Note 86 — BOOK XI.
Reading edition
Evelyn, certainly no Whig, gives the following description of a Sunday at court:—“I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming, and all dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of God, it being Sunday, which this day se’enight I was witness of. The king sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, and Mazarine. A French boy singing love songs in that glorious gallery, while about seventy of the great courtiers, and other dissolute persons, were at basset round a large table; a bank of at least £2000 in gold before them, upon which the gentlemen who were with me made reflections with astonishment.” Mem. vol. i. p. 585.