ence. improved, that, before he was of age, he was allowed to be one of the finest gentlemen and finest scholars of his time. His learning is proved by notes which are still extant in his hand-writing on books in almost every department of literature. He spoke French like a gentleman of Louis's bed-chamber, and Italian like a citizen of FlorIt was impossible that a youth of such parts should not be anxious to understand the grounds on which his family had refused to conform to the religion of the state. He studied the disputed points closely, submitted his doubts to priests of his own faith, laid their answers before Tillotson, weighed the arguments on both sides long and attentively, and, after an investigation which occupied two years, declared himself a Protestant. The Church of England welcomed the illustrious convert with delight. His popularity was great, and became greater when it was known that royal solicitations and promises had been vainly employed to seduce him back to the superstition which he had abjured. The character of the young earl did not, however, develop itself in a manner quite satisfactory to those who had borne the chief part in his conversion. His morals by no means escaped the contagion of fashionable libertinism. In truth, the shock which had overturned his early prejudices had at the same time unfixed all his opinions, and left him to the unchecked guidance of his feelings; but, though his principles were unsteady, his impulses were so generous, his temper so bland, his manners so gracious and easy, that it was impossible not to love him. He was early called the King of Hearts, and never, through a long, eventful, and checkered life, lost his right to that name.* Shrewsbury was lord lieutenant of Staffordshire, and colonel of one of the regiments of horse which had been raised in consequence of the western insurrection. He now Coxe's Shrewsbury Correspondence; Mackay's Memoirs; Life of Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, 1718; Burnet, i., 762; Birch's Life of Tillotson, where the reader will find a letter from Tillotson to Shrewsbury, which seems to me a model of serious, friendly, and gentlemanlike reproof. refused to act under the board of regulators, and was deprived of both his commissions. None of the English nobles enjoyed a larger measure of public favor than Charles Sackville, earl of Dorset. He was, indeed, a remarkable man. In his youth he had been one of the most notorious libertines of the wild time which followed the Restoration. He had been the terror of the city watch, had passed many nights in the round-house, and had at least once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Betty Morrice and for Nell Gwynn, who always called him her Charles the First, had given no small amusement and scandal to the town. Yet, in the midst of follies and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his natural goodness of heart, had been conspicuous. Men said that the excesses in which he indulged were common between him and the whole race of gay young Cavaliers, but that his sympathy with human suffering and the generosity with which he made reparation to those whom his freaks had injured were all his own. His associates were astonished by the distinction which the public made between him and them. "He may do what he chooses," said Wilmot; "he is never in the wrong." The judg ment of the world became still more favorable to Dorset when he had been sobered by time and marriage. His graceful manners, his brilliant conversation, his soft heart, his open hand, were universally praised. No day passed, it was said, in which some distressed family had not reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his good nature, such was the keenness of his wit, that scoffers whose sarcasm all the town feared stood in craven fear of the sar casm of Dorset. All political parties esteemed and caressed him; but politics were not much to his taste. Had he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would probably have risen to the highest posts in the state; but he was born to rank so high and wealth so ample that many of the motives which impel men to engage in public affairs were wanting to him. He took just so much part in parliamentary and diplomatic business as sufficed His to show that he wanted nothing but inclination to rival Danby and Sunderland, and turned away to pursuits which pleased him better. Like many other inen who, with great natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indolent, he became an intellectual voluptuary, and a master of all those pleasing branches of knowledge which can be acquired without severe application. He was allowed to be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of architecture, of acting, that the court could show. On questions of polite learning, his decisions were regarded at all the coffee-houses as without appeal. More than one clever play which had failed on the first representation was supported by his single authority against the whole clamor of the pit, and came forth successful from the second trial. The delicacy of his taste in French composition was extolled by Saint Evremond and La Fontaine. Such a patron of letters England had never seen. bounty was bestowed with equal judgment and liberality, and was confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged from each other by literary jealousy or by dif ference of political opinion, joined in acknowledging his impartial kindness. Dryden owned that he had been saved from ruin by Dorset's princely generosity. Yet Montague and Prior, who had keenly satirized Dryden, were introduced by Dorset into public life; and the best comedy of Dryden's mortal enemy, Shadwell, was written at Dorset's country seat. The munificent earl might, if such had been his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was content to be the benefactor; for the verses which he occasionally composed, unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously cultivated, would have produced something great. In the small volume of his works may be found songs which have the easy vigor of Suckling, and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as that of Butler.* * Pepys's Diary; Prior's dedication of his poems to the Duke of Dorset; Dryden's Essay on Satire, and Dedication of the Essay on Dramatic Poesy. The affection of Dorset for his wife, and his strict fidelity to her, are men Dorset was lord lieutenant of Sussex, and to Sussex the board of regulators looked with great anxiety; for in no other county, Cornwall and Wiltshire excepted, were there so many small boroughs. He was ordered to repair No person who knew him expected that he to his post. would obey. He gave such an answer as became him, and was informed that his services were no longer needed. The interest which his many noble and amiable qualities inspired was heightened when it was known that he had received by the post an anonymous billet telling him that, if he did not promptly comply with the king's wishes, all his wit and popularity should not save him from assas sination. A similar warning was sent to Shrewsbury. Threatening letters were then much more rare than in our time. It is therefore not strange that the people, excited as they were, should have been disposed to believe that the best and noblest Englishmen were really marked out for popish daggers. Just when these letters were the talk of all London, the mutilated corpse of a noted Puritan was found in the streets. It was soon discovered that the murderer had acted from no religious or poIlitical motive. But the first suspicions of the populace fell on the papists. The mangled remains were carried in procession to the house of the Jesuits in the Savoy; and during a few hours, the fear and rage of the populace were scarcely less violent than on the day when Godfrey was borne to his grave.† The other dismissions must be more concisely related. The Duke of Somerset, whose regiment had been taken tioned with great contempt by that profligate coxcomb Sir George Etherege, in his letters from Ratisbon, Dec., 1687, and Jan. 18, 1688; Shadwell's Dedication of the Squire of Alsatia; Burnet, i., 264; Mackay's Characters. Some parts of Dorset's character are well touched in this epitaph, written by Pope: and again : "Yet soft his nature, though severe his lay;" "Bless'd courtier, who could king and country please, * Barillon, Jan., 1687; Citters, Jan. 31 + Adda, Feb. 3, 10, 1688. from him some months before, was now turned out of the lord lieutenancy of the East Riding of Yorkshire. The North Riding was taken from Viscount Fauconberg, Shropshire from Viscount Newark, and Lancashire from the Earl of Derby, grandson of that gallant Cavalier who had faced death so bravely, both on the field of battle and on the scaffold, for the house of Stuart. The Earl of Pembroke, who had recently served the crown with fidelity and spirit against Monmouth, was displaced in Wiltshire, the Earl of Rutland in Leicestershire, the Earl of Bridgewater in Buckinghamshire, the Earl of Thanet in Cumberland, the Earl of Northampton in Warwickshire, the Earl of Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and the Earl of Scarsdale in Derbyshire. Scarsdale was also deprived of a regiment of cavalry, and of an office in the household of the Princess of Denmark. She made a struggle to retain his services, and yielded only to a peremptory command of her father. The Earl of Gainsborough was ejected, not only from the lieutenancy of Hampshire, but also from the government of Portsmouth and the rangership of the New Forest, two places for which he had, only a few months before, given five thousand pounds.* The king could not find lords of great note, or, indeed, Protestant lords of any sort, who would accept the vacant offices. It was necessary to assign two shires to Jeffreys, a new man whose landed property was small, and two to Preston, who was not even an English peer. The other counties which had been left without governors were intrusted, with scarcely an exception, to known Roman Catholics, or to courtiers who had secretly promised the king to declare themselves Roman Catholics as soon as they could do so with prudence. At length the new machinery was put in action; and soon, from every corner of the realm, arrived the news of complete and hopeless failure. The catechism by which the lords lieutenants had been directed to test the senti * Barillon, Dec. 1, 1687; Citters, 8 Nov. 29 Dec. |