had no commission at all to treat of anything else, without the privity and direction of the Lord Lieutenant, much less to capitulate any thing concerning religion, or any property belonging either to church or laity. And his Majesty doth protest that until such time as he had advertisement that the person of the said Earl of Glamorgan was arrested and restrained, as is above said, he never heard or had any notice that the said earl had entered into any kind of treaty or capitulation with those Irish commissioners, much less that he concluded or signed those articles, so destructive both to church and state, and so repugnant to his Majesty's public professions and known resolutions."

The following day the king addressed to the Marquess of Ormonde the following private note on the same subject;—" Ormonde, I cannot but add to my long letter, that upon the word of a christian I never intended that Glamorgan should treat anything without your approbation, much less without your knowledge. For besides the injury to you, I was always diffident of his judgment, though I could not think him so extremely weak as now to my cost I have found. And albeit I have too just cause for the clearing of my honour, to command, as I have done, to prosecute Glamorgan in a legal way; yet I will have you suspend the execution of any sentence against him, until you inform me fully of all the proceedings, for I believe it was his misguided zeal more than any malice, which brought this great misfortune on him and on us all."

We have quoted the above passages with the view of enabling the candid reader to determine whether they will justify the charges of deceit, duplicity, and hypocrisy, with which it is so much the practice to load the memory of the unfortunate Charles. The accusation rests mainly on the fact that the king gave orders to proceed against Glamorgan in a legal way, and immediately wrote to the lord lieutenant to suspend the execution of any sentence against him, until he should have had due information of all the proceedings. It is inferred that the king was more deeply involved in the earl's treaty with the Catholics than he was willing to avow; that he told a lie to the parliament; and that smitten with compunction for his inhumanity towards Glamorgan, or wishing to save him for future intrigues, he sent a private letter to his deputy at Dublin, desiring that the culprit might be exempted from punishment. This step on the part of his Majesty is, in short, regarded by his uncharitable adversaries as the blackest proof of his dishonesty, deceit, and falsehood!

But we are satisfied that to every reader who is not absolutely blinded by the fury of faction, the forbearance urged by the king in behalf of Glamorgan will appear in no other light than

that of humanity and justice. The impetuous youth had exceeded the limits of the commission with which he was intrusted, and thereby brought a load of calumny and persecution, both on himself and on his master; but Charles, sensible that the evil had arisen from "misguided zeal more than any malice," gives orders that the penalties of law should not be inflicted until he himself had obtained full information of all the proceedings. In this we can perceive no deceit or insincerity whatever; and had the king left his indiscreet agent to the rage of his enemies, unprotected and unacknowledged, there can be no doubt that those who now condemn his humane interposition would have been the loudest in their reproaches upon his ingratitude and cowardice.

In fact, so far was the conduct of the unhappy monarch in this matter removed from hypocrisy and concealment, that he appears to have acted throughout with the greatest plainness. In writing to the lord lieutenant and council of Ireland, he says, "To the end that your zeal may be the better instructed in that particular, whereby to satisfy such of our good subjects as might be apt to be misled by the subtilty and malice of our enemies, we have thought fit to let you know the whole truth of what hath passed from us unto the Earl of Glamorgan, whereby he might in any wise pretend to the least kind of trust or authority from us, in what concerned the treaty of that kingdom. The truth is, that the pressing condition of our affairs obliging us to procure a peace in that kingdom, if it might be had upon any terms safe to our honour and conscience, and to our Protestant subjects there; and finding also that the said peace could not be gained but by some indulgence to the Roman Catholics, in point of freeing them from the penalties imposed upon the exercise of their religion, as though justly and duly we might grant, yet haply in a public transaction could not be without some scandal to such our good subjects as might be yet to be wrought upon by their arts, who did continually watch all advantages to blast the integrity of our actions; we thought proper, over and above our public power and directions to you, our lieutenant, to give you private instructions and power to assure the Roman Catholics, in a less public way, of the said exemptions from the penalties of the law, and of some such other graces as might without blemish to our honour and conscience, or prejudice to our Protestant subjects, be afforded them. With the knowledge of these secret instructions to you, we thought fit to acquaint the Earl of Glamorgan, at his going to Ireland, being confident of his hearty affections to our service; and withal knowing his interest with the Roman Catholic party to be very considerable, we thought

it not unlikely that you might make good use of him, by employing that interest in persuading them to a moderation, and to rest satisfied upon his engagement also, with those above-mentioned concessions, of which, in the condition of our affairs, you could give them no other than a private assurance. This is all and the very bottom of what we might possibly have intrusted unto the said Earl of Glamorgan, in this affair; which, as things then stood, might have been very useful to our service in accelerating the peace, and whereof there was so much need, as well for the preservation of our Protestant subjects there, as for hastening those necessary aids which we were to expect from thence, had we had the luck to employ a wiser man. But the truth is, being very confident of his affections and obedience, we had not much regard to his abilities, since he was bound up by our positive commands from doing anything but what you should particularly and precisely direct him to, both in the matter and manner of his negotiation."

In the three documents now quoted, the message to parliament, the private note to Ormonde, and the official letter to the lord lieutenant and council of Ireland, Charles gives, in substance, the very same statement; admits that he employed Glamorgan to pave the way for a final peace with the Catholic insurgents, as well as to raise troops for his service in England; but denies that he intrusted him with powers to treat of any thing else, much less to capitulate anything concerning religion or any property belonging either to church or laity. Though this declaration seems agreeable to truth, yet, to use the words of Hume, it gave no satisfaction to the parliament; "and some historians, even at present, when the ancient bigotry is somewhat abated, are desirous of representing this very innocent transaction, in which the king was engaged by the most violent necessity, as a stain on the memory of that unfortunate prince."

But we have the declaration of Glamorgan himself, when examined before a committee of the council at Dublin, that, in the treaty he formed with the Catholics at Kilkenny, he had acted without the authority of the king; adding, that what he did there was not, in his opinion, obligatory on his Majesty. He gave assurance that he consulted with nobody in it, but the parties with whom he made the agreement, and to shew that the king was not bound by said agreement, he produced at his examination a defeazance, or act of annulment, signed by the same parties, the next day after the signing of the articles, in the presence of his brother the Lord John Somerset, Father Oliver Darcy, and Peter Bathe, explaining the intent of those articles, and expressing that the Earl "did no way intend

thereby to oblige his Majesty other than he himself should please, after he had received those 10,000 men as a pledge and testimony of the same Roman Catholics' loyalty and fidelity to his Majesty; yet he promised faithfully, upon his word and honour, not to acquaint his Majesty with this defeazance till he had endeavoured, as far as in him lay, to induce his Majesty to the granting of the particulars in the said articles; but that done, the said commissioners discharged the said Earl of Glamorgan, both in honour and conscience, of any further engagement to them therein, though his Majesty should not be pleased to grant the said particulars in the articles mentioned, the said Earl having given them assurance upon his word, honour, and voluntary oath, that he would never to any person whatever discover this defeazance in the interim without their consent."

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By this deed of annulment Glamorgan testifies in the most distinct manner possible, that in granting to the Irish the conditions complained of by the parliament, he had exceeded the powers with which the king had intrusted him. On what ground, then, is Charles to be convicted of duplicity? He asserts no more than we find fully borne out by undeniable facts, as well as by the acknowledgment of the principal party concerned. it because that, after giving orders to prosecute the earl according to law, he desired the lord-lieutenant not to execute the sentence, whatever it might be, until an official report of the proceedings should be sent for the royal inspection? This precaution, in our view of the matter, so far from supplying a charge of deceit and hypocrisy against the king, affords an additional proof of his wisdom and humanity; for, without doubt, during the violence of civil war, when party spirit was exasperated to the highest pitch, one of the most important duties of the sovereign was to prevent hasty and vindictive proceedings in every case where life was at stake. In a word, the employment of Glamorgan was an innocent, though a very unfortunate step taken on the part of Charles, and is by no means chargeable with the unpatriotic and destructive views which by factious writers, both in his own day and ours, have been so groundlessly attributed to his majesty.

It is difficult to repress one's indignation, upon finding in Mr. Godwin's volumes the most atrocious of the calumnies invented by the regicides repeated with the utmost coolness and assurance, as if they had not been a hundred times refuted and exposed, upon the clearest historical grounds. For example, he speaks of the commission said to have been given to Sir Phelim O'Neile as an established and undeniable fact, though every novice in English history is aware that the said commission has been

proved to be a forgery; while, in regard to Glamorgan, he unblushingly insinuates that the king countenanced all the proceedings of his agent, though the earl himself acknowledged, even while the pen with which he signed the treaty was in his hand, that he possessed not the authority of his Majesty for the terms which he had granted; and though Charles declared, in public and in private, in official documents as well as in confidential communications, that he did not confide to the young nobleman the powers which he had exercised. Nor is Mr. Godwin satisfied with the repetition of antiquated calumnies; he founds upon them more ferocious accusations than were ever conceived by the malignity of Prynne, or uttered by the venal tongue of Bradshaw; for it is in reference to the affairs of Ireland that he writes of Charles in the words which we have already quoted, that "there is scarcely a sovereign on record who scrupled less, on occasion, to invoke the name of God, and consign his soul to perdition if that were not true, which he intimately and certainly knew to be false."

He alludes to an occurrence which took place at Oxford in the year 1643, when the king was about to receive the holy communion from the hands of Archbishop Usher. Before the prelate proceeded to administer the sacred symbols of our redemption, his majesty rose from his knees, and making a sign to the archbishop for a short pause, said, "My Lord, I espy here many resolved Protestants, who may declare to the world the resolution I now make. I have, to the utmost of my power, prepared my soul to become a worthy receiver; and may I so receive comfort by the blessed sacrament, as I 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. I bless God, that in the midst of these public distractions, I have still liberty to communicate; and may this sacrament be my damnation, if my heart do not join with my lips in this protestation."

It must have been a very corrupted heart indeed, which, in such circumstances, could pronounce a premeditated falsehood; and that heart cannot, we think, be much more amiable which, at the distance of nearly two hundred years, can accuse an unfortunate prince of imprecating eternal perdition on his own soul, by averring, at the altar of God, as a solemn truth, that which he "intimately and certainly knew to be false." In this calumny, with which Mr. Godwin has been pleased to stain the page of an historical record, there is a degree of fierce and poisonous malignity which must revolt every reader possessed of proper feeling; and when we call to mind that it rests on no better ground than a per