oftentimes change his own opinion for a
worse, and follow the advice of men that did not judge so well as
himself. This made him more irresolute than the conjuncture of his
affairs would admit; if he had been of a rougher and more imperious
nature, he would have found more respect and duty. And his not
applying some severe cures to approaching evils proceeded from the
lenity of his nature, and the tenderness of his conscience, which, in
all cases of blood, made him choose the softer way, and not hearken to
severe counsels, how reasonable soever urged. This only restrained him
from pursuing his advantage.

As he excelled in all other virtues, so in temperance he was so strict
that he abhorred all debauchery to that degree, that, at a great
festival solemnity, where he once was, when very many of the nobility
of the English and Scots were entertained, being told by one who
withdrew from thence, what vast drafts of wine they drank, and "that
there was one earl who had drunk most of the rest down, and was not
himself moved or altered," the king said "that he deserved to be
hanged"; and that earl coming shortly after into the room where his
majesty was, in some gaiety, to shew how unhurt he was from that
battle, the king sent some one to bid him withdraw from his majesty's
presence; nor did he in some days after appear before him.

So many miraculous circumstances contributed to his ruin, that men
might well think that heaven and earth conspired it. Tho he was, from
the first declension of his power, so much betrayed by his own
servants, that there were very few who remained faithful to him, yet
that treachery proceeded not always from any treasonable purpose to do
him any harm, but from particular and personal animosities against
other men. And afterward, the terror all men were under of the
parliament, and the guilt they were conscious of themselves, made them
watch all opportunities to make themselves gracious to those who could
do them good; and so they became spies upon their master, and from one
piece of knavery were hardened and confirmed to undertake another,
till at last they had no hope of preservation but by the destruction
of their master.

And after all this, when a man might reasonably believe that less than
a universal defection of three nations could not have reduced a great
king to so ugly a fate, it is most certain that, in that very hour,
when he was thus wickedly murdered in the sight of the sun, he h