he had been by an implacable faction, his disposition should have
become sterner and more severe than it had once been thought, and
that, when those who had tried to blast his honour and to rob him
of his birthright were at length in his power, he should not have
sufficiently tempered justice with mercy? As to the worst charge
which had been brought against him, the charge of trying to cheat
his daughters out of their inheritance by fathering a
supposititious child, on what grounds did it rest? Merely on
slight circumstances, such as might well be imputed to accident,
or to that imprudence which was but too much in harmony with his
character. Did ever the most stupid country justice put a boy in
the stocks without requiring stronger evidence than that on which
the English people had pronounced their King guilty of the basest
and most odious of all frauds? Some great faults he had doubtless
committed, nothing could be more just or constitutional than that
for those faults his advisers and tools should be called to a
severe reckoning; nor did any of those advisers and tools more
richly deserve punishment than the Roundhead sectaries whose
adulation had encouraged him to persist in the fatal exercise of
the dispensing power. It was a fundamental law of the land that
the King could do no wrong, and that, if wrong were done by his
authority, his counsellors and agents were responsible. That
great rule, essential to our polity, was now inverted. The
sycophants, who were legally punishable, enjoyed impunity: the
King, who was not legally punishable, was punished with merciless
severity. Was it possible for the Cavaliers of England, the sons
of the warriors who had fought under Rupert, not to feel bitter
sorrow and indignation when they reflected on the fate of their
rightful liege lord, the heir of a long line of princes, lately
enthroned in splendour at Whitehall, now an exile, a suppliant, a