36 Depraved character of the court of Charles II. DEPRAVITY OF MANNERS. Ch. 14. reigned supreme, and was suffered to insult the patient and blameless successor of Henrietta Maria. No man of spirit could willingly associate with the insolent favourite who first debauched the wife, and then, with her assistance, murdered the husband;d still less with the audacious adventurer, who, having stolen the crown of England, and attempted, with every accompaniment of ignominy, the life of the most illustrious subject in the realm, not only received substantial marks of the royal favour, but was selected as one of the choicest companions of his majesty's lighter hours. Society must have sunk low, indeed, when such outrages on decency as these could be safely practised. We shall in vain seek for a parallel to the Court of Charles the Second in the history of his predecessors. Edward the Fourth, selfish and luxurious as he was, appears to have been not wholly regardless of decency, even in times when public stews were licensed and registered. We do not read that Jane Shore was admitted into the palace of Elizabeth Woodville, nor that the princely Plantagenet ever associated with felons, or suffered the insolent presumption of minions and pimps. Even There is no tale of cruelty and profligacy more revolting than the well-authenticated case referred to above. The Duke of Buckingham, having seduced the Countess of Shrewsbury, picked a quarrel with the Earl, and assassinated him under the form of a duel, while the Countess, habited as a page, held his horse. • Colonel Blood. The marvellous stories of his seizure of the crown, and of his attempt to hang the Duke of Ormond at Tyburn, are well known. PROFLIGACY OF THE COURT. Henry the Eighth was careful to veil his lust and cruelty under the sanctions of religion and law. Among the successors of Charles, the first and second sovereigns of the House of Hanover equalled him in the grossness of their sensuality, but were far from displaying a like shameless indifference to public decency. It is not until we come down to a time within living memory, that we find the crown dishonoured by a prince as selfish and debauched, as false and ungrateful as Charles, without that easy good nature and good breeding, which went far to palliate the vices and the follies of the merry monarch. Ch. 14. gacy of the Charles II. 37 Monarchy having been fully re-established by Open proflithe Restoration, the old cavalier party, their ser- favourites of vices and sufferings alike forgotten, soon dwindled and died away. The personal influence of Charles the Second ceased in course of time; but it was long before either morals or manners shewed any material improvement. The savage profligacy of men of fashion ceased to be openly exhibited. Knights of the shire were not in danger of being waylaid and maimed by courtiers for being too plain spoken with regard to the scandals of Whitehall. A nobleman of the time of the Hanover succession could not with impunity employ bullies to wait for and murder a poor player or posture-master who had unwittingly given him offence. But under the successors of Charles, f See the trials of Lord Mohun and Lord Semphill. 38 Ch. 14. Spread of infidelity. SPREAD OF INFIDELITY. the coarseness and depravity of manners were abundantly manifested. I need not dwell upon the examples furnished by particular reigns, since there is hardly any instance of grossness and profligacy since the Revolution which cannot be matched from the records of society, during the first half at least, of the reign of George the Third. Infidelity and immorality, which broke out like a plague at the Restoration, expended their virulence during the reign of Charles, and subsided into a chronic indifference to religion, and a conventional disregard of moral restraint. The disease which had hitherto been confined, for the most part, to the higher orders, now spread among the inferior classes. Revelation was either rejected altogether, or adopted in some extravagant or fantastic form; and there was hardly a medium between stolid insensibility and frantic zeal among the half-educated and uneducated mass of the community. I have already endeavoured to show, that these were the results of breaking up the ancient foundations of faith, without providing an adequate substitute for the spiritual machinery which was destroyed. The subversion of an established doctrine, either of morals or politics, has always proved a dangerous experiment, even among a people advanced in the arts of civilized life; but the subversion of an established creed, which has from time immemorial held an ignorant people in subjection, is another word for spiritual anarchy. STATE OF THE CHURCH. Excepting, of course, the adherents of the ancient faith, no candid student of the history of this country will perhaps question that the fall of the Roman church has in the end promoted the interests of religion, as it undoubtedly has been conducive to the social progress of the nation; but the loss of AUTHORITY, which was buried in the ruins of Rome, is a loss which can never be repaired. Ch. 14. 39 the Church. The office-bearers of the Anglican Church soon Condition of experienced the want of authority derived from usage and tradition. In an evil hour they sought to remedy the defect by claiming divine right for their temporal head. This tenet, which went to the root of civil liberty, was, therefore, roughly assailed; and not only the establishment, but religion itself, suffered injury in the conflict which ensued. The Church of England, for nearly two centuries after the Reformation, instead of attending to the spiritual nurture of the people, was engaged in polemical and political controversy. The doctrine taught from the pulpits of the establishment after the Great Rebellion was, for the most part, a dry and cold morality, which bore only a distant allusion to the beautiful and affecting record of the Atonement. The lives and characters of the clergy were ill fitted to compensate for the poverty of their creed. The spoliation of the Church by Henry the Eighth; the abolition of masses and other offices which yielded considerable emoluments to the secular as well as 40 Inconsistent lives of the clergy. IMMORALITY OF THE CLERGY. Ch. 14. the regular clergy, left the clerical profession without the means of decent support. We learn from writers during the reign of Elizabeth and her successor, that people no longer sent their children to schools and universities, knowing that they might gain a livelihood in any calling better than in the ministry. The consequence was that the lower ranks of the Church were recruited from an inferior class, who degraded the order to their own level, and brought religion into contempt. The curate of the seventeenth, and the first half at least of the eighteenth century, in point of education, was little above his flock; and, in social position, he was certainly below the yeomen and tradesmen of the parish. He was often obliged to eke out a subsistence for his ragged and halfstarved family by the labour of his hands; and his children were brought up to earn their bread by servile labour. The vices and foibles incident to a position theoretically one of dignity and authority, but in which it was really difficult to maintain self-respect, were the constant theme of ridicule to the satirists of the age. The higher ranks of the clergy, though free from the degrading influences of abject poverty, seldom fulfilled the duties, or ever regarded much the outward decencies of their calling. The rector or vicar was often a pluralist, and, therefore, an absentee; or, if he lived upon his glebe, he was a kind of ecclesiastical squire, differing only from other country gentlemen in the discharge of the formal duties of |