CHAPTER LXV.
[Illustration: 1-802-hyde-park.jpg HYDE PARK] CHARLES II.
{1668.} Since the restoration, England had attained a situation which had never been experienced in any former period of her government, and which seemed the only one that could fully insure, at once, her tranquillity and her liberty: the king was in continual want of supply from the parliament, and he seemed willing to accommodate himself to that dependent situation.

Instead of reviving those claims of prerogative, so strenuously insisted on by his predecessors, Charles had strictly confined himself within the limits of law, and had courted, by every art of popularity, the affections of his subjects.

Even the severities, however blamable, which he had exercised against nonconformists, are to be considered as expedients by which he strove to ingratiate himself with that party which predominated in parliament.
But notwithstanding these promising appearances, there were many circumstances which kept the government from resting steadily on that bottom on which it was placed.

The crown, having lost almost all its ancient demesnes, relied entirely on voluntary grants of the people; and the commons, not fully accustomed to this new situation, were not yet disposed to supply, with sufficient liberality, the necessities of the crown.

They imitated too strictly the example of their predecessors in a rigid frugality of public money; and neither sufficiently considered the indigent condition of their prince, nor the general state of Europe, where every nation, by its increase both of magnificence and force, had made great additions to all public expenses.