HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

might unwittingly have given. “She ask my pardon, poorwoman!” cried Charles; “I ask hers with all my heart.”

The morning light began to peep through the windows ofWhitehall; and Charles desired the attendants to pull asidethe curtains, that he might have one more look at the day.He remarked that it was time to wind up a clock which stoodnear his bed. These little circumstances were long remem-bered, because they proved beyond dispute that, when he de-clared himself a Roman Catholic, he was in full possession ofhis faculties. He apologized to those who had stood roundhim all night for the trouble which he had caused. He hadbeen, he said, a most unconscionable time dying;, but hehoped that they would excuse it. This was the last glimpse ofthat exquisite urbanity, so often found potent to charm awaythe resentment of a justly incensed nation. Soon after dawnthe speech of the dying man failed. Before ten his senseswere gone. Great numbers had repaired to the churches atthe hour of morning service. When the prayer for the Kingwas read, loud groans and sobs showed how deeply his peoplefelt for him. At noon on Friday, the sixth ofFebruary, hepassed away without a struggle.*

* Clarke’s Life of James the Second, i. 146. Orig. Mem.; Itarillon’sDespatch ofFeb. T 8 ff 1685; Citters’s Despatches of Feb. A-. and Feb. A.;Huddleston’s Narrative; Letters of Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield,277.; Sir II. Ellis’s Original Letters, First Series, iii. 333.; Second Series,iv. 74.; Chaillot MS.; Bdrnet, i. 606.; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4. 168J.;Welwood’s Memoirs, 140.; North’s Life of Guildford, 252.; Examen,648.;Hawkins’s Life of Ken; Dryden’s Threnodia Augustalis; Sir H. Halford’sEssay on Deaths of Eminent Persons. See also a fragment of a letterwhich Lord Bruce wrote long after he'had become Earl of Ailesbury, andwhich is printed in the European Magazine for April, 1795. Ailesburycalls Burnet an impostor. Yet his own narrative and Burnet’s will not, toany candid and sensible reader, appear to contradict each other. I haveseen in the British Museum, and also in the Library of the Royal Insti-tution, a curious broadside containing an account of the death ofCharles. It will be found in the Somers Collection. The author wasevidently a zealous Roman Catholic, and must have bad access to goodsources of information. I strongly suspect that he had been in commu-nication, directly or indirectly, with James himself. No name is given