onsternation.--Dr. Ken questions his
majesty.--A Benedictine monk sent for.--Charles professes catholicity
and receives the Sacraments.--Farewell to all.--His last night on
earth.--Daybreak and death.--He rests in peace.

His majesty's habits changed but little with the flight of time, To the
end of his reign the court continued brilliant and profligate. Wits,
courtezans, and adventurers crowded the royal drawing-rooms, and
conversed without restraint; the monarch pursued his pleasures with
unsatiated zest, taking to himself two new mistresses, Lady Shannon
and Catherine Peg, who respectively bore him a daughter and a son, duly
created Countess of Yarmouth and Earl of Plymouth. For a while, indeed,
a shadow fell upon the life of the merry monarch, when, in 1683, he was
roused to a sense of danger by discovery of the Rye House conspiracy.

This foul plot, entered into by the Whigs on failure of the Exclusion
Bill, had for its object the murder of his majesty and of the Duke of
York. Before arriving at maturity its existence and intentions were
revealed by one of the conspirators, when William Lord Russell, the Earl
of Essex, and Algernon Sidney, second son of the Earl of Leicester, were
arrested and charged with high treason. My Lord Essex died in the Tower
by his own hand; Lord Russell was condemned on testimony of one witness,
and duly executed; as was likewise Algernon Sidney, whose writings on
Republicanism were used as evidence against him. On the revelation
of this wicked scheme the country became wildly excited, and the king
grievously afflicted. A melancholy seized upon his majesty, who stirred
not abroad without double guards; and the private doors of Whitehall and
avenues of the park were closed.

From this condition, however, he gradually recovered, and resumed his
usual habits. Accordingly, we find him engaged in "luxurious dalliance
and prophaneness" with the Duchess of Mazarine, and visiting the Duchess
of Portsmouth betimes in her chamber, where that bold and voluptuous
woman, fresh risen from bed, sat in loose garments talking to the king
and his gallants, the while her maids combed her beautiful hair.

"I can never forget," says John Evelyn, writing on the 4th of February,
1685, "the inexpressible luxury and prophaneness, gaming, and all
dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfullnesse of God (it being
Sunday evening), which this day se'nnight I was witnesse of, the king
sitting and toying wi