CORRESPONDENCE OF

SIR EDWARD NICHOLAS AND THE ROYAL

FAMILY,

AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES I.

THE subjoined letters, in continuation of the preceding correspondence, will be found to require little illustrative comment. They embrace the brief and unsuccessful royalist campaign which closed on the field of Worcester; they coutain illustrations of Charles the Second's distrust and dislike of his Presbyterian friends and supporters; but they derive perhaps their chief interest from the gossiping details in which the deceased King's sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, so largely indulges, and in which the fears and jealousies, the enjoyments and privations of the Exiles, the fluctuation of her nephew's hopes, Cromwell's assumption of power, the vagaries of the errant Queen of Sweden, the attempts of the Queen-mother Henrietta to make Roman Catholics of her children, and the childhood of that young Prince of Orange for whom those attempts were preparing a throne, are curiously and impartially mixed up. The letter of earnest remon strance to the Duke of Gloucester, "concerning his being tempted to turne papist," bearing the signature of his elder brother, is a somewhat strange comment on the faith in which Charles the Second died.

Sir,

PARIS,' Nov. 6, 1649. St. No.

To giue you an account of the vastnesse of this packet, give me leaue to tell you, that together with this booke web I send you, there came in half a

Charles, at the period of his father's death, was at the Hague with his brother in law, the Prince of Orange; after which he went to France to join his mother; but having been proclaimed King throughout Ireland, with the exception of Dublin and Londonderry, he would have proceeded there, had he not been forewarned that such a procedure would produce much alarm among the Protestant friends to his cause. He therefore went no farther than Jersey, where he

score persons of consideration, who with very much passion desired me to represent to Jersey, the high indignity by this base edition' offered to our blessed Master, and the great injury rendered to his Majesty that now is.

You will finde a preface to this Booke, we tends to proue that our blessed Master might be, nay perhaps was, a Papist in his heart, notwithstanding this Booke. That what instructions & com'ands were giuen to his Sonne for his firmenesse to the Protestant religion, were giuen out of politique considerations meerely, and many other particulars, wch I hope will bring it to the hands of the commonhangman.

This Marsys is one who setting out the tryall of the late King, and ye manner of his murther, stiles himselfe "Interprete et Maistre pour la langue Françoise du Roy d'Angleterre regnant à present et de son Altesse Royale le Duc d' Yorke son frere,” in wch Booke he stiles Queene Elizabeth (of euer blessed memory) Jezabell. He setts downe a false and faigned speech of the King's at y time of his being murthered; & being charged with it, he said he thought fitt to make that speech as spoken by him, since the speech he did make was poore and below a King. He hath sett forth diuers other things, an extract whereof I shall shortly send you, the least of we would deserve a whipping in England in good was proclaimed King, a short time previous to the date of this Remonstrance. To what Courtier or Minister about Charles's person it was addressed, does not appear; but it was written by Sir Edward Nicholas during his retreat from England, after the death of his royal master. He appears at its date to have been resident with his relative, Sir Richard Browne, who still remained Chargé d'Affaires at the French Court.

The wish here expressed was not fulfilled specifically; though afterwards in some measure gratified by the publica tion of "Eikon Aklastos" in 1651, as a vindication of the original work against the attacks of "Eikonoklastes." The reader may find some interest in turning from this letter to the very copious essay on the subject by Mr. Nichols in Literary Anecdotes, vol. i. p. 522.