Had it not been his misfortune to inherit a
crown, his scholarly refinements and exquisite tastes, his
irreproachable morals, and his rectitude in the personal relations of
life, might have won him only esteem and honor. But these qualities
belonged to Charles Stuart the gentleman. Charles the King was
imperious, false, obstinate, blind to the conditions of his time, and
ignorant of the nature of his people. Every step taken during his
reign led him nearer to its fatal consummation.

No family in Europe ever grasped at power more unscrupulously than the
Guises in France. They were cruel and remorseless in its pursuit. It
was the warm southern blood of her mother which was Mary Stuart's ruin.
She was a Guise,--and so was her son James I.--and so was Charles I.,
her grandson. There was despotism and tyranny in their blood. Their
very natures made it impossible that they should {103} comprehend the
Anglo-Saxon ideal of civil liberty.

Who can tell what might have been the course of History, if England had
been ruled by English Kings, which it has not been since the Conquest.
With every royal marriage there is a fresh infusion of foreign blood
drawn from fountains not always the purest,--until after centuries of
such dilutions, the royal line has less of the Anglo-Saxon in it than
any ancestral line in the Kingdom.

The odious Spanish marriage had been abandoned and Charles had married
Henrietta, sister of Louis XIII. of France.

The subject of religion was the burning one at that time. It soon
became apparent that the new King's personal sympathies leaned as far
as his position permitted toward Catholicism. The Church of England
under its new Primate, Archbishop Laud, was being drawn farther away
from Protestantism and closer to Papacy; while Laud in order to secure
Royal protection advocated the absolutism of the King, saying that
James in his theory of "Divine right" had {104} been inspired by the
Holy Ghost, thus turning religion into an engine of attack upon English
liberties. Laud's ideal was a purified Catholicism--retaining
auricular confession, prayers for the dead, the Real Presence in the
Sacrament, genuflexions and crucifixes, all of which were odious to
Puritans and Presbyterians. He had a bold, narrow mind, and recklessly
threw himself against the religious instincts of the time. The same
pulpit from which was read a proclamation ordering that the Sabbath be
treated as a holiday, and not a Holy