and eighty-three. He died a hero, and died, in his own words, ‘For
that good old cause in which he had been engaged from his youth,
and for which God had so often and so wonderfully declared
himself.’
The Duke of Monmouth had been making his uncle, the Duke of York,
very jealous, by going about the country in a royal sort of way,
playing at the people’s games, becoming godfather to their
children, and even touching for the King’s evil, or stroking the
faces of the sick to cure them – though, for the matter of that, I
should say he did them about as much good as any crowned king could
have done. His father had got him to write a letter, confessing
his having had a part in the conspiracy, for which Lord Russell had
been beheaded; but he was ever a weak man, and as soon as he had
written it, he was ashamed of it and got it back again. For this,
he was banished to the Netherlands; but he soon returned and had an
interview with his father, unknown to his uncle. It would seem
that he was coming into the Merry Monarch’s favour again, and that
the Duke of York was sliding out of it, when Death appeared to the
merry galleries at Whitehall, and astonished the debauched lords
and gentlemen, and the shameless ladies, very considerably.
On Monday, the second of February, one thousand six hundred and
eighty-five, the merry pensioner and servant of the King of France
fell down in a fit of apoplexy. By the Wednesday his case was
hopeless, and on the Thursday he was told so. As he made a
difficulty about taking the sacrament from the Protestant Bishop of
Bath, the Duke of York got all who were present away from the bed,
and asked his brother, in a whisper, if he should send for a
Catholic priest? The King replied, ‘For God’s sake, brother, do!’
The Duke smuggled in, up the back stairs, disguised in a wig and
gown, a priest named HUDDLESTON, who had saved the King’s life
after the battle of Worcester: telling him that this worthy man in
the wig had once saved his body, and was now come to save his soul.
The Merry Monarch lived through that night, and died before noon on
the next day, which was Friday, the sixth. Two of the last things
he said were of a human sort, and your remembrance will give him
the full benefit of them. When the Queen sent to say she was too
unwell to attend him and to ask his pardon, he said, ‘Alas! poor
woman, SHE beg MY pardon! I beg hers with all my heart. Take back
that answer to her.’ And he also said, in reference to Nell Gwyn,
‘Do not let poor Nelly starve.’
He died in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth of
his reign.
CHAPTER XXXVI – ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND
Page 240
Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
KING JAMES THE SECOND was a man so very disagreeable, that even the
best of historians has favoured his brother Charles, as becoming,
by comparison, quite a pleasant character. The one object of his
short reign was to re-establish the Catholic religion in England;
and this he doggedly pursued with such a stupid obstinacy, that his
career very soon came to a close.
The first thing he did, was, to assure his council that he would
make it his endeavour to preserve the Government, both in Church
and State, as it was by law established; and that he would always
take care to defend and support the Church. Great public
acclamations were raised over this fair speech, and a great deal
was said, from the pulpits and elsewhere, about the word of a King
which was never broken, by credulous people who little supposed
that he had formed a secret council for Catholic affairs, of which
a mischievous Jesuit, called FATHER PETRE, was one of the chief
members. With tears of joy in his eyes, he received, as the
beginning of HIS pension from the King of France, five hundred