execution against recusants, his promises had never been performed; but on the contrary he trusted recusants with the most important posts." -Rapin, Vol. XI. p. 305.

The king, in a letter to the marquis of Ormond, Jan. 18, 1644-5, orders him to promise the Irish rebels, that if they would give him the assistance they had promised, he would consent to the repeal of the penal laws against them by law. And in a letter to the queen, March 5, 1644-5, he promises to take away all the penal laws against Roman catholics in ENGLAND, if he might have their assistance. And yet in a message of his majesty to the two houses, April 8, 1642, he called GOD to witness, that he would NEVER consent, upon WHATSOEVER PRETENCE, to a toleration of the popish profession, or abolition of the laws now in force against popish recusants in Ireland. Inquiry into Glamorgan's Transactions, p. 287. “And in July, 1643, being just going to receive the sacrament from archbishop Usher's hands at Oxford, he made this solemn protestation :-May I so receive comfort from this blessed sacrament, as I do intend the establishment of the true reformed protestant religion, as it stood in its beauty, in the happy days of queen Elizabeth, without ANY CONNIVANCE at POPERY! And may this sacrament be MY DAMNATION, if my heart do not join with my lips in this protestation."Rapin, Vol. XII. p. 169. "And yet (astonishing to read!) the very next day was peace given to the bloody Irish rebels by the cessation agreed on at Oxford: in which toleration was granted to the catholics of Ireland."- Hist. Stu. p. 243.And in treating of a peace with those horrid murderers he made no scruple to grant them the same in the most ample manner, as will presently appear,

"his

Alike hard is it to reconcile with sincerity majesty's declaration from Newark (March 9, 1641,) in which he very seriously disowned all correspondence abroad for engaging foreign aids: We are confident, says he, no sober honest man in our kingdom can believe, that we are so desperate or so senseless as to entertain such designs as would bury our name and posterity in perpetual scorn and infamy.--And yet at the very same time the queen was soliciting for succour from Lorrain; (ten thousand men, by the king's privity and direction) and colonel Cokran appointed to treat with the king of Denmark for arins and men to be sent over from thence into England."-Bennet's Def. Memor. p. 109. - King's Letter to the Queen, Feb. 19, 1641.

The king's conduct as to the condemnation of the earl of Strafford seemed also not a little to reflect on his veracity and honour. "He had," says Lord Clarendon, "been present at the earl's trial, and heard all the testimony given against him, and had heard nothing proved by which he could believe that he was a traitor, either in fact or in intention: and therefore the king declared it to be much against his conscience, and that he neither could nor would give his royal assent to the bill of attainder against him."-Clarend. Vol. I. p. 241, 243. "He took advice (as some report) of several of the bishops, and others his intimate counsellors, what to do in this intricate affair; and that the major part of them urged to him the opinion of the judges that this was treason, and the bill legal: but what chiefly induced the king to pass the bill, was said to be a letter from the earl himself, in which he desires him to pass it: and adds, My consent, Sir, herein shall more acquit you to GOD than all the world can do besides: to a willing man there is no injury done.—After

the king had signed the bill, he sent secretary Car Jeton to the earl to acquaint him with what was done, who seriously asked the secretary, whether his majesty had passed the bill? As not believing without some astonishment that the king would have done it. And being assured it was passed, he rose up from his chair, lift up his eyes to heaven, laid his hand upon his heart, and said, Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation.

"Great censures were past upon the king's signing this bill, as a giving up his most faithful servant. Certainly he had great remorse thereupon; for he had forced the earl, contrary to his own earnest desire, to appear in parliament, and promised that they should not touch an hair of his head."-Whitelock's Mem. p. 44.-Ibid. p. 36.

"The king's former promise of protection," archdeacon Echard observes, must needs be very uneasy to him in this emergency. His majesty was soon sensible of his error, and always remembered it with infinite regret, and as the just cause of all his misfortunes. It is observed that this sin was one of those that carry their own punishment along with them, and naturally produce it, abstractedly from the remorse of conscience, and the chastisement of heaven. The king's mind was filled with relenting thoughts and melancholy reflections."-Echard, p. 503.

"His majesty sent for Hollis, whose sister the earl of Strafford had married (and who was of great influence in the house of commons) to know what he could do to save the earl. Hollis advised the king to come next day with a petition in his hands, and lay it before the two houses: with a speech which he drew up for the king, and he said, he would try his interest among his friends to get them to consent to it. He prepared a great

many by assuring them that if they would save lord Strafford, he would become wholly theirs in consequence of his first principles. In this he had wrought on so many, that he believed if the king's party had struck into it, he might have saved him. It was carried to the queen, as if Hollis had engaged that the earl should accuse her, and discover all he knew. So the queen not only diverted the king from going to the parliament, changing the speech into a message, but to the wonder of the whole world, the queen prevailed with him. to add that mean postscript, if he must die, it were charity to reprieve him till Saturday; which was a very unhandsome giving up the whole message. When it was communicated to both houses, the whole court party was plainly against it: and so he fell truly by the queen's means."-Burnet, Vol. 1. p. 32.

Finally; it was this artifice and dissimulation, with which the king's conduct too generally aboun ded, that principally hastened his catastrophe at last. Whilst the parliament were negociating the terms of his restoration (when a prisoner at Hamp ton-court) "He made a secret agreement with Cromwell; by which, if the king closed with the propositions of the army, Cromwell was to be advanced to a degree higher than any other; to be vicar-general of England, as Cromwell was under Henry VIII.

While the affair was transacting, "the king wrote to the queen, That though he assented to the army's proposals, yet if thereby he could procure peace, it would be easier then to take off Cromwell, than now he was the head that governed the army.

"Cromwell, who had his spies upon every motion of the king, intercepts these letters, and resolved never to trust the king again."-Coke, Det,

p. 188. And so finding matters come to this dangerous extremity, that either the king or himself must fall, from henceforward, it is thought, he resolved to secure himself by the king's execution.

CHAP. XIII.

Of the King's magnified Piety, and Concern for real Religion.

"KING Charles's court," Echard acknowledges, "was corrupt in manners: full of excess, idleness, and luxury. The greatest part of his ministers were chiefly intent upon their own accommodation in their fortunes, in which they did not abound; or in their ease and pleasure which they passionately affected having no further care of the public, than that no disturbance might break in upon them in their own days."-Echard, p. 447, 455. Masques were encouraged and highly relished by the king and court, at one of which the expence was not less, it is said, than 21,000 pounds.-Hist. Stu. p. 122.

"The custom of revels, wakes and other parish festivals, on Sundays, was at that time grown to a great enormity. Drunkenness, lewdness and riot were but the least part of it; fighting and blood generally accompanied. No county in England was then more debauched and disturbed by evels and clerks ales than that of Somerset. At the earnest request of the gentlemen of that county (giving for reason, at the assizes, that many persons had been indicted for murdering bastards begotten at revels, and for other grand disorders occasioned by these intemperate meetings) the judges, Richardson and Denham, with the con