History of King Charles the Second of England

by Jacob Abbott

The devout sense of responsibility to Almighty God, and the spirit of submission and obedience to his will, which this letter breathes, descended from the grandmother to the mother, and were even instilled, in some degree, into the heart of the son. They remained, however, latent and dormant through the long years of the monarch's life of frivolity and sin, but they revived and reasserted their dominion when the end came.

The dying scene opened upon the king's vision in a very abrupt and sudden manner. He had been somewhat unwell during a certain day in February, when he was about fifty-four years of age. His illness, however, did not interrupt the ordinary orgies and carousals of his palace. It was Sunday. In the evening a very gay assembly was convened in the apartments, engaged in deep gaming, and other dissolute and vicious pleasures. The king mingled in these scenes, though he complained of being unwell. His head was giddy—his appetite was gone—his walk was unsteady. When the party broke up at midnight, he went into one of the neighboring apartments, and they prepared for him some light and simple food suitable for a sick man, but he could not take it. He retired to his bed, but he passed a restless and uneasy night. He arose, however, the next morning, and attempted to dress himself, but before he finished the work he was suddenly struck by that grim and terrible messenger and coadjutor of death—apoplexy—as by a blow. Stunned by the stroke, he staggered and fell.

The dreadful paroxysm of insensibility and seeming death in a case of apoplexy is supposed to be occasioned by a pressure of blood upon the brain, and the remedy, according to the practice of those days, was to bleed the patient immediately to relieve this pressure, and to blister or cauterize the head, to excite a high external action as a means of subduing the disease within. It was the law of England that such violent remedies could not be resorted to in the case of the sovereign without authority previously obtained from the council. They were guilty of high treason who should presume to do so. This was a case, however, which admitted of no delay. The attendants put their own lives at hazard to serve that of the king. They bled him with a penknife, and heated the iron for the cautery. The alarm was spread throughout the palace, producing universal confusion. The queen was summoned, and came as soon as possible to the scene. She found her husband sitting senseless in a chair, a basin of blood by his side, his countenance death-like and ghastly, while some of the attendants were attempting to force the locked jaws apart, that they might administer a potion, and others were applying a red hot iron to the patient's head, in a desperate endeavor to arouse and bring back again into action the benumbed and stupefied sensibilities. Queen Catharine was so shocked by the horrid spectacle that she sank down in a fit of fainting and convulsions, and was borne immediately away back to her own apartment.

In two hours the patient's suspended faculties began to return. He looked wildly about him, and asked for the queen. They sent for her. She was not able to come. She was, however, so far restored as to be able to send a message and an apology, saying that she was very glad to hear that he was better, and was much concerned that she could not come to see him; she also added, that for whatever she had done in the course of her life to displease him, she now asked his pardon, and hoped he would forgive her. The attendants communicated this message to the king. "Poor lady!" said Charles, "she beg my pardon! I am sure I beg hers, with all my heart."

Apoplexy fulfills the dread behest of its terrible master Death by dealing its blow once with a fatal energy, and then retiring from the field, leaving the stunned and senseless patient to recover in some degree from the first effect of the stroke, but only to sink down and die at last under the permanent and irretrievable injuries which almost invariably follow.

Things took this course in the case of Charles. He revived from the stupor and insensibility of the first attack, and lay afterward for several days upon his bed, wandering in mind, helpless in body, full of restlessness and pain, and yet conscious of his condition. He saw, dimly and obscurely indeed, but yet with awful certainty, that his ties to earth had been suddenly sundered, and that there only remained to him now a brief and troubled interval of mental bewilderment and bodily distress, to last for a few more hours or days, and then he must appear before that dread tribunal where his last account was to be rendered; and the vast work of preparation for the solemn judgment was yet to be made. How was this to be done?

Of course, the great palace of Whitehall, where the royal patient was lying, was all in confusion. Attendants were hurrying to and fro. Councils of physicians were deliberating in solemn assemblies on the case, and ordaining prescriptions with the formality which royal etiquette required. The courtiers were thunderstruck and confounded at the prospect of the total revolution which was about to ensue, and in which all their hopes and prospects might be totally ruined. James, the Duke of York, seeing himself about to be suddenly summoned to the throne, was full of eager interest in the preliminary arrangements to secure his safe and ready accession. He was engaged night and day in selecting officers, signing documents, and stationing guards. Catharine mourned in her own sick chamber the approaching blow, which was to separate her forever from her husband, deprive her of her consequence and her rank, and consign her, for the rest of her days to the pains and sorrows, and the dreadful solitude of heart which pertains to widowhood. The king's other female intimates, too, of whom there were three still remaining in his court and in his palace, were distracted with real grief. They may have loved him sincerely; they certainly gave every indication of true affection for him in this his hour of extremity. They could not appear at his bedside except at sudden and stolen interviews, which were quickly terminated by their being required to withdraw; but they hovered near with anxious inquiries, or else mourned in their apartments with bitter grief. Without the palace the effects were scarcely less decisive. The tidings spread every where throughout the kingdom, arresting universal attention, and awakening an anxiety so widely diffused and so intense as almost to amount to a terror. A Catholic monarch was about to ascend the throne, and no one knew what national calamities were impending.

In the mean time, the dying monarch lay helpless upon his bed, in the alcove of his apartment, distressed and wretched. To look back upon the past filled him with remorse, and the dread futurity, now close at hand, was full of images of terror and dismay. He thought of his wife, and of the now utterly irreparable injuries which he had done her. He thought of his other intimates and their numerous children, and of the condition in which they would be left by his death. If he had been more entirely sensual and selfish in his attachments, he would have suffered less; but he could not dismiss these now wretched participators in his sins from his mind. He could do very little now to promote their future welfare, or to atone for the injury which he had done them; but his anxiety to do so, as well as his utter helplessness in accomplishing his desire, was evinced by his saying, in his last charge to his brother James, just before he died, that he hoped he would be kind to his children, and especially not let poor Nelly starve. [Footnote: Eleanor Gwyn. She was an actress when Charles first became acquainted with her.]

Troubled and distressed with these thoughts, and still more anxious and wretched at the prospect of his own approaching summons before the bar of God, the fallen monarch lay upon his dying bed, earnestly desiring, but not daring to ask for, the only possible relief which was now left to him, the privilege of seeking refuge in the religious hopes and consolations which his mother, in years now long gone by, had vainly attempted to teach him to love. The way of salvation through the ministrations and observances of the Catholic service was the only way of salvation that he could possibly see. It is true that he had been all his life a Protestant, but Protestantism was to him only a political faith, it had nothing to do with moral accountability or preparation for heaven. The spiritual views of acceptance with God by simple personal penitence and faith in the atoning sacrifice of his Son, which lie at the foundation of the system of the Church of England, he never conceived of. The Church of England was to him a mere empty form; it was the service of the ancient Catholic faith, disrobed of its sanctions, despoiled of its authority, and deprived of all its spirit and soul. It was the mere idle form of godless and heartless men of the world, empty and vain. It had answered his purpose as a part of the pageantry of state during his life of pomp and pleasure, but it seemed a mockery to him now, as a means of leading his wretched and ruined soul to a reconciliation with his Maker. Every thing that was sincere, and earnest, and truly devout, in the duties of piety were associated in his mind with the memory of his mother; and as death drew nigh, he longed to return to her fold, and to have a priest, who was clothed with the authority to which her spirit had been accustomed to bow, come and be the mediator between himself and his Maker, and secure and confirm the reconciliation.

But how could this be done? It was worse than treason to aid or abet the tainting of the soul of an English Protestant king with the abominations of popery. The king knew this very well, and was aware that if he were to make his wishes known, whoever should assist him in attaining the object of his desire would hazard his life by the act. Knowing, too, in what abhorrence the Catholic faith was held, he naturally shrank from avowing his convictions; and thus deterred by the difficulties which surrounded him, he gave himself up to despair, and let the hours move silently on which were drawing him so rapidly toward the grave. There were, among the other attendants and courtiers who crowded around his bedside, several high dignitaries of the Church. At one time five bishops were in his chamber. They proposed repeatedly that the king should partake of the sacrament. This was a customary rite to be performed upon the dying, it being considered the symbol and seal of a final reconciliation with God and preparation for heaven. Whenever the proposal was made, the king declined or evaded it. He said he was "too weak," or "not now," or "there will be time enough yet;" and thus day after day moved on.