men, were Anabaptists. They had broken down all the wainscot, rails, and partitions which divided the church, defaced all the monuments and other marks, and reduced the whole into the form of a stable or barn; indeed, the building (the present St. George's Chapel) was scarcely fit for any other use, when Cromwell ordered the royal body to be privately interred there. The Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, and the Earls of Southampton and Lindsey, obtained leave to be present at the burial of their master, attended each by three servants only. But they found the place so wild and strange, and their attention was too much engrossed by the mournful ceremony, to allow them to note the precise spot where the royal body was deposited, and no sooner was it under ground, than they were conducted out of the Castle to their lodgings in the town, and which they left next morning, and returned to their respective houses.

On the return of Charles II. to England, he reinstated the dean and chapter of Windsor, with directions to repair the Chapel, put it into the order in which it used to be, and commanded the dean to inform himself of the place in which the King's body had been interred, and to give him notice of it. Upon inquiry, the dean could not find a single person, either in the Castle or the town, who had been present at the burial, when the Parliament first seized the Castle, and put a garrison into it. Soon afterwards, they ejected not only the prebends and singing-men of the ChapelRoyal, but likewise all the officers and servants, who

had any relation to the King, or the church, excepting such as were notorious for their infidelity to both; and of these, or of the garrison, not a man was now to be found who had been present at the burial of the King. On receiving this account from the dean, the King sent to Windsor the Earls of Southampton and Lindsey-for the Duke of Richmond and the Marquis of Hertford were both dead; and they took with them as many of the servants who had attended them at the funeral as were still living, but none of them had any recollection of the spot where the King's body lay. The workmen employed upon the new pavement, having found a particular place where the earth seemed to be lighter than elsewhere, imagined that it might be in or near this spot. They caused it, therefore, to be dug up and examined, but found nothing; and, on their return, the King gave up all further thought of inquiry, and the real cause of the disappointment was not publicly acknowledged.

CHAPTER VI.

Debts contracted by the King.-State of the Navy.-The Act of Uniformity.-The clergy ejected from their livings. -Seizure of Church-property.-Arrangements for the Coronation. Description of the ceremony. - Profligacy at Court. Some account of Lady Castlemaine. Her marriage and dissolute life.-She gives birth to a daughter.- Her intimacy with the King.--Negociations for the alliance of Charles with the Infanta of Portugal.-Particulars relative to Catherine of Braganza.-Geographical blunder of Clarendon.-The King consults his Privy Council on the subject of his union.-Representations of the Spanish Ambassador. He is ordered to quit the kingdom.-Policy of the Court of France. The King's speech to Parliament, acquainting them with his resolution to take a consort.Fleet sent over to fetch the Princess from Portugal.-Proceedings of the Earl of Sandwich.-Catherine embarks for England. Her marriage at Portsmouth.-The King and Queen proceed to Hampton Court.

CORD CLARENDON tells us, as we have seen, that for a year and half after Charles's return to England, he had received from Parliament no more than the £70,000 assigned for his Coronation. The

consequence was that he had contracted debts, which, on their meeting in November 1661, he most earnestly recommended to their attention. Nor were these debts incurred solely for the supply of his personal necessities. "It will hardly be believed that in so warlike an age, and when the armies and fleets of England had made more noise in the world for twenty years, and fought more battles at land and sea, than all the world had done besides, and when, at his Majesty's return, there remained an hundred ships at sea, and an army of near threescore thousand men at land, there should not be in the Tower of London, and in all the stores belonging to the crown, fire-arms enough, nor indeed of other kind, to arm three thousand men, nor powder and naval provisions enough to set out five ships of war."

any

From the death of Cromwell, no care had been taken for supplies of any of the stores; and the changes which ensued in the government, and in the officers, the continual opportunities which these had for embezzlement and the equipment of the fleet sent to fetch the King over from the continent, had drained the magazines to the degree mentioned before. This state of things the King was most anxious to conceal, that it might not be known, either at home or abroad, how ill prepared he was to meet an enemy. He appointed Sir William Compton, whom he knew he could entirely trust, Master of the Ordnance, made all the shifts that he could devise for money to supply the most urgent wants, and had laboured so effectually, that, at the

commencement of the first Dutch war, the naval magazines were more amply furnished with stores and provisions of all kinds than they had ever been under any former sovereign, or in the time of Cromwell himself.

By this Parliament was passed the Act of Uniformity, which provided that if any clergyman did not conform to every thing contained in the book of Common Prayer before Bartholomew Day, which was about three months after the publication of the Act, he was ipse facto deprived of his benefice, or of any other spiritual promotion, and the patron was to present a successor as if he were dead. The King promised several of the Presbyterian clergy that the Act should not be rigorously enforced on the appointed day; but he would take care to have it dispensed with for three months longer, that they might have more leisure for consideration. This gave confidence to the party, and encouraged them to hold out, when, a little before the time, he informed them that there were weighty reasons why he ought not to fulfil so rash a promise. Accordingly, two thousand dissenting clergymen were expelled from their cures in one day. Here it should be remarked, that, under the rule of the Long Parliament, one-fifth of the livings had been left to the ejected elergy; but, by the present Act of retaliation, the Presbyterian ministers were deprived of all their possessions, and left without any visible means of support. It is evident from other parts of the King's conduct, that his design was to drive the dissenters to despair, and to make