UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND.

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good service to the crown, and that its intentions were ex-cellent. But, both in public and in the closet, he, on every'occasion, expressed his concern that gentlemen so sincerelyattached to monarchy should unadvisedly incroach on theprerogative of the monarch. Widely as they differed in spiritfrom the members of the Long Parliament, they yet, he said,imitated that Parliament in meddling with matters whichlay beyond the sphere of the Estates of the realm , andwhich were subject to the authority of the crown alone. Thecountry, he maintained, would never be well governed tillthe knights of shires and the burgesses were content to bewhat their predecessors had been in the days of Elizabeth.All the plans which men more observant than himself of thesigns of that time proposed, for the purpose of maintaining agood understanding between the Court and the Commons, hedisdainfully rejected as crude projects, inconsistent with theold polity of England. Towards the young orators, whowere rising to distinction and authority in the Lower House,his deportment was ungracious; and he succeeded in makingthem, with scarcely an exception, his deadly enemies. In-deed one of his most serious faults was an inordinate con-tempt for youth: and this contempt was the more unjusti-fiable, because his own experience in English politics was byno means proportioned to his age. For so great a part of hislife had been passed abroad that he knew less of that worldin which he found himself on his return than many who mighthave been his sons.

For these reasons he was disliked by the Commons. Forvery different reasons he was equally disliked by the Court.His morals as well as his politics were those of an earliergeneration. Even when he was a young law student, livingmuch with men of wit and pleasure, his natural gravity andhis religious principles had to a great extent preserved himfrom the contagion of fashionable debauchery; and he wasMacaulay. Hislo'-y. I. J3

CHAP.

II.