Note 550 — Chapter XI

Several of these appear in Somers Tracts, vol. vii. The king's nearest friends were of course not backward in praising him, though a little at the expense of their consciences. "In a word," says Hyde to a correspondent in 1659, "if being the best protestant and the best Englishman of the nation can do the king good at home, he must prosper with and by his own subjects." Clar. State Papers, 541. Morley says he had been to see Judge Hale, who asked him questions about the king's character and firmness in the protestant religion. Id. 736. Morley's exertions to dispossess men of the notion that the king and his brother were inclined to popery, are also mentioned by Kennet in his Register, 818: a book containing very copious information as to this particular period. Yet Morley could hardly have been without strong suspicions as to both of them.