ng his pardon; which
the king granting, Lord Chesterfield sought his majesty at Brussels.
Soon afterwards Barbara Palmer and her complaisant husband, a right
loyal man, joined the king's court abroad, when the intrigue begun which
was continued on the night of the monarch's arrival in London. True the
loyal PARLIAMENTARY INTELLIGENCER stated "his majesty was diverted from
his pious intention of going to Westminster to offer up his devotions
of prayer and praise in publick according to the appointment of his
Majesty, and made his oblations unto God in the presence-chamber;" but
it is, alas, equally certain, according to Oldmixon, Lord Dartmouth, and
other reliable authorities, he spent the first night of his return
in the company of Barbara Palmer. From that time this abandoned woman
exercised an influence over the king which wholly disgraced his court,
and almost ruined his kingdom.

Another prominent figure, whose history is inseparable from the king's,
was that of his majesty's brother, James, Duke of York--a man of greater
ambition and lesser talents than the merry monarch, but one whose
amorous disposition equalled the monarch's withal. At an early period
of his life the Duke of York was witness of the strife which divided his
unhappy father's kingdom. When only eight years old he was sent for by
Charles I. to York, but was forbidden by the Parliament to leave St.
James's Palace. Despite its commands he was, however, carried to
the king by the gallant Marquis of Hereford. That same year the boy
witnessed the refusal of Sir John Hotham, Governor of Hull, to admit
his majesty within the gates; and James was subsequently present at the
siege of Bristol, and the famous battle of Edgehill, when his life at
one period of the engagement was in imminent peril.

Until 1646 he continued under the guardianship of his father, when, on
the entrance of Fairfax into Oxford, the young duke was found among
the prisoners, and by Cromwell's orders committed to the charge of
Sir George Ratcliffe. A few months later he was removed to St. James's
Palace, when in company with his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, and
his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, he was placed under the care of Lord
Northumberland, who had joined the Republican cause.

Though by no means treated with unkindness, the young duke, unhappy at
the surveillance placed upon his actions and fearful of the troubles
quickly gathering over the kingdom, twice sought escape. Th