We may here pause to remark that, from the close of the year 1640, when the Long Parliament commenced its memorable sittings, the prominent events affecting the history of art and science in England are comparatively meagre, as might be expected, while the public mind was being perpetually distracted and disturbed not by intestine war alone, but also by plague and pestilence in fearful forms.
Of remarkable events of the period we especially notice the fortifying of London in 1643, and the delivering up of Charles the First to the Parliament by the Scots in January 1647, followed by his execution on the 30th of January 1649, the establishment of the Commonwealth on the 6th of February following, and of the Protectorate under Cromwell in 1654.
Under the new regime, public taste either was greatly changed, or was to be compulsorily directed into new channels, for, in 1647, theatrical performances were prohibited, actors were declared rogues and vagabonds, and all places usually employed for theatrical performances were ordered to be demolished. Such was the narrow-minded and furious puritanical zeal of the then governing power.
Charles the Second held his Court at Paris, where alone the Marquis of Worcester associated with the libertine monarch; at least no circumstance occurs to show that he ever removed with the Court in its several changes to Cologne, Bruges, Brussels, and other continental towns.
Sir Richard Browne, ambassador at Paris, in his correspondence with John Evelyn, when writing from Paris, the 3rd of August, 1648, incidentally observes in a postscript:—“Our Court wants money, and lives very quietly at St. Germains: where no peer appears but my Lord Jermin. The Marquis of Worcester, the Lords Digby and Hatton, though yet in France, yet live for the most part in Paris.”[37]
The Marquis had been little more than a year in France, when he seems to have written to the exiled King, then at Jersey, for some confirmation of his titles; to which request he received the following courtly compliments and vain empty promises:—[D]
“My Lord Worcester,
I am truly sensible of your great merit and sufferings in the service of the King my father, and I shall never be wanting to reward and encourage as well that kindness to his person as that zeal to his service which you have expressed in all your actions, and which I doubt not but you will still continue to me. I fear that in this conjuncture of time it will not be seasonable for me to grant, nor for you to receive the addition of honour you desire; neither can I at this time send the order you mention concerning the Garter, but be confident that I will in due time give you such satisfaction in these particulars and in all other things that you can reasonably expect from me, as shall let you see with how much truth and kindness I am
“Your affectionate friend,
“Charles R.