Word: pearsons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Merry Monarch, by Hesketh Pearson...
Merry Monarch, by Hesketh Pearson...
Dismal Jimmy. Charles played his international affairs, as Pearson sees it, with the skill of a chess master. He captured New Amsterdam, and thereby, as it turned out, consolidated England's hold in the New World. Deftly, he outdistanced The Netherlands as a maritime power. Whenever he needed cash, he allowed Louis XIV to bribe him, but contrived to give little value for money. In 1670 Louis agreed to pay Charles ?160,000 to become a Catholic, but-knowing well that open conversion would cause civil war and wreck an Anglo-French alliance-he asked Charles to defer...
...worst temblor of the early Restoration was a delirium of anti-Catholic hatred. Although the frenzy was started by a supposed plot to murder the King, Charles tempered the witch hunt when he could, signed death warrants when he had to, and eventually restored order. Pearson tells the famed story of how, at the furor's height, a boisterous mob stopped a gilded carriage, thinking that Charles's French mistress, Louise de Keroualle, was inside. Nell Gwynn saved matters by sticking her head out and saying, "Pray, good people, be civil: I am the Protestant whore...
Biographer Pearson leaves Charles with a balanced assessment that recalls one of Shaw's prose arias: "His imaginative nature made him gentle, but also weak. His intelligence made him tolerant, but also indifferent. His rational disposition made him considerate, but also negligent. His sense of loyalty made him generous, but also extravagant. His mental balance gave him humour as well as irresponsibility. His natural charity brought indolence as well as callousness." Withal, concludes Pearson, he was "the sanest, most human and civilised of monarchs...