that good old cause in which he had been engaged from his youth, and
for which God had so often and so wonderfully declared himself.'

The Duke of Monmouth had been making his uncle, the Duke of York, very
jealous, by going about the country in a royal sort of way, playing at
the people's games, becoming godfather to their children, and even
touching for the King's evil, or stroking the faces of the sick to cure
them--though, for the matter of that, I should say he did them about as
much good as any crowned king could have done. His father had got him to
write a letter, confessing his having had a part in the conspiracy, for
which Lord Russell had been beheaded; but he was ever a weak man, and as
soon as he had written it, he was ashamed of it and got it back again.
For this, he was banished to the Netherlands; but he soon returned and
had an interview with his father, unknown to his uncle. It would seem
that he was coming into the Merry Monarch's favour again, and that the
Duke of York was sliding out of it, when Death appeared to the merry
galleries at Whitehall, and astonished the debauched lords and gentlemen,
and the shameless ladies, very considerably.

On Monday, the second of February, one thousand six hundred and eighty-
five, the merry pensioner and servant of the King of France fell down in
a fit of apoplexy. By the Wednesday his case was hopeless, and on the
Thursday he was told so. As he made a difficulty about taking the
sacrament from the Protestant Bishop of Bath, the Duke of York got all
who were present away from the bed, and asked his brother, in a whisper,
if he should send for a Catholic priest? The King replied, 'For God's
sake, brother, do!' The Duke smuggled in, up the back stairs, disguised
in a wig and gown, a priest named HUDDLESTON, who had saved the King's
life after the battle of Worcester: telling him that this worthy man in
the wig had once saved his body, and was now come to save his soul.

The Merry Monarch lived through that night, and died before noon on the
next day, which was Friday, the sixth. Two of the last things he said
were of a human sort, and your remembrance will give him the full benefit
of them. When the Queen sent to say she was too unwell to attend him and
to ask his pardon, he said, 'Alas! poor woman, _she_ beg _my_ pardon! I
beg hers with all my heart. Take back that answer to her.' And he also
said, in reference to Nell Gwyn, 'Do not let poor Nelly starv