Note 383 — Chapter X · (continued 2)

The king's manners were not good. He spoke and behaved to ladies with indelicacy in public. See Warburton's Notes on Clarendon, vii. 629, and a passage in Milton's Defensio pro populo Anglicano, quoted by Harris and Brodie. He once forgot himself so far as to cane Sir Henry Vane for coming into a room of the palace reserved for persons of higher rank. Carte's Ormond, i. 366, where other instances are mentioned by that friendly writer. He had in truth none who loved him, till his misfortunes softened his temper, and excited sympathy.

An anecdote, strongly intimating the violence of Charles's temper, has been rejected by his advocates. It is said that Burnet, in searching the Hamilton papers, found that the king, on discovering the celebrated letter of the Scots covenanting lords to the King of France, was so incensed that he sent an order to Sir William Balfour, lieutenant-governor of the Tower, to cut off the head of his prisoner, Lord Loudon; but that the Marquis of Hamilton, to whom Balfour immediately communicated this, urged so strongly on the king that the city would be up in arms on this violence, that with reluctance he withdrew the warrant. This story is told by Oldmixon, Hist. of the Stuarts, p. 140. It was brought forward on Burnet's authority, and also on that of the Duke of Hamilton, killed in 1712, by Dr. Birch, no incompetent judge of historical evidence; it seems confirmed by an intimation given by Burnet himself in his Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton, p. 161. It is also mentioned by Scott of Scotstarvet, a contemporary writer. Harris, p. 350, quotes other authorities, earlier than the anecdote told by Burnet; and upon the whole, I think the story deserving credit, and by no means so much to be slighted as the Oxford editor of Burnet has thought fit to do.