feel tenderness for the enemy whose tyranny was now no longer
feared, and dislike of the allies whose services were now no
longer needed. It was easy to gratify both feelings by imputing
to the dissenters the misgovernment of the exiled King. His
Majesty-such was now the language of too many Anglican divines-
would have been an excellent sovereign had he not been too
confiding, too forgiving. He had put his trust in a class of men
who hated his office, his family, his person, with implacable
hatred. He had ruined himself in the vain attempt to conciliate
them. He had relieved them, in defiance of law and of the
unanimous sense of the old royalist party, from the pressure of
the penal code; had allowed them to worship God publicly after
their own mean and tasteless fashion; had admitted them to the
bench of justice and to the Privy Council; had gratified them
with fur robes, gold chains, salaries, and pensions. In return
for his liberality, these people, once so uncouth in demeanour,
once so savage in opposition even to legitimate authority, had
become the most abject of flatterers. They had continued to
applaud and encourage him when the most devoted friends of his
family had retired in shame and sorrow from his palace. Who had
more foully sold the religion and liberty of his country than
Titus? Who had been more zealous for the dispensing power than
Alsop? Who had urged on the persecution of the seven Bishops more
fiercely than Lobb? What chaplain impatient for a deanery had
ever, even when preaching in the royal presence on the thirtieth
of January or the twenty-ninth of May, uttered adulation more
gross than might easily be found in those addresses by which
dissenting congregations had testified their gratitude for the
illegal Declaration of Indulgence? Was it strange that a prince
who had never studied law books should have believed that he was