168

HISTORY OP ENGLAND,

CHAP.

.II.

draw without limit on the treasury for the gratification of hisprivate tastes, who could hire with wealth and honourspersons capable of assisting him to kill the time, and who,even when the state was brought by maladministration to thedepths of humiliation and to the brink of ruin, could still ex-clude unwelcome truth from the purlieus of his own seraglio,and refuse to see and hear whatever might disturb his luxuri-ous repose. For these ends, and for these ends aione, hewished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could be obtainedwithout risk or trouble. In the religious disputes whichdivided his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at allinterested. For his opinions oscillated in a state of contentedsuspense between infidelity and Popery. But, though hisconscience was neutral in the quarrel between the Episco-palians and the Presbyterians, his taste was by no meansso. His favourite vices were precisely those to which thePuritans were least indulgent. He could not get throughone day without the help of diversions which the Puritansregarded as sinful. As a man eminently well bred, and keenlysensible of the ridiculous, he was moved to contemptuousmirth by the Puritan oddities. He had indeed some reasonto dislike the rigid sect. He had, at the age when the pas-sions are most impetuous and when levity is most pardonable,spent some months in Scotland, a King in name, but in fact astate prisoner in the hands of austere Presbyterians. Notcontent with requiring him to conform to their worship and tosubscribe their Covenant, they had watched all his motions,and lectured him on all his youthful follies. He had beencompelled to give reluctant attendance at endless prayers andsermons, and might think himself fortunate when he was notinsolently reminded from the pulpit of his own frailties, ofhis father’s tyranny, and of his mother’s idolatry. Indeed hehad been so miserable during this part of his life that thedefeat which made him again a wanderer might be regarded