HISTORY OF HARTING. IO/ 



Towards the end of Charles the Second's reign, in 

 the year 1679, John Caryll II. (afterwards Secretary) 

 was sent to prison on suspicion of being concerned in 

 the Popish Plot, at the time when the infamous Titus 

 Gates was informer, but was afterwards discharged on 

 bail.* In January, 1686, he was put out of the Com- 

 mission as a Magistrate for Sussex on account of his 

 being a Papist, f On the other hand, early in the 

 reign of James II. he rose to high favour, and for the 

 first half of the three and a half short years of that 

 monarch, he was English Ambassador at Rome with 

 Pope Innocent. Lingard says, he was " too timid for 

 the Roman party in England in 1686"; while Macaulay 

 says in his praise, that he was an enemy of violent 

 courses, and a sound statesman. " Caryll acquitted 

 himself of his delicate errand at Rome with good 

 sense and good feeling. The business confided to him 

 was well done : but he assumed no public character, 

 and carefully avoided all display. His mission, there- 

 fore, put the Government to scarcely any change, 

 and excited scarcely any murmurs." In 1685, John 

 Caryll II. was recalled to England to make room at 

 the Pope's court for Lord Castelmaine, a more fiery 

 spirit ; and as soon as he reached England Caryll was 

 made Secretary of Requests to Mary of Modena, Queen 

 of James the Second, whom he had married after the 

 death of the first wife of that king. Anne Hyde, 

 Lord Clarendon's daughter. It is possible that Caryll 



Fermor, on the trifling occasion of his having cut off a lock of 

 her hair. "In this more solemn edition, Pope wrote to Caryll III., 

 (Feb. 25th, 1714,) I was strangely tempted to have set your name 

 at length, as well as I have my own." In the poem, the Baron 

 is Lord Petre and Belinda Miss Fermor; Thalestris, Mrs. Morley 

 (also of a Harting family, and connected with the Carylls) ; Sir 

 Plume, her brother, Sir George Brown, of Berkshire (Wharton). 



* Narcissus Luttrell's History of State Affairs, I., 259, under 

 date of 2 ist May, 1683, where he says the imprisonment was 

 " four years ago." 



f Ibid., I., 392- 



