nature is, we admit, so capricious that there may be a single,
sensitive point, in a conscience which everywhere else is
callous. A man without truth or humanity may have some strange
scruples about a trifle. There was one devout warrior in the
royal camp whose piety bore a great resemblance to that which is
ascribed to the King. We mean Colonel Turner. That gallant
Cavalier was hanged, after the Restoration, for a flagitious
burglary. At the gallows he told the crowd that his mind received
great consolation from one reflection: he had always taken off
his hat when he went into a church. The character of Charles
would scarcely rise in our estimation, if we believed that he was
pricked in conscience after the manner of this worthy loyalist,
and that while violating all the first rules of Christian
morality, he was sincerely scrupulous about church-government.
But we acquit him of such weakness. In 1641 he deliberately
confirmed the Scotch Declaration which stated that the government
of the church by archbishops and bishops was contrary to the word
of God. In 1645, he appears to have offered to set up Popery in
Ireland. That a King who had established the Presbyterian religion
in one kingdom, and who was willing to establish the Catholic
religion in another, should have insurmountable scruples about
the ecclesiastical constitution of the third, is altogether
incredible. He himself says in his letters that he looks on
Episcopacy as a stronger support of monarchical power than even
the army. From causes which we have already considered, the
Established Church had been, since the Reformation, the great
bulwark of the prerogative. Charles wished, therefore, to
preserve it. He thought himself necessary both to the Parliament
and to the army. He did not foresee, till too late, that by
paltering with the Presbyterians, he should put both them and