responsibility which lay on him made his mind for a time
peculiarly open to religious impressions. He formed and announced
many good resolutions, spoke in public with great severity of the
impious and licentious manners of the age, and in private assured
his Queen and his confessor that he would see Catharine Sedley no
more. He wrote to his mistress intreating her to quit the
apartments which she occupied at Whitehall, and to go to a house
in Saint James's Square which had been splendidly furnished for
her at his expense. He at the same time promised to allow her a
large pension from his privy purse. Catharine, clever,
strongminded, intrepid, and conscious of her power, refused to
stir. In a few months it began to be whispered that the services
of Chiffinch were again employed, and that the mistress
frequently passed and repassed through that private door through
which Father Huddleston had borne the host to the bedside of
Charles. The King's Protestant ministers had, it seems, conceived
a hope that their master's infatuation for this woman might cure
him of the more pernicious infatuation which impelled him to
attack their religion. She had all the talents which could
qualify her to play on his feelings, to make game of his
scruples, to set before him in a strong light the difficulties
and dangers into which he was running headlong. Rochester, the
champion of the Church, exerted himself to strengthen her
influence. Ormond, who is popularly regarded as the
personification of all that is pure and highminded in the English
Cavalier, encouraged the design. Even Lady Rochester was not
ashamed to cooperate, and that in the very worst way. Her office
was to direct the jealousy of the injured wife towards a young
lady who was perfectly innocent. The whole court took notice of
the coldness and rudeness with which the Queen treated the poor