“It will be seen in God’s own time how many make a conscience of the oaths they take in his presence. For me it is enough that I believe not all that is in this book. If it had been a question whether the King would or would not compel the oath, I could have humbled myself under his feet to beseech him to spare the consciences which no King can bind; but as it is now too late for this, we must cheerfully descend to a low estate among men, that we may look up before God.”
“Without doubt; I mean nought else; but when, and where shall we go?”
"In a few days, unless it should please God to touch the hearts that he hath hardened,—in a few days we must gird ourselves to go forth."
“With these little ones! And where?”
“Where there may be some unseen to bid us God speed! Whether the path shall open to the right hand or to the left, what matters it?”
"True: if a path be indeed opened. But these little ones——"
“God hath sent food into the heart of wildernesses whence there was no path; and the Scripture hath a word of the young ravens which cry.”
"It hath. I will never again, by God’s grace, look back to the estate which my father lost for this very King. But, without reckoning up that score with him, it moves the irreligious themselves to see how he guides himself in these awful times,—toying in his palace-walks this very morning, while he himself puts sackcloth on the whole nation. Edmund is just come in from seeing the King standing on the green walk in the palace-garden, and jesting with the Jezebel who ever contrives to be at that high, back window as he passes by. I would the people knew of it, that they might avoid the scandal of interceding for a jester whom they suppose to be worshipping with them, while he is thinking of nothing so little all the time as worshipping any but his own wantons."
“If Edmund can thus testify, it is time that I were enlarging my prayer for the King. If for the godly we intercede seven times, should it not for the ungodly be seventy-times seven?”
Mrs. Reede’s brother Edmund could confirm the account. In virtue of an office which he held, he had liberty to pass through the palace-garden. The sound of mirth, contrasting strangely with the distant toll of bells, had drawn him into the shade; and he had seen Charles throwing pebbles up to a window above, where a lady was leaning out, and pelting him with sweetmeats in return. It was hoped that the queen, newly married, and a stranger in the country, was in some far-distant corner of the palace, and that she did not yet understand the tongue in which Charles’s excesses were wont to be openly spoken of. The Corporations of London had not yet done feasting and congratulating this most unhappy lady; but all supposed matter of congratulation was already over. The clergy of the kingdom prayed for her as much from compassion as duty; and her fate served them as an unspoken text for their discourses on the vanity of worldly greatness. The mothers of England dropped tears at the thought of the lonely and insulted stranger; and their daughters sighed their pity for the neglected bride.