But we have on record his amusing and sufficient footnote, that his sayings were his own, and his doings were his ministers'. (This answer, by the way, must have been made to fit the occasion, and the gay exigency of it, for he was exceedingly jealous of his unused prerogative. "I assure you," he writes to one of his family, about 1668, "that my lord of Buckingham does not govern affairs here." And Clarendon attests later, that "he abhorred to be thought to be governed by any single person.") At Whitehall, as the gentlemen-in-waiting laid the plates before the King, they bent a knee. "You see how they serve me," Charles said pleasantly to his guest, the Chevalier de Grammont. "I thank your Majesty for the explanation," that accomplished wag replied, "for I thought they were begging your Majesty's pardon for so bad a dinner." No reply at all, were it but pungent, offended him. "Shaftesbury, Shaftesbury, I do believe thou art the wickedest fellow in my dominions!" "Of a subject, Sire, mayhap I am." "Killigrew, whither goest thou, booted and spurred?" "To Hell, to fetch up Oliver to look after the welfare of the English." As a monitor, this same lewd, lying, scribbling, kindly, music-loving Killigrew was almost as successful with Charles as was Nell Gwynne. For sharp sensible comment went home to him; he saw a point none the less because it told against him. "Such ability and understanding has Charles Stuart," growled the man who was called his jester, "that I do long to see him employed as King of England." Libels and satires had small sting for him. Mistress Holford, a young lady of the court, seated in her own apartment, warbles Old Rowley, the ballad of close but inelegant libel, at the top of her silvery voice. A rap comes at the outer door, from one strolling by. "Who's there?" she asks, with unconcern. "Old Rowley himself, Madam!" in the "plump bass" of Carolus Secundus. Nothing much more diverting ever happened to him than the inverted salute of a worthy citizen, who once ran along in the street, beside his coach, with a half-formed fervent "God bless your Majesty!" upon his lips: the spaniel pup on his Majesty's knee, suddenly reaching out, gave the man a nip, and caused the ready benison to blurt forth incontinently as "God bl—amn your dogs!" The well-worn tradition of Master Busby of Westminster School reversing conditions with the King, is characteristic on both sides: Charles all humor and toleration, the little man stiffened with conscious reputation, to be upheld at all costs, and heroically wearing his cap before the face of visiting royalty, "lest the boys should think there lived a greater than myself." And was it not a prettier pass yet, between the monarch and his impregnable Quaker who wanted a charter? Penn came to his first audience with his hat, on the principle of unconvention and equality, firmly fixed upon his brows. Presently the King, having moved apart from the attendants, in his gleaming dress, slowly and ceremoniously bared his head. Penn interrupted his own plea. "Friend Charles, why hast taken off thy hat?" "Because it has so long been the custom here," said the other, with that peculiar lenient smile of his, "for but one person to remain covered at a time." (It strikes one that a little of this humor would have saved his father from much woe on a not dissimilar occasion in the Commons; and, indeed, throughout.) Equally charming was his behavior, on being laid hold of, by the hiccoughing Lord Mayor,—Vyner, wasn't that his name?—who insisted that he should come back and "finish t'other bottle." Charles, instead of glowering, hummed a line of an old song, a synopsis of the difficult situation to the company, which none other but he could have given with any grace:

"The man that is Drunke is as good as a King!"

and sat again. He never became, as his tutor, the loyal Duke of Newcastle, feared, "seared with majestie."

The Lord's Anointed liked to forego his authority, and come as a mere spectator into a session of Parliament. "'Tis as good as a play," the provoking creature said. He would get down from his throne in the Lords, to stand with folded arms by the hearth, drawing a group around him, and breaking up the order and impressiveness of the place. Those really interested in statecraft, whose fond incubations he so overturned, must have found him an enfant terrible to an incorrigible degree. A memorandum-book, to be seen in one of the cases at the Bodleian, lies open at a bit of scribbled correspondence between himself and his Chancellor, passed from one to the other in the middle of debate. The King's share is as wayward and roguish as Sterne could have made it.

——"I would willingly make a visite to my sister at tunbridge, for a night or two at farthest. When do you thinke I can best spare that time?"

——"I know no reason why you may not, for such a tyme (two nights) go the next weeke about Wednsday or Thursday, and return tyme enough for the adiournement, which you ought to do the weeke following. I suppose you will goe with a light Trayne."

——"I intend to take nothing but my night-bag."

—"God, you will not go without forty or fifty horses?"

——"I counte that part of my night-bag."