He relied on the
interposition of the Scots, the intercession of foreign powers, and the
attachment of many of his English subjects. He persuaded himself that his
very enemies would blush to shed the blood of their sovereign; and that
their revenge would be appeased, and their ambition sufficiently gratified,
by the substitution in his place of one of his younger children on the
throne.[1]
But these were the dreams of a man who sought to allay his fears by
voluntary delusions. The princes of Europe looked with cold indifference
on his fate. The king of Spain during the whole contest had maintained a
friendly correspondence with the parliament. Frederic III. king of Denmark,
though he was his
[Footnote 1: Herbert, 155, 157. Whitelock, 365. Sir John Temple attributed
his tranquillity "to a strange conceit of Ormond's working for him in
Ireland. He still hangs upon that twigg; and by the enquireys he made after
his and Inchiquin's conjunction, I see he will not be beaten off it."--In
Leicester's Journal, 48.]
cousin-german, made no effort to save his life; and Henrietta could obtain
for him no interposition from France, where the infant king had been
driven from his capital by civil dissension, and she herself depended for
subsistence on the charity of the Cardinal de Retz, the leader of the
Fronde.
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