36 



CHARLES II. 



To the Editor of the Analyst. 



Sir, — I was much pleased with the article in your last number 

 relative to Charles II., and permit me to say that the more 

 papers you publish upon topics connected with local antiquities, 

 the more the interest of your periodical, to the success of which 

 I am a hearty well-wisher, will be strengthened among the 

 generality of your readers. Now certainly, as Mr. Hughes 

 observes in his Introduction to the Boscobel Tracts, p. 12, "at 

 no time did the character of Charles II. appear to so much 

 advantage as at the period of the battle of Worcester, and had 

 he met his fate there, history would have lost a theme of repro- 

 bation in a bad king, and gained as respectable a hero as many 

 whom it has thought fit to immortalize." For it seems a settled 

 point with all historians of credit and authority, that after his 

 accession to the throne, he became, as Mr. Fox has briefly but 

 most impressively styled him, " a bad man and a bad king." 

 Accordingly, some writers have deemed it an unaccountable 

 circumstance why a great people who had put down the tyranny 

 of the father, should not have opposed another revolution as a 

 barrier to those passions which the son had let loose upon them 

 for the destruction of their national religion and liberty. In a 

 very able article-'^- in the Edinburgh Review on that illustrious 

 man's history of James II., we meet with the following observa- 

 tions : — 



" There are three great events of which it appears to us, that the story has not 

 been intelligibly told for the want of a correct analysis of the national feelings. 

 One is the universal joy and sincere confidence with which Charles 2nd was 

 received back without one stipulation for the liberties of the people, or one pre- 

 caution against the abuses of power. This was done by the very people who had 

 waged war against a more amicable Sovereign, and quarrelled with the Protector 

 for depriving them of their freedom. It is saying nothing to say that Monk did 

 this by means of the army. It was not done either by Monk or the army, but by 

 the nation ; and even if it were not so, the question would still be, by what 

 change in the dispositions of the army and the nation, Monk was able to make 

 them do it. The second event, which must always appear unaccountable upon the 

 mere narrative of the circumstances, is the base and abject submission of the 

 people to the avowed tyranny of Charles when he was pleased at last to give up 

 the use of Parliaments and to tax and govern on his own single authority. This 

 happened when most of those must have still been alive who had seen the nation 

 rise up in arms against his father, and within five years of the time when it rose 

 up still more unanimously against his successor, and not only changed the succes- 

 sion of the Crown, but very strictly defined and limited its prerogatives. The 

 third is the Revolution itself; an event which was brought about by the very 

 individuals who had submitted so quietly to the domination of Charles, and who, 

 ■when assembled in the House of Commons under James himself, had of their own 

 accord sent one of their members to the Tower for having observed upon a harsh 



* Vol. XII., 1808, p. 284. 



