, and to accelerate the assistance, he was to receive from
France. In a later period of his reign, when his interest, as he
thought, lay the other way, that he might at once continue to earn his
wages, and yet put off a public conversion, he stated some scruples,
contracted, no doubt, by his affection to the Protestant churches, in
relation to the popish mode of giving the sacrament, and pretended a wish
that the pope might be induced by Louis to consider of some alterations
in that respect, to enable him to reconcile himself to the Rom