“To receive his Highness the Duke’s pleasure respecting the navy accounts that are to be laid before Parliament.”
“That is my brother’s affair,” replied the King. "I desire from you,—your parts having been well commended to me,—some discreet composure which shall bring our government into less disfavour with our people than it hath been of late."
Edmund did not doubt that this could easily be done.
"It must be done; for in our present straits we cannot altogether so do without the people as for our ease we could desire. But as for the ease,—there is but little of it where the people are so changeable. They have forgot the flatteries with which they hailed us, some short while since, and give us only murmurs instead. It is much to be wished that they should be satisfied in respect of their duty to us, without which we cannot satisfy them in the carrying on of the war."
The Duke of York thought that his Majesty troubled himself needlessly about the way in which supplies were to be obtained from the people. Money must be had, and speedily, or defeat would follow defeat; for never were the army and navy in a more wretched condition than now. But if his Majesty would only exert his prerogative, and levy supplies for his occasions as his ancestors had done, all might yet be retrieved without the trouble of propitiating the nation. The King persisted however in his design of making his government popular by means of a pamphlet which should flatter the people with the notion that they kept their affairs in their own hands. It was the shortest way to begin by satisfying the people’s minds.
And how was this to be done? Dr. Reede presumed to inquire. Charles, thoroughly discomposed by the news he had just heard, in addition to a variety of private perplexities, declared that nothing could be easier than to set forth a true account of the royal poverty. No poor gentleman of all the train to whom he was in debt could be more completely at his wit’s end for money than he. His wardrobeman had this morning lamented that the King had no handkerchiefs, and only three bands to his neck; and how to take up a yard of linen for his Majesty’s[Majesty’s] service was more than any one knew.
Edmund glanced at his own periwig in the opposite mirror, and observed that it would be very easy to urge this plea, if such was his Majesty’s pleasure.
“Od’s fish! man, you would not tell this beggarly tale in all its particulars! You would not set the loyal housewives in London to offer me their patronage of shirts and neckbands!”
“Besides,” said the Duke, “though it might be very easy to tell the tale of our poverty, it might not be so easy to make men believe it.”
Dr. Reede here giving an involuntary sign of assent, the King would know what was in his mind. Dr. Reede, as usual, spoke his thoughts. The people, being aware what sums had within a few months fallen into the royal treasury, would be slow to suppose that their king was in want of necessary clothing.