312 LITE, TIMES, AND SCIENTIFIC LABOURS 



Parliament. His loyalty led him to choose the former 

 course, and his association with Charles the First, 

 combined with that unfortunate monarch s unhappy 

 situation and disposition, eventually worked the entire 

 ruin of the Marquis of Worcester. But apart from the 

 ordinary occurrences of the war, it was his misfortune 

 to be selected by the King to act as his emissary in ne 

 gotiating a peace with the Eoman Catholic party in 

 Ireland, on terms contrary to the established religion of 

 the realm and irrespective of the laws. That he should 

 have listened to the urgent demands of his sovereign is, 

 under any circumstances, not very remarkable ; and we 

 are the less disposed to be surprised at his being 

 won over by the King s solicitations, considering that 

 he was not a practised statesman, arid that the proposed 

 measure was preceded by his being created Earl of 

 Glamorgan, and that it was represented as offering 

 enlarged privileges to his own church and party, as well 

 in Ireland as in England. A more cautious politician 

 might have suspected some ulterior design beneath this 

 promising external appearance, might have questioned 

 the possibility of some extraordinary exercise of the 

 royal prerogative, and at length concluded that no 

 measure was safe, coming from a sovereign who 

 actually seemed to imagine that divine right was 

 delegated to him to annul any obligation whatever, 

 however freely tendered by himself, provided he 

 could satisfy his own conscience that his so acting 

 would be to the advantage of the Crown. But 

 the Marquis was no grovelling worldling ; he had left 

 the study for the battle-field, and for awhile abandoned 

 the path of philosophy to become the King s agent in 

 Ireland. It was thus that his loyalty and his zeal, 

 uniting with his religious sentiments and his sovereign s 

 gracious conduct toward him, and seeming sincerity, 



