“These dogges are little, pretty, proper, and fyne, and sought for to satisfie the delicateness of daintie dames, instrumentes of folly for them to play and dally withal, to tryfle away the treasure of time, to withdraw their mindes from more commendable exercises.”
Sarcasm and good advice alike were wasted. Where a king set the fashion, fine gentlemen and ladies delighted to follow, and lap-dogs became as necessary to their equipment as lace ruffles or brocades. Charles II. and his brother, James II., always liked dogs; and some fine canvases by Vandyke remain, in which the royal children are grouped with their four-footed friends. In one painting, Prince Charles is the central figure; one hand hangs idly at his side; the other rests on the head of a huge mastiff, near which frisks a tiny spaniel. The same spaniel probably, and another that might be its twin, act as “supporters” in a second painting to the three oldest children.
When, after many vicissitudes, Charles finally reached the throne, his devotion to pets was more marked than ever, and he gave them a good deal of attention that by rights belonged elsewhere. Under date of September 4, 1667, Repys notes in his Diary that he “went by coach to Whitehall, to the Council Chamber. All I observed there is the silliness of the king’s playing with his dog all the while, and not minding the business.”
As a matter of course, contemporary wits and playwrights are not silent, and have many a squib too at this foible of Charles:
“His dogs would sit at Council Board,
Like judges in their furs;
We question much which had most sense,—
The Master, or the Curs.”
