of raising a little pocket-money, made a merry
bargain. He sold Dunkirk to the French
King for five millions of livres. When I
think of the dignity to which Oliver Cromwell
raised England in the eyes of foreign
powers, and when I think of the manners in
which he gained for England this very
Dunkirk, I am much inclined to consider that if
the Merry Monarch had been made to follow
his father for this action he would have
received his just deserts.

Though he was like his father in none of
that father's greater qualities, he was
undoubtedly like him in being worthy of no
trust. When he sent that letter to the
Parliament, from Breda, he did expressly promise
that all sincere religious opinions should be
respected. Yet he was no sooner firm in his
power than he consented to one of the worst
Acts of Parliament ever passed. Under
this law, every minister who should not give
his solemn assent to the Prayer-Book by a
certain day was declared to be a minister no
longer, and to be deprived of his church. The
consequence of this was that some two
thousand honest men were taken from their
congregations, and reduced to dire poverty
and distress. It was followed by another
outrageous law, called the Conventicle Act,
by which any person above the age of
sixteen who was present at any religious
service not according to the Prayer-Book, was
to be imprisoned three months for the first
offence, and six for the second, and to be
transported for the third. This Act alone
filled the prisons, which were then most
villanous dungeons, to overflowing.

The Covenanters in Scotland had already
fared no better. A base Parliament, usually
known as the Drunken Parliament, in
consequence of its principal members being seldom
sober, had been got together to make laws
against the Covenanters, and to force all men
to be of one mind in religious matters.
The MARQUIS OF ARGYLE, relying on the
King's honour, had given himself up to
him; but he was wealthy, and his enemies
wanted his wealth. He was tried for
treason on the evidence of some private
letters, in which he had expressed opinions—
as well he might —more favourable to the
government of the late Lord Protector than
of the present merry and religious King. He
was executed, as were two men of mark
among the Covenanters; and SHARP, a traitor
who had once been the friend of the
Presbyterians and betrayed them, was made
Archbishop of St. Andrew's, to teach the Scotch
how to like bishops.

Things being in this merry state at home,
the Merry Monarch undertook a war with
the Dutch; principally because they
interfered with an African company, established
with the two objects of buying gold-
dust and slaves, of which the Duke of York
was a leading member. After some
preliminary hostilities, the said Duke sailed to
the coast of Holland with a fleet of ninety-
eight vessels of war, and four fire-ships. This
engaged with the Dutch fleet, of no fewer
than one hundred and thirteen ships. In the
great battle between the two forces the Dutch
lost eighteen ships, four admirals, and seven
thousand men. But, the English on shore
were in no mood of exultation when they
heard the news.

For, this was the year and the time of the
Great Plague in London. During the winter
of one thousand six hundred and sixty-four
it had been whispered about, that some
few people had died here and there of
the disease called the Plague, in some of
the unwholesome suburbs around London.
News was not published at that time as
it is now, and some people believed these
rumours and some disbelieved them, and they
were soon forgotten. But, in the month of
May, one thousand six hundred and sixty-five,
it began to be said all over the town that the
disease had burst out with great violence in
St. Giles's, and that the people were dying
in great numbers. This soon turned out to
be awfully true. The roads out of London
were choked up by people endeavouring to
escape from the infected city, and large sums
were paid for any kind of conveyance. The
disease soon spread so fast that it was
necessary to shut up the houses in which
sick people were, and to cut them off from
communication with the living. Every one
of these houses was marked on the outside of
the door with a red cross, and the words,
Lord, have mercy upon us! The streets
were all deserted, grass grew in the public
ways, and there was a dreadful silence in the
air. When night came on, dismal rumblings
used to be heard, and these were the wheels
of the death-carts, attended by men with
veiled faces and holding cloths to their
mouths, who rang doleful bells and cried in
a loud and solemn voice, " Bring out your
dead!" The corpses put into these carts
were buried by torch-light in great pits;
no service being performed over them; all
men being afraid to stay for a moment on
the brink of the ghastly graves. In the
general fear, children ran away from their
parents, and parents from their children.
Some who were taken ill, died alone and without
any help. Some were stabbed or strangled
by hired nurses, who robbed them of all their
money and stole the very beds on which they
lay. Some went mad, dropped from the
windows, ran through the streets, and in
their pain and frenzy flung themselves into
the river.

These were not all the horrors of the time.
The wicked and dissolute, in wild desperation,
sat in the taverns singing roaring songs,
and were stricken as they drank, and went
out and died. The fearful and superstitious
persuaded themselves that they saw
supernatural sights —burning swords in the sky,
gigantic arms and darts. Others pretended