The character of this prince has been elaborately drawn by two great masters, perfectly well acquainted with him, the duke of Buckingham and the marquis of Halifax; not to mention several elegant strokes given by Sir William Temple. Dr Welwood, likewise, and Bishop Burnet have employed their pencil on the same subject; but the former is somewhat partial in his favor, as the latter is by far too harsh and malignant. Instead of finding an exact parallel between Charles II. and the emperor Tiberius, as asserted by that prelate, it would be more just to remark a full contrast and opposition. The emperor seems as much to have surpassed the king in abilities, as he falls short of him in virtue. Provident, wise, active, jealous, malignant, dark, sullen, unsociable, reserved, cruel, unrelenting, unforgiving these are the lights under which the Roman tyrant has been transmitted to us. And the only circumstance in which it can justly be pretended he was similar to Charles, is his love of women, a passion which is too general to form any striking resemblance, and which that detestable and detested monster shared also with unnatural appetites.
CHAPTER LXX.
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JAMES II.
1685
THE first act of James’s reign was to assemble the privy council; where, after some praises bestowed on the memory of his predecessor, he made professions of his resolution to maintain the established government, both in church and state. Though he had been reported, he said, to have imbibed arbitrary principles, he knew that the laws of England were sufficient to make him as great a monarch as he could wish; and he was determined never to depart from them. And as he had heretofore ventured his life in defence of the nation, he would still go as far as any man in maintaining all its just rights and liberties.
This discourse was received with great applause, not only by the council, but by the nation. The king universally passed for a man of great sincerity and great honor; and as the current of favor ran at that time for the court, men believed that his intentions were conformable to his expressions. “We have now,” it was said, “the word of a king, and a word never yet broken.” Addresses came from all quarters, full of duty, nay, of the most servile adulation. Every one hastened to pay court to the new monarch:[*] and James had reason to think, that, notwithstanding the violent efforts made by so potent a party for his exclusion, no throne in Europe was better established than that of England.