table offices of the Household, of the Revenue, of State, of
Law, of Religion, of the Navy and (since his present Majestie's time)
of the Army, that it seems as if the Nation could scarce furnish
honest men enow to supply all those imployments. So that the Kings of
England are in nothing inferiour to other Princes, save in being more
abridged from injuring their own subjects: but have as large a field
as any of external felicity, wherein to exercise their own virtue,
and so reward and incourage it in others. In short, there is nothing
that comes nearer in Government to the Divine Perfection, than where
the Monarch, as with us, injoys a capacity of doing all the good
imaginable to mankind, under a disability to all that is
evil."[181:1]

This was the constitution which Marvell, whose means of information
were great and whose curiosity was insatiable, believed to be in danger.
No wonder he was agitated.

The politics in which Marvell was immersed during his last years are
difficult to unravel and still more difficult to illuminate, for they
had their dim origin in the secret thoughts and wavering purposes of the
king.

Charles the Second, like many another Englishman guiltless of Stuart
blood in his veins, was mainly governed by his dislikes, his pleasures,
and his financial necessities. To suppose, as some hasty moralisers have
done, that Charles cared for nothing but his women is to misread his
character. He had many qualifications to be the chief magistrate of a
nation of shopkeepers. He was ever alive to the supreme importance of
English trade upon the high seas. His thoughts were often turned in the
direction of the Indies, east and west. He took a constant, though not
always an honest, interest in the navy. He hated Holland for more
reasons than one, but among these reasons was his hatred of England's
most formidable and malicious trade competitor. He also disliked her
arid and ugly Protestantism, and blood being thicker than water, he
hated Holland for what he considered her shabby treatment of his
youthful nephew, whose ultimate destiny was happily hidden from
Whitehall. Among Charles's many dislikes must be included the Anglican
bishops, who had prevented him from keeping his word, and foiled his
purpose of a wide toleration. He envied his brother of France the wide
culture, the literature and art of Catholicism. He regretted the
Reformation, and would have been best pleased to