passing in language so indecent and profane that he was driven in
by a shower of brickbats, was prosecuted for a misdemeanour, was
sentenced to a heavy fine, and was reprimanded by the Court of
King's Bench in the most cutting terms.66 His daughter had
inherited his abilities and his impudence. Personal charms she
had none, with the exception of two brilliant eyes, the lustre of
which, to men of delicate taste, seemed fierce and unfeminine.
Her form was lean, her countenance haggard. Charles, though he
liked her conversation, laughed at her ugliness, and said that
the priests must have recommended her to his brother by way of
penance. She well knew that she was not handsome, and jested
freely on her own homeliness. Yet, with strange inconsistency,
she loved to adorn herself magnificently, and drew on herself
much keen ridicule by appearing in the theatre and the ring
plastered, painted, clad in Brussels lace, glittering with
diamonds, and affecting all the graces of eighteen.67

The nature of her influence over James is not easily to be
explained. He was no longer young. He was a religious man; at
least he was willing to make for his religion exertions and
sacrifices from which the great majority of those who are called
religious men would shrink. It seems strange that any attractions
should have drawn him into a course of life which he must have
regarded as highly criminal; and in this case none could
understand where the attraction lay. Catharine herself was
astonished by the violence of his passion. "It cannot be my
beauty," she said; "for he must see that I have none; and it
cannot be my wit, for he has not enough to know that I have any."

At the moment of the King's accession a sense of the new