It is not uncharacteristic of his hatred of suffering, that it was Charles the Second who abolished the statute which had thoughtfully provided for the roasting of heretics. He might quite as well have abolished "cockfighting and courses," but he did not. On a certain 22nd of July, he wrote to his "deare, deare Sister" Henrietta: "I am one of those Bigotts who thinke that malice is a much greater sinn than a poore frailty of nature." And Burnet has assured us that the same remark was made, by the same moralist, to him, "that cruelty and falsehood are the worst vices": an opinion of pedigree, antedated by Taliesin, Chief of the Bards, in the sixth century. It would seem an irresistible inference that Butler must have heard of the royal speculation when he penned his immortal couplet:
"Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to."
(Charles used to carry in his pocket a copy of Hudibras which Buckhurst gave him.) Cruelty, especially, was very far from this indulgent King. His first official appearance had been on an errand of mercy. As a spectator of ten, he had sat through the first session of Strafford's trial, "in his little chair beside the throne"; but he was sent as Prince of Wales, to carry his father's letter to the Peers, urging them to forbear or delay Strafford's execution. As the young nominal leader of the army in the west, he was full of compassion. "There's a child," said the Earl of Lindsay, "born to end this war we now begin. How gravely doth he pity the dead, the sick, the maimed!" His nature was thoroughly humane; and more: it was affectionate. It is the modern fashion to say he had no feeling. In this regard he has never been fairly appraised, and no wonder! He affected cynicism, and disclaimed sensitiveness; he made no confidences; he avoided "scenes." Yet he originated at least two scenes, which may be worth something to those who recognize true emotion, from whatever unexpected source, and honor it. One was in 1663, when the good Queen fell very ill, and when Charles, more and more conscience-stricken, dropped beside the bed, and begged her, with tears, to live for his sake. The other was when he himself lay dying, in his fifty-fifth year; when his old friend, the Benedictine priest, John Huddleston, came into the room before the lords, physicians, and gay gentlemen, to reconcile him to the Catholic Church, and give him the Holy Communion. The King was extremely weak, and in the greatest pain; but he was with difficulty kept in his recumbent position. "I would kneel," he said aloud several times, endeavoring to rise, "I would kneel to my Heavenly Lord." What if by such touching demonstrations, rather than by his miserable stifling stoicism, his taint of drugged indifference, he were to be judged? But to some he had always shown his heart. The dearest to him were those longest about him: even his old nurse, Mrs. Wyndham, had an extraordinary hold upon him. He was kindness itself to his sister-in-law, Anne Hyde, the first Duchess of York, at the very time when she was exposed to ridicule, and most needed a powerful friend; and he was no less kind to her successor, Mary of Modena, who never forgot him. His attachment to Monmouth is beyond question; yet it was no greater than his attachment to James, whose succession he safeguarded, with whom he had few qualities in common. For besides being the perfect companion Hume allows him to have been, he was a perfect brother. Mrs. Ady (Julia Cartright) justly observes, in the preface to Madame, her valuable memoir of Charles the First's youngest daughter, Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, that the private letters from the French archives, there first printed, written by Charles the Second, establish two novel points greatly in his favor: "the courage and spirit with which he could defend the privileges of his subjects and the rights of the British flag," and the extreme love and concern he had for his only surviving sister. Patriotism and affection are about the last things of which historians seem even yet likely to accuse him. Let us have a few of these epistolary extracts, at random; they are delightful, and worded with a careless idiomatic force equal to that of any correspondence of the time. Moreover, they make one surmise that a volume of Charles's less accessible letters to his mother and Prince Rupert, those to his sister Mary, not excluding the beautiful one on the occasion of their father's death, those to Clarendon, Lord Jermyn and others, would make, if collected from the private packets or state papers where they lie unread, in his own delicate, clear, whimsical hand, an uncommonly pleasant publication.
"To my deare, deare Sister.
"Pour l'avenir, je vous prie, ne me traitez pas avec tant de cérémonie, en me donnant tant de 'majestés,' car je ne veux pas qu'il y ait autre chose entre nous deux, qu'amitié."
"I will not now write to you in French, for my head is dosed with business!"
"Pray send me some images, to put in prayer-books: they are for my wife, who can gett none heere. I assure you it will be a great present to her, and she will looke upon them often; for she is not onlie content to say the greate office in the breviere every day, but likewise that of Our Lady too; and this is besides goeing to chapell, where she makes use of none of these. I am iust now goeing to see a new play; so I shall say no more but that I am intierly yours." (These are "the pretty pious pictures" which Pepys saw and admired.)
"They who will not beleeve anything to be reasonably designed unless it be successfully executed, have neede of a less difficult game to play than mine; and I hope friends will thinke I am now too old, and have had too much experience of things and persons to be grossly imposed upon; and therefore they who would seem to pity me so for being so often deceeved, do upon the matter declare what opinion they have of my understanding and judgment. And I pray you, discountenance those kind of people."
"I hope it is but in a compliment to me, when you say my niece" (the little Marie-Louise d'Orléans, afterwards Queen of Spain) "is so like me: for I never thought my face was even so much as intended for a beauty! I wish with all my heart I could see her; for at this distance I love her."
"Sir George Downing is come out of Holland, and I shall now be very busy upon that matter. The States keepe a great braying and noise, but I beleeve, when it comes to it, they will looke twise before they leape. I never saw so great an appetite to a warre as is in both this towne and country, espetially in the parlament-men, who, I am confident, would pawne there estates to maintaine a warre. But all this shall not governe me, for I will look meerly to what is just, and best for the honour and goode of England, and will be very steady in what I resolve: and if I be forsed to a warre, I shall be ready with as good ships and men as ever was seen, and leave the successe to God." (Here we have a sort of original for the modern chant: