e hundred
thousand more. 'Pity!' do you say? Reader mine, there is enough land in
parks at this present day in broad England to feed that wretched one
eighth of her population who are now buried at public expense. That
dis-parking business was at any rate not badly done.
Little more is seen of the young lord through the war. In 1654 he is at
King Charles's court in France--is sent to London to procure supplies of
money for the king--is caught and Towered, where he rests for several
years, sorrowfully poor, if we may judge from a letter to Colonel
Copley, in which he declares that 'I am forced to begge, if you could
possible, eyther to helpe me with tenne pownds to this bearer, or to
make vse of the coache and to goe to Mr. Clerke, and if he could this
daye helpe me to fifty pownds then to paye yourself the five pownds I
owe you out of them.' A melancholy letter, after all that glittering
Arthur's-court splendor of first, second, and third tables of nobility,
Masters of Robes and Records--a letter in which there seems some trace
of getting money by 'projects' and 'bubbles'--whether of doing little
bills or by Notable Inventions, I will not say. Prison does not, it is
true, last forever, but its doors open on a scene of baseness blacker
than that which brought the brave old marquis with sorrow to his grave.
The tale is told in a paragraph:
'On the king's restoration, the Marquis of Worcester was one of the
first to congratulate his Majesty on the happy event, though the
situation of the unfortunate nobleman was little bettered by the
change; indeed it appeared but as the signal for new persecutions,
as one of the earliest public acts of the ungrateful monarch may be
characterized as an insidious attempt to set aside the claims of
his earliest and best friend.'
'Put not thy trust in princes.' To contrast this treatment of poor
Worcester with the fervent written promises of the ungrateful 'C. R.' or
Carolus Rex, might have shook the faith of Dr. Johnson in his beloved
'merry monarch.' The earlier letters of the king to the marquis, when
something was expected of the 'gallant cavalier,' and the latter had
'money to lend,' are painfully amusing:
OXFORD, _Feb. 12._ * * 'I am sensible of the dangers yu will
undergo, and ye greate trouble and expences you must be at, not
being able to assist yu who have already spente aboue a Million of
Crowns in my Service, neither
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