life of
guilt by rebukes as sharp and bold as those which David had heard
from Nathan and Herod from the Baptist. On the other hand, zealous
Protestants, whose favourite theme was the laxity of Popish casuists
and the wickedness of doing evil that good might come, had attempted
to obtain advantages for their own Church in a way which all Christians
regarded as highly criminal. The victory of the cabal of evil
counsellors was therefore complete. The King looked coldly on Rochester.
The courtiers and foreign ministers soon perceived that the Lord
Treasurer was prime minister only in name. He continued to offer his
advice daily, and had the mortification to find it daily rejected. Yet
he could not prevail on himself to relinquish the outward show of power
and the emoluments which he directly and indirectly derived from his
great place. He did his best, therefore, to conceal his vexations from
the public eye. But his violent passions and his intemperate habits
disqualified him for the part of a dissembler. His gloomy looks, when he
came out of the council chamber, showed how little he was pleased
with what had passed at the board; and, when the bottle had gone round
freely, words escaped him which betrayed his uneasiness. [70]

He might, indeed, well be uneasy. Indiscreet and unpopular measures
followed each other in rapid succession. All thought of returning to the
policy of the Triple Alliance was abandoned. The King explicitly avowed
to the ministers of those continental powers with which he had lately
intended to ally himself, that all his views had undergone a change, and
that England was still to be, as she had been under his grandfather,
his father, and his brother, of no account in Europe. "I am in no
condition," he said to the Spanish Ambassador, "to trouble myself about
what passes abroad. It is my resolution to let foreign affairs take
their course, to establish my authority at home, and to do something for
my religion." A few days later he announced the same intentions to the
States General. [71] From that time to the close of his ignominious
reign, he made no serious effort to escape from vassalage, though, to
the last, he could never hear, without transports of rage, that men
called him a vassal.

The two events which proved to the public that Sunderland and
Sunderland's party were victorious were the prorogation of the
Parliament from February to May, and the departure of Castelmaine for
Rome with the appoi