CHAP.

VIII.

ployed to seduce him back to the superstition which he had abjured. The character of the young Earl did not however develope itself in a manner quite satisfactory 1687. to those who had borne the chief part in his conversion. His morals by no means escaped the contagion of fashionable libertinism. In truth the shock which had overturned his early prejudices had at the same time unfixed all his opinions, and left him to the unchecked guidance of his feelings. But, though his principles were unsteady, his impulses were so generous, his temper so bland, his manners so gracious and easy, that it was impossible not to love him. He was early called the King of Hearts, and never, through a long, eventful, and chequered life, lost his right to that name."

Shrewsbury was Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire and Colonel of one of the regiments of horse which had been raised in consequence of the Western insurrection. He now refused to act under the board of regulators, and was deprived of both his commissions.

None of the English nobles enjoyed a larger measure The Earl of public favour than Charles Sackville Earl of Dorset. of Dorset. He was indeed a remarkable man. In his youth he had been one of the most notorious libertines of the wild time which followed the Restoration. He had been the terror of the City watch, had passed many nights in the round house, and had at least once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Betty Morrice, and for Nell Gwynn, who called him her Charles the First, had given no small amusement and scandal to the town. Yet, in the midst of follies and vices, his courageous spirit,

*Coxe's Shrewsbury Correspondence; Mackay's Memoirs; Life of Charles Duke of Shrewsbury, 1718; Burnet, i. 762.; Birch's Life of Tillotson, where the reader will find a letter from Tillotson to Shrewsbury, which seems to me a model of serious, friendly, and gentlemanlike reproof.

The King was only Nell's
Charles III. Whether Dorset or
Major Hart had the honour of being
her Charles I. is a point open to
dispute. But the evidence in favour
of Dorset's claim seems to me to

preponderate. See the suppressed
passage of Burnet, i. 263.; and
Pepys's Diary, Oct. 26. 1667.

CHAP.
VIII.

1687.

his fine understanding, and his natural goodness of heart,
had been conspicuous. Men said that the excesses in
which he indulged were common between him and the
whole race of gay young Cavaliers, but that his sympathy
with human suffering and the generosity with which
he made reparation to those whom his freaks had injured
were all his own. His associates were astonished by
the distinction which the public made between him and
them. "He may do what he chooses," said Wilmot;
"he is never in the wrong." The judgment of the
world became still more favourable to Dorset when he
had been sobered by time and marriage. His graceful
manners, his brilliant conversation, his soft heart, his
open hand, were universally praised. No day passed,
it was said, in which some distressed family had not
reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his good-
nature, such was the keenness of his wit that scoffers
whose sarcasm all the town feared stood in craven fear
of the sarcasm of Dorset. All political parties esteemed
and caressed him: but politics were not much to his
Had he been driven by necessity to exert him-
self, he would probably have risen to the highest posts
in the state; but he was born to rank so high and wealth
so ample that many of the motives which impel men to
engage in public affairs were wanting to him. He took
just so much part in parliamentary and diplomatic
business as sufficed to show that he wanted nothing but
inclination to rival Danby and Sunderland, and turned
away to pursuits which pleased him better.
Like many

taste.

other men who, with great natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indolent, he became an intellectual voluptuary, and a master of all those pleasing branches of knowledge which can be acquired without severe application. He was allowed to be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of architecture, of acting, that the court could show. On questions of polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the coffeehouses as

VIII.

without appeal. More than one clever play which had CHAP. failed on the first representation was supported by his single authority against the whole clamour of the pit, 1687. and came forth successful from the second trial. The delicacy of his taste in French composition was extolled by Saint Evremond and La Fontaine. Such a patron of letters England had never seen. His bounty was bestowed with equal judgment and liberality, and was confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged from each other by literary jealousy or by difference of political opinion, joined in acknowledging his impartial kindness. Dryden owned that he had been saved from ruin by Dorset's princely generosity. Yet Montague and Prior, who had keenly satirised Dryden, were introduced by Dorset into public life; and the best comedy of Dryden's mortal enemy, Shadwell, was written at Dorset's country seat. The munificent Earl might, if such had been his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was content to be the benefactor. For the verses which he occasionally composed, unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously cultivated, would have produced something great. In the small volume of his works may be found songs which have the easy vigour of Suckling, and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as that of Butler.*

Dorset was Lord Lieutenant of Sussex: and to Sussex the board of regulators looked with great anxiety: for

VIII.

CHAP. in no other county, Cornwall and Wiltshire excepted, were there so many small boroughs. He was ordered to 1687. repair to his post. No person who knew him expected that he would obey. He gave such an answer as became him, and was informed that his services were no longer needed. The interest which his many noble and amiable qualities inspired was heightened when it was known that he had received by the post an anonymous billet telling him that, if he did not promptly comply with the King's wishes, all his wit and popularity should not save him from assassination. A similar warning was sent to Shrewsbury. Threatening letters were then much more rare than they afterwards became. It is therefore not strange that the people, excited as they were, should have been disposed to believe that the best and noblest Englishmen were really marked out for Popish daggers.* Just when these letters were the talk of all London, the mutilated corpse of a noted Puritan was found in the streets. It was soon discovered that the murderer had acted from no religious or political motive. But the first suspicions of the populace fell on the Papists. The mangled remains were carried in procession to the house of the Jesuits in the Savoy; and during a few hours the fear and rage of the populace were scarcely less violent than on the day when Godfrey was borne to his grave.†

The other dismissions must be more concisely related. The Duke of Somerset, whose regiment had been taken from him some months before, was now turned out of the lord lieutenancy of the East Riding of Yorkshire. The North Riding was taken from Viscount Fauconberg, Shropshire from Viscount Newark, and Lancashire from the Earl of Derby, grandson of that gallant Cavalier who had faced death so bravely, both on the field of battle and on the scaffold, for the House of Stuart. The Earl of Pembroke, who had recently served the *Barillon, Jan. 1688; Cit

Jan. 31.

ters, Feb. 10.

10
† Adda, Feb. 18. 1688.

13° 20°

crown with fidelity and spirit against Monmouth, was displaced in Wiltshire, the Earl of Rutland in Leicestershire, the Earl of Bridgewater in Buckinghamshire, the Earl of Thanet in Cumberland, the Earl of Northampton in Warwickshire, the Earl of Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and the Earl of Scarsdale in Derbyshire. Scarsdale was also deprived of a regiment of cavalry, and of an office in the household of the Princess of Denmark. She made a struggle to retain his services, and yielded only to a peremptory command of her father. The Earl of Gainsborough was ejected, not only from the lieutenancy of Hampshire, but also from the government of Portsmouth and the rangership of the New Forest, two places for which he had, only a few months before, given five thousand pounds.*

The King could not find Lords of great note, or indeed Protestant Lords of any sort, who would accept the vacant offices. It was necessary to assign two shires to Jeffreys, a new man whose landed property was small, and two to Preston who was not even an English peer. The other counties which had been left without governors were entrusted, with scarcely an exception, to known Roman Catholics, or to courtiers who had secretly promised the King to declare themselves Roman Catholics as soon as they could do so with prudence.

CHAP.

VIII.

1687.

At length the new machinery was put in action; and Questions soon from every corner of the realm arrived the news of put to the Magiscomplete and hopeless failure. The catechism by which trates, the Lords Lieutenants had been directed to test the sentiments of the country gentlemen consisted of three questions. Every magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant was to be asked, first, whether, if he should be chosen to serve in Parliament, he would vote for a bill framed on the principles of the Declaration of Indulgence; secondly, whether, as an elector, he would support can