dged his right. Yet King William justly passes for a very
sincere prince; and this transaction is not regarded as any objection to
his character in that particular. In all the negotiations at the peace
of Ryswic, the French ambassadors always addressed King William as king
of England; yet it was made an express article of the treaty, that the
French king should acknowledge him as such. Such a palpable difference
is there between giving a title to a prince, and positively recognizing
his right to it. I may add, that Charles, when he asserted that
protestation in the council books before his council, surely thought he
had reason to justify his conduct. There were too many men of honor in
that company to avow a palpable cheat. To which we may subjoin, that, if
men were as much disposed to judge of this prince's actions with candor
as severity, this precaution of entering a protest in his council
books might rather pass for a proof of scrupulous honor; lest he should
afterwards be reproached with breach of his word, when he should think
proper again to declare the assembly at Westminster no parliament. 5.
The denying of his commission to Glamorgan is another instance which
has been cited. This matter has been already treated in a footnote to
chapter lviii. That transaction was entirely innocent. Even if the king
had given a commission to Glamorgan to conclude that treaty, and had
ratified it, will any reasonable man, in our age, think it strange that,
in order to save his own life, his crown, his family, his friends, and
his party, he should make a treaty with Papists, and grant them very
large concessions for their religion? 6. There is another of the king's
intercepted letters to the queen commonly mentioned; where, it is
pretended, he talked of raising and then destroying Cromwell. But
that story stands on no manner of foundation, as we have observed in a
preceding footnote to this chapter. In a word, the parliament, after
the commencement of their violences, and still more after beginning the
civil war, had reason for their scruples and jealousies, founded on the
very nature of their situation, and on the general propensity of the
human mind; not on any fault of the king's character, who was candid,
sincere, upright; as much as any man whom we meet with in history.
Perhaps it would be difficult to find another character so
unexceptionable in this particular.

As to the other circumstances of Charles's character chiefly e