502 "Thrice crowned, Life's mingled yarn remains the same.”

that the Duchess of Orleans, his own reputed-father's sister, was poisoned by her husband, owing to jealousy of her having shown much favour to young Monmouth. This was in June, 1670. Even in his boyhood, the public and private blandishments of Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine, had compelled him to be separated, to preserve him from being wholly contaminated. Later, when Nell Gwynne was in the ascendant, he was continually to be found closeted with her, as though to outrage every notion of conventional propriety. The beginning of a feud between him and his nominal uncle, the Duke of York, was caused by the thoughtless young man having intrigued with a Lady who was already notoriously a mistress of Charles's gloomy brother, but who threw over both her lovers for the capricious Duke of Buckingham. Despite the dangerous conspiracy in which he was engaged with Ford Lord Grey, Monmouth debauched his friend's wife. Wealth and rank, the Dukedom of Buccleugh, came to this spoilt child of fortune as the dower of his young bride, the accomplished, intelligent, and ambitious Anne Scott; his undisguised infidelities to her began before the consummation of espousals, and were continued to the very last, when he avowed no repentance for his conduct with the misguided Lady Henrietta Wentworth. At his execution he refused even then to see that his conduct had been a sin against religion, as well as a wrong to the wife who had loved him and been faithful during years of neglect.

But from an early time he had been flattered and fooled to the top of his bent. Charles permitted the world to know how much dearer to him was this eldest son of his than the Duke of Richmond, or the other irregular offspring of different mothers. Monmouth was adorned with the purple robes for Court mourning, such as were worn by none but those of Royal blood. The conferring on him such dignities as the command of the Royal Guards and the Chancellorship of Cambridge was indefensible: the latter being a position for which he had no intellectual claim, whatever fitness his military bearing might give him for the other. But neither his questionable birth, his unchaste affections, or his riotous behaviour among the dissipated companions of his own age, sufficed to remove from him the hopes and the dangerous attentions of the Whig citizens and plotters, whenever Shaftesbury saw fit to point him out as a likely person to become a popular idol, a Protestant Hero, and, if conspiracies or civil war could be successful, the future king. Such was the false lustre of "England's Darling."

[Roxburghe Collection, II. 140; Pepys, II. 219; Euing, No. 94.]

England's Darling ;

Or,

Great Britain's Joy and hope on that Noble Prince

JAMES, DUKE OF MONMOUTH.

Brave Monmouth, England's glory,
Hated of none but Papist and Tory,

May'st thou in thy Noble Father's love remain,
Who happily over this land doth Reign.

[Its own] Tune of Young Jemmy, or Philander [pages 33, 38].

1 The attack on Maestricht by Louis XIV. in the second Dutch War, June, 1673, when Monmouth won the counterscarp, and twice carried the half-moon in front of the Brussels gate, being the first to enter.

2 Rhineberg and Orsol, Wesel, Burick, etc., in 1672. In relief of Mons, at St. Denis, in August, 1678; now against Louis and in conjunction with William of Orange. See the ballad of "Valiant Monmouth Revived," on an after page.

3 See the ballads on Monmouth at Bothwell Bridge, a few pages later in this volume, and the account of the Murder of Archbishop Sharp, on p. 144.

There he the Rebels' force withstood, and did their Might oppose,

Both for the King and Countries' good, in spight of all his foes.

48

But oh! unhappy Fates!

a curse on Pride and Malice; The Popish plotting States

have banish'd him the Palace.

They turn'd him out of grace of late,
of dignity and fame,

And every mighty place of State;
Yet Jemmy's still the same.

Maliciously they plot

(against all sense and reason) 'Gainst Shaftesbury and Scot,

to cloak their Popish Treason: Tories and Papists all agree to blast his spotless fame; But spight of all their policy, Young Jemmy's still the same.

For still to lose his blood

young Jemmy does importune, And for his Countries' good,

to spend his Life and Fortune, For to support the Church and State, our Liberties and Laws,

56

[Scot Monmouth.

64

Against their Malice, Plots, and Hate,

that wou'd our rights oppose.

72

Let all good men implore

for Jemmy's Restauration, Whose conduct must restore the ruines of our Nation:

That he to Charles's praise may live,

our freedome to maintain,

When Jemmy shall his fame retrieve,

and be in grace again.

80

Printed for J. Wright, J. Clark, W. Thackeray, and T.

Passenger.

[In Black-letter. Four woodcuts. The second, being the man with bandy legs, here indicates Ford Lord Grey of Werk, the cold Caleb" of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel; concerning whose evil guidance of Monmouth a particular account is given hereafter, in connection with The Cabal, and The Rye House Plot. The oval portrait of a man, on p. 505, was originally intended to represent Prince Rupert. Date of the ballad, certainly before the end of 1682.]