Note 600 — Chapter XI
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The suspicions against Charles were very strong in England before the restoration, so as to alarm his emissaries: "Your master," Mordaunt writes to Ormond, Nov. 10, 1659, "is utterly ruined as to his interest here in whatever party, if this be true." Carte's Letters, ii. 264, and Clar. State Papers, iii. 602. But an anecdote related in Carte's Life of Ormond, ii. 255, and Harris's Lives, v. 54, which has obtained some credit, proves, if true, that he had embraced the Roman catholic religion as early as 1659, so as even to attend mass. This cannot be reckoned out of question; but the tendency of the king's mind before his return to England is to be inferred from all his behaviour. Kennet (Complete Hist. of Eng. iii. 237) plainly insinuates that the project for restoring popery began at the treaty of the Pyrenees; and see his Register, p. 852.