382

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

CIIAP.

VI.

1 ( 186 .

that he might have the merit and the glory of saving a fellow' creature from perdition. He seems, indeed, about this time,to have been seized with an unusually violent fit of zeal for hisreligion; and this is the more remarkable, because he had justrelapsed, after a short interval of self-restraint, into de-bauchery which all Christian divines condemn as sinful, andwhich, in an elderly man married to an agreeable young wife,is regarded even by people of the world as disreputable.Lady Dorchester had returned from Dublin, and was againthe King’s mistress. Her return was politically of no impor-tance. She had learned by experience the folly of attemptingto save her lover from the destruction to which he was runningheadlong. She therefore suffered the Jesuits to guide hispolitical conduct; and they, in return, suffered her to wheedlehim out of money. She was, however, only one of severalabandoned women who at this time shared, with his belovedChurch, the dominion over his mind.* He seems to havedetermined to make some amends for neglecting the welfareof his own soul by taking care of the souls of others. He sethimself, therefore, to labour, with real goodwill, but withthe goodwill of a coarse, stern, and arbitrary mind, for theconversion of his kinsman. Every audience which theTreasurer obtained was spent in arguments about the autho-rity of the Church and the worship of images. Rochester wasfirmly resolved not to abjure his religion; but he had noscruple about employing in self-defence artifices as discredit-able as those which had been used against him. He affectedto speak like a man whose mind was not made up, professedhimself desirous to be enlightened if he was in error, bor-rowed Popish books, and listened with civility to Popishdivines. He had several interviews with Ley burn, the VicarApostolic, with Godden, the chaplain and almoner of theQueen Dowager, and with Bonaventure Giffard, a theologian* Bariflon, Sept. R. 1686; Bonrepaux, June 1.1687.