harlots; with painted faces and languishing eyes they roll by in their coaches; the singing boys practise the latest part song by Tom D'Urfey; the courtiers are loud. with ribald jest. I suppose that these things cannot be denied. It is, however, a great mistake to suppose that there was no serious side to the Court. In the first place, it is impossible to conduct the business of the kingdom without an immense amount of ceremony and state. Charles was not an Edward the Second; there is nothing to show that he did not do what was expected of a king with as much dignity as his father, even though he did not take himself so seriously. There were

grave and weighty troubles and difficulties in his reign; domestic troubles such as the Fire of London; foreign troubles such as the war with the Dutch; the King's counsellors were for the most part grave and serious men. Add to this that every officer in the numerous household and following of the King desired and expected his rank and dignity to be respected.

There were daily duties to be performed. The King held a levée every morning; he went in state to prayers; he received his ministers and sat at the Council; he dined in public; the Court was open to any one who might venture to claim the rank and consideration of a gentleman; the King was accessible to all.

The quiet, dull Court of the Georges was a new thing altogether in the land. Charles kept open house, like the kings of France. He walked fearlessly and almost unattended in the Park and in his gardens; one cannot, I repeat, deny the gambling, singing, and love-making which the King permitted and encouraged; but I plead for Charles that amount of serious attention to his state and dignity of his position, no small amount, which was necessary for the mere maintenance of kingship. In other things the laxness of his morals did not prevent the assertion of his prerogative, especially in his dealings with the City of London. No king before him, for instance, had dared to inflict upon the City so enormous a fine as that when Charles shut up the Exchequer and robbed the merchants of a million and a half of money. This one action, so bold, so calculated both as to the occasion and the probable impotence of the City to resist it, ought to be alone sufficient to set aside completely the old theory of the jaded voluptuary. It was not, again, the jaded voluptuary who plotted, planned, and carried out the destruction of the City liberties; it was a Stuart, with all the cleverness of his race, with all the tenacity of his father and his brother, and with all the inability to discern the forces that were arrayed against him and to comprehend the certainty of their success. He died in the moment of his success, leaving to his brother the fruits of his despotic measures in ruin and deposition (see Appendix I.).

THE CORONATION OF JAMES II. IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY From a contemporary print. E. Gardner's Collection.

CHAPTER VII

JAMES II

THE short reign of James afforded to the City a time of continual surprises and ceaseless anxiety, with the corresponding emotions of joy, sorrow, disappointment, and despair.

The reign began with an assurance that the established government, that of Church and State, would be respected and maintained. The King, however, showed

what he understood by the proclamation when he continued to receive the customs which had been settled on Charles for life, and which could not be exacted by his successor without the assent of Parliament. James announced his intention of speedily calling a Parliament at the same time as he proclaimed his continuance of taking the customs. In the same illegal way he took over the excise duties.

Meantime the Mayor and Aldermen, in accordance with the successful craft of Charles, were mostly nominees of the King; they were instructed to admit to the liveries of the City Companies none but persons of "unquestionable loyalty"; so that, as Charles had provided, the whole of the governing bodies in the City were mere creatures of the Court.

One can hardly be surprised at the arrest and punishment of Titus Oates when James succeeded. At the same time to flog a man all the way from Aldgate to Newgate, and two days afterwards from Newgate to Tyburn, seems, short of the