The rigor, too, which the king, during his abode in Scotland, had experienced from the Presbyterians, disposed him to run into the other extreme, and to bear a kindness to the party most opposite in its genius to the severity of those religionists.

The solicitations and importunities of the queen mother, the contagion of the company which he frequented, the view of a more splendid and courtly mode of worship, the hopes of indulgence in pleasure, all these causes operated powerfully on a young prince, whose careless and dissolute temper made him incapable of adhering closely to the principles of his early education.

But if the thoughtless humor of Charles rendered him an easy convert to Popery, the same disposition ever prevented the theological tenets of that sect from taking any fast hold of him.

During his vigorous state of health, while his blood was warm and his spirits high, a contempt and disregard to all religion held possession of his mind; and he might more properly be denominated a deist than a Catholic.
But in those revolutions of temper, when the love of raillery gave place to reflection, and his penetrating, but negligent understanding was clouded with fears and apprehensions, he had starts of mere sincere conviction; and a sect which always possessed his inclination, was then master of his judgment and opinion.[**] * Kennet's Register, p.

850.
* The author confesses, that the king's zeal for Popery was apt at intervals to go further than is here supposed, as appears from many passages in James II.'s Memoirs.
But though the king thus fluctuated, during his whole reign, between irreligion, which he more openly professed, and Popery, to which he retained a secret propensity, his brother the duke of York, had zealously adopted all the principles of that theological party.