t least he was willing
to make for his religion exertions and sacrifices from which the great
majority of those who are called religious men would shrink. It seems
strange that any attractions should have drawn him into a course of life
which he must have regarded as highly criminal; and in this case
none could understand where the attraction lay. Catharine herself was
astonished by the violence of his passion. "It cannot be my beauty," she
said; "for he must see that I have none; and it cannot be my wit, for he
has not enough to know that I have any."

At the moment of the King's accession a sense of the new responsibility
which lay on him made his mind for a time peculiarly open to religious
impressions. He formed and announced many good resolutions, spoke in
public with great severity of the impious and licentious manners of the
age, and in private assured his Queen and his confessor that he would
see Catharine Sedley no more. He wrote to his mistress entreating her
to quit the apartments which she occupied at Whitehall, and to go to a
house in Saint James's Square which had been splendidly furnished for
her at his expense. He at the same time promised to allow her a large
pension from his privy purse. Catharine, clever, strongminded, intrepid,
and conscious of her power, refused to stir. In a few months it began
to be whispered that the services of Chiffinch were again employed, and
that the mistress frequently passed and repassed through that private
door through which Father Huddleston had borne the host to the bedside
of Charles. The King's Protestant ministers had, it seems, conceived a
hope that their master's infatuation for this woman might cure him
of the more pernicious infatuation which impelled him to attack their
religion. She had all the talents which could qualify her to play on his
feelings, to make game of his scruples, to set before him in a strong
light the difficulties and dangers into which he was running headlong.
Rochester, the champion of the Church, exerted himself to strengthen her
influence. Ormond, who is popularly regarded as the personification of
all that is pure and highminded in the English Cavalier, encouraged the
design. Even Lady Rochester was not ashamed to cooperate, and that in
the very worst way. Her office was to direct the jealousy of the injured
wife towards a young lady who was perfectly innocent. The whole court
took notice of the coldness and rudeness with which the Queen