Note 34 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
"I like Charles the First," says Helen Burns in Jane Eyre, Chapter VI.; "I respect him—I pity him, poor murdered king! Yes, his enemies were the worst: they shed blood they had no right to shed. How dared they kill him!" Montagu of course would know that his own ancestor brought over Charles the Second on the Restoration. Hence his warmth. We now understand the origin of the detached fragment in Jane Eyre.