he opened his mouth, ranted, cursed and swore with such frantic
violence that superficial observers set him down for the wildest
of libertines. The multitude was unable to conceive that a man
who, even when sober, was more furious and boastful than others
when they were drunk, and who seemed utterly incapable of
disguising any emotion or keeping any secret, could really be a
coldhearted, farsighted, scheming sycophant. Yet such a man was
Talbot. In truth his hypocrisy was of a far higher and rarer sort
than the hypocrisy which had flourished in Barebone's Parliament.
For the consummate hypocrite is not he who conceals vice behind
the semblance of virtue, but he who makes the vice which he has
no objection to show a stalking horse to cover darker and more
profitable vice which it is for his interest to hide.

Talbot, raised by James to the earldom of Tyrconnel, had
commanded the troops in Ireland during the nine months which
elapsed between the death of Charles and the commencement of the
viceroyalty of Clarendon. When the new Lord Lieutenant was about
to leave London for Dublin, the General was summoned from Dublin
to London. Dick Talbot had long been well known on the road which
he had now to travel. Between Chester and the capital there was
not an inn where he had not been in a brawl. Wherever he came he
pressed horses in defiance of law, swore at the cooks and
postilions, and almost raised mobs by his insolent rodomontades.
The Reformation, he told the people, had ruined everything. But
fine times were coming. The Catholics would soon be uppermost.
The heretics should pay for all. Raving and blaspheming
incessantly, like a demoniac, he came to the court.52 As soon as
he was there, he allied himself closely with Castelmaine, Dover,
and Albeville. These men called with one voice for war on the