from the attachment of a large party to his office. But this
danger his execution only increased. His personal influence was
little indeed. He had lost the confidence of every party.
Churchmen, Catholics, Presbyterians, Independents, his enemies,
his friends, his tools, English, Scotch, Irish, all divisions and
subdivisions of his people had been deceived by him. His most
attached councillors turned away with shame and anguish from his
false and hollow policy, plot intertwined with plot, mine sprung
beneath mine, agents disowned, promises evaded, one pledge given
in private, another in public. "Oh, Mr. Secretary," says
Clarendon, in a letter to Nicholas, "those stratagems have given
me more sad hours than all the misfortunes in war which have
befallen the King, and look like the effects of God's anger
towards us."

The abilities of Charles were not formidable. His taste in the
fine arts was indeed exquisite; and few modern sovereigns have
written or spoken better. But he was not fit for active life. In
negotiation he was always trying to dupe others, and duping only
himself. As a soldier, he was feeble, dilatory, and miserably
wanting, not in personal courage, but in the presence of mind
which his station required. His delay at Gloucester saved the
parliamentary party from destruction. At Naseby, in the very
crisis of his fortune, his want of self-possession spread a
fatal panic through his army. The story which Clarendon tells of
that affair reminds us of the excuses by which Bessus and Bobadil
explain their cudgellings. A Scotch nobleman, it seems, begged
the King not to run upon his death, took hold of his bridle, and
turned his horse round. No man who had much value for his life
would have tried to perform the same friendly office on that day