lord-lieutenant, and placing it in the king's own
hands, and the commission to which the king had delegated ecclesiastical
patronage was revoked. In May 1684 the office of lord high admiral, in
spite of the Test Act, was again given to James, who had now returned
from Scotland. To all appearances the same policy afterwards pursued so
recklessly and disastrously by James was now cautiously initiated by
Charles, who, however, not being inspired by the same religious zeal as
his brother, and not desiring "to go on his travels again," would
probably have drawn back prudently before his throne was endangered. The
developments of this movement were, however, now interrupted by the
death of Charles after a short illness on the 6th of February 1685. He
was buried on the 17th in Henry VII.'s chapel in Westminster Abbey with
funeral ceremonies criticized by contemporaries as mean and wanting in
respect, but the scantiness of which was probably owing to the fact that
he had died a Roman Catholic.

On his death-bed Charles had at length declared himself an adherent of
that religion and had received the last rites according to the Romanist
usage. There appears to be no trustworthy record of his formal
conversion, assigned to various times and various agencies. As a youth,
says Clarendon, "the ill-bred familiarity of the Scotch divines had
given him a distaste" for Presbyterianism, which he indeed declared "no
religion for gentlemen," and the mean figure which the fallen national
church made in exile repelled him at the same time that he was attracted
by the "genteel part of the Catholic religion." With Charles religion
was not the serious matter it was with James, and was largely regarded
from the political aspect and from that of ease and personal
convenience. Presbyterianism constituted a dangerous encroachment on the
royal prerogative; the national church and the cavalier party were
indeed the natural supporters of the authority of the crown, but on the
other hand they refused to countenance the dependence upon France; Roman
Catholicism at that moment was the obvious medium of governing without
parliaments, of French pensions and of reigning without trouble, and was
naturally the faith of Charles's choice. Of the two papers in defence of
the Roman Catholic religion in Charles's own hand, published by James,
Halifax says "though neither his temper nor education made him very fit
to be an author, yet in this case ... he might write