so worthy of the hand and heart of Dorothy Vaughan as that same
roundhead fellow, Richard Heywood. I would to God he were as good a
catholic as he is a mistaken puritan! And now, my lady, may I not
send thy maiden from us, for I would talk with thee alone of certain
matters--not from distrust of Dorothy, but that they are not my own
to impart, therefore I pray her absence.'

The parliament having secured the assistance of the Scots, and their
forces having, early in the year, entered England, the king on his
side was now meditating an attempt to secure the assistance of the
Irish catholics, to which the devotion of certain of the old
catholic houses at home encouraged him. But it was a game of
terrible danger, for if he lost it, he lost everything; and that it
should transpire before maturity would be to lose it absolutely; for
the Irish catholics had, truly or falsely, been charged with such
enormities during the rebellion, that they had become absolutely
hateful in the eyes of all English protestants, and any alliance
with them must cost him far more in protestants than he could gain
by it in catholics. It was necessary therefore that he should go
about it with the utmost caution; and indeed in his whole management
of it, the wariness far exceeded the dignity, and was practised at
the expense of his best friends. But the poor king was such a
believer in his father's pet doctrine of the divine right of his
inheritance, that not only would he himself sacrifice everything to
the dim shadow of royalty which usurped the throne of his
conscience, but would, without great difficulty or compunction,
though not always without remorse, accept any sacrifice which a
subject might have devotion enough to bring to the altar before
which Charles Stuart acted as flamen.