BOOK in the Romish church; while the descendants of

V.

1649,

Icon Basi

like spuri

ous.

his sister, by a female branch, have been raised to the secure possession of that throne from which his son was expelled.

The history of this unfortunate reign may be concluded with an account of the ICON BASILIKE, or the Portraiture of his Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings, published a few days after his death. As a posthumous work of the late king, it was received with enthusiasm by the royalists, and was rapidly diffused. Editions were multiplied beyond any former example, and the whole nation was edified with the meek and forgiving piety of its martyred prince. An obscure rumour or suspicion prevailed at the time, that the work was a political forgery of some royalist in his master's name. A note prefixed by the earl of Anglesea to a copy of the book, and discovered after his death, ascribed it to Dr. Gauden, on the authority of Charles II. and his brother, who had communicated the same information to Burnet. The claims of Gauden were attested by his friend 'Dr. Walker, whose evidence was confirmed afterwards by the discovery of original letters, and of Mrs. Gauden's posthumous narrative of the fact; and the authorities appeared to be so strong, or so equally balanced, that the royalists had recourse to the more fallacious criterion of composition and style. There, however, the internal evidence was alike inconclusive. The language at least and remarks, if not the secrets, of a statesman were to

be expected in the genuine reflections of a monarch, written upon each political event that occurred. Like the spurious political legacies, however, of other statesmen, the ICON BASILIKE contained nothing beyond the familiar meditations and the limited observation of a court divine and, if more chaste and correct than Gauden's, the style appeared, when impartially examined, to be far more elegant and diffusive than that of the king 68. Such was the state of this acrimonious controversy, till the publication of the Clarendon papers, in which Gauden, in a letter to the chancellor, claims the merit and the reward of this pious fraud. He appeals to the bishop of Winchester, who composed a part, and conveyed the whole

68 Whoever peruses Gauden's Life of Hooker, and the dedication prefixed, will find a command of language, periods nicely balanced, frequently antithetical, and a style disfigured by a capricious affectation of wit and imagery, but flowing and oratorical beyond the age. Imagery such as Gauden's, is not wanting in the Icon; and his attempt to disguise and retrench his exuberance would reduce it naturally to a chaste and temperate style, which his taste and genius, unrestrained by the necessity of disguise, would never have inspired. But the compositions of Charles are either harsh and abrupt like his letters, or succinct and irregular like his controversy with Henderson, and his messages from the Isle of Wight, the only certain productions of his pen. It is equally difficult to conceive that such a style should be elevated occasionally to that of the ICON, or that his accustomed eloquence, in his transition from occasional meditations to more important dispatches, should desert his pen.

BOOK

V.

1649.

V.

BOOK of the performance to the king; and the silence of Clarendon in his history, and his confession in a letter, that the circumstance "had indeed been

1649,

imparted to him as a secret, and when it ceased "to be a secret, it would please none but Mil"ton," joined with the conviction of the royal brothers, must outweigh the vague, and contradictory reports which the royalists have preserved 69.

1

THE

HISTORY

OF

SCOTLAND.

BOOK VI.

Negociations with Charles II.-Expedition, Defeat, and Execution of Montrose.-King's Reception in Scotland.-Cromwell's Invasion-and Victory at Dunbar:-March into England, and Battle of Worcester.-Conquest and Situation of Scotland under the Usurpation.-Revolution in England on Cromwell's Death.-The Restoration.

UCH was the critical situation to which Scot- BOOK

SUCH

land was reduced, on the death of Charles,

po

VI.

1649.

Policy of

that the minutest error or misfortune in its licy became disastrous in the extreme. Whatever the Scots. principles of liberty had been originally inserted. in its constitution, the democratical forms and schemes of government agitated in England, had made no impression upon a nation to whose genius they were adverse; as they were irreconcil,

BOOK able with the feudal aristocracy to which the

VI.

1649.

people were inured. The most violent of the parties into which the nation was divided, had not yet renounced their attachment to monarchy, and if the loyalty of the people was repressed by the civil wars, the execution of their native, hereditary sovereign was an event well calculated to revive the unextinguished flame. His death was ascribed to the surrender of his person to the English parliament; and an event which was never intended, and could not be foreseen, was to be expiated only, in the public opinion, by the reception of his son as their lawful king. But the movements of popular indignation were opposed by political considerations, and regulated by others of a religious nature. Their monarchy, re-established in the son of their deceased sovereign, could not fail, as an hostile defiance, to provoke the resentment and incur the vengeance of the rising commonwealth; and Hamilton's disastrous expedition might convince them, that their utmost strength was inadequate to support his claims upon the English throne. Their apprehensions however of a war, the more dangerous and formidable from the exhausted state to which the country was reduced, were superseded by the obligations both of their national covenant, and of the solemn league and covenant with England, in which the preservation of monarchy was particularly enjoined. But the same covenants, as they required the pro