The survivors of the dreadful calamity would have perished of famine, but for the bounty of the affluent. The money subscribed is said to have amounted to one hundred thousand pounds a week, to which Charles the Second humanely gave one thousand pounds weekly. In the parish of Cripplegate alone, the disbursements to the poor amounted to seventeen thousand pounds a week. But even when the poor had obtained the money, they feared to lay it out in provisions, lest they should, by some means, catch the infection. If they bought a joint of meat in the market, they would not receive it from the hand of the butcher, but take it off the hooks themselves; the butcher, equally cautious, would not touch the money, but had it dropped into a pot of vinegar, kept for the purpose. Workmen were equally cautious with their masters, and even members of the same family with each other.

but Defoe asserts, "that the number The priests prepared the sacrament of was, at least, one hundred thousand." extreme unction, and soon afterwards The lives of numbers were preserved by her gentle respirations ceased, and her means of shipping on the Thames, into soul passed to eternity. She died in her which the infection did not reach, except sixty-first year, on the morning of the in very few instances. twenty-first of August, 1669, at her favourite residence of Colombe. Couriers were immediately dispatched, with the fatal tidings, to the relations and friends, and the subsequent night her heart was taken out and presented to her convent at Chaillot; whither her body, after being embalmed, was conveyed, previous to the funeral. The royal corpse lay in state at Chaillot, till the second of September. On the evening of that day, immediately darkness had set in, it was carried in grand funeral procession, by torch-light, to the royal tombs, in the Abbey of St. Denis, and there interred with imposing funeral rites. Twentyeight days afterwards, another magnificent service was performed to the memory of the Queen of Charles the First, by the nuns of Chaillot, at which her bereaved daughter, Henrietta Maria, Duchess of Orleans, took a conspicuous part, and Bossuet delivered the renowned funeral oration, which at once stamped his reputation as one of the greatest orators of his times. courts of France and of England went into deep mourning for the departed Queen. Charles the Second deeply deplored the loss of his mother, and gave the sisterhood of Chaillot two thousand jacobuses, to erect a chapel for the reception of her heart.

To return to the subject of this memoir: Henrietta was relieved, but not cured, by the waters of Bourbon; consumption, and a complication of other maladies, slowly, but fatally undermined her constitution. In August, her situation became such, that the four leading physicians in France attended her. In truth, she was in the last stage of consumption, and a too-powerful dose of opium, administered by order of M. D'Aquin, her physician, sent her into a sleep from which she never again woke. The day before her death, she was more cheerful than usual; after partaking of supper she swallowed the opium draught, went to bed, and fell into a calm sleep. At day-break her attendants approached her bed-side, to administer another draught; she made no reply to their reiterated questions; they touched her, and finding that she moved not, became alarmed, and sent for priests and physicians; when they arrived, she slightly breathed but was quite unconscious,

The

Henrietta died intestate, but not in debt. According to the then law of France, Louis the Fourteenth was heir to her effects; but he waived his claim in favour of Charles the Second, and Charles presented all her furniture to the nuns of Chaillot, who, on the tenth of every month, said mass for the repose of her soul. Henrietta left but three surviving children, Charles the Second, James, Duke of York, who, on the death of his brother, ascended the throne of Great Britain, and the beautiful Duchess of Orleans. The Duchess survived her but a few months. She died, suddenly, in June, 1670; some say of poison, and others of cholera.

fifty thousand pounds, and invited him to return and take possession of his throne, both the Princesses of Orange and Mazarin sought to renew the negotiation, but to each of them Charles answered, "I was too poor for the lady in my adversity, now she is not exalted enough for me.'

propose, through his Ambassador, the marriage of his daughter, Katherine of Braganza, with the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles the Second; a proposal to which the needy English monarch listened with stoical indifference. Katherine was educated in a convent, under the immediate superintendence of her wise, energetic mother, the Queen Shortly after Charles the Second had of Portugal; and in November, 1654, been restored to the throne, his more her father, out of the unbounded affec- sober friends, perceiving what scandal tion he bore her, gave her, besides other his immoralities gave rise to, urgently sources of income, the island of Ma- entreated him to marry, and at last he deira, the city of Lanega, and the town seriously resolved to choose a consort. of Mour; but with a proviso, that if Whilst pondering on the subject, and she married out of the kingdom, she yet undecided as to which of the marshould exchange them for a suitable riageable Princesses of Europe he should equivalent from the nation. Shortly offer his hand, his mother, at the secret afterwards her father died, and her el- instigation of the French court, directed dest brother, Don Alphonso, being too his attention to Katherine of Braganza. young to reign, her mother assumed the France, be it observed, had aided Porregal authority, which she exercised for tugal to preserve its independence ten years, with such success, that the against Spain, but, by the recently conindependence of Portugal was firmly cluded treaty of the Pyrenees, Louis established, the commerce and trade of had bound himself to afford no further the nation enlarged, and the social con- assistance to the Portuguese patriots; dition of the people greatly meliorated. he, however, to prevent that country Many were the offers made for the from being again incorporated with hand of the Infanta Katherine; but her Spain, determined to procure the marmother, foreseeing the restoration of riage of the Donna Katherine to Charles Charles the Second, refused them all, the Second; and afterwards, through with the secret intention of marrying England, to afford that assistance to her to that sovereign. Donna Luiza's Charles's wife's family, which he otherfirst proposals for this match were made wise could not do without violating the to General Monk, by a clever Jew, who treaty. He wrote to the court at Lisat the time almost ruled her cabinet. bon, proposing the match; Donna Luiza But Monk felt no desire to wed his so- thanked him, and as his advice accorded vereign to a Catholic. Meanwhile, with her own politic views on the subCharles himself fell in love with Hen-ject, immediately adopted it. The burietta, the young Princess of Orange, and had the mortification to learn that her mother, the Princess-dowager of Orange, peremptorily refused his offer for her hand, with the cutting remark, that "although the son of a King, he was but a poor exile, and therefore she could not think of throwing her daughter away upon him." Charles also made the offer of his hand to the niece of the Cardinal Mazarin, but with no better success. In a few weeks, however, the tide of popular feeling in England turned in favour of royalty, and when a deputation from the Parliament arrived at Breda, presented the royal Stuart with

siness was opened by Don Francisco de Mello, the Portuguese Ambassador in England. He proposed the match to the King's Lord Chamberlain, the Farl of Manchester, and on the following day paid Charles a visit in person, and offered with the Princess a dower of five hundred thousand pounds in ready money, and to annex Tangiers, on the coast of Africa, and Bombay, in the East Indies, to the crown of England for ever; and to grant to the English a free trade to Portugal and to the Portuguese colonies. Charles, who greatly needed money, lent a willing ear to the proposal, consulted a secret council composed of