There is a fatality attending the verses of most time-serving poets. Waller never wrote a court poem well but when he lauded that great man, the Protector. When the statue of “the Martyr” was set up, _fourteen years_ after the Restoration--so tardy was filial affection--Waller wrote the following dull and unworthy lines about the statue of a faithless king:-- “That the first Charles does here in triumph ride, See his son reign where he a martyr died, And people pay that reverence as they pass (Which then he wanted) to the sacred brass Is not th’ effect of gratitude alone, To which we owe the statue and the stone; But Heaven this lasting monument has wrought, That mortals may eternally be taught Rebellion, though successful, is but vain, And kings so kill’d rise conquerors again. This truth the royal image does proclaim Loud as the trumpet of surviving fame.” Andrew Marvell, one of the most powerful of lampoon writers, and the very Gillray of political satirists, wrote some bitter lines on the statue of the so-called Martyr at Charing Cross, lines which in an earlier reign would have cost the honest daring poet his ears, if not his head. There was an equestrian stone statue of Charles II. at Woolchurch (Woolwich?), and the poet imagines the two horses, the one of stone and the other of brass, talking together one evening, when the two riders, weary of sitting all day, had stolen away together for a chat. “WOOLCHURCH.--To see Dei gratia writ on the throne, And the king’s wicked life says God there is none. CHARING.--That he should be styled Defender of the Faith Who believes not a word what the Word of God saith. WOOLCHURCH.--That the Duke should turn Papist and that church defy For which his own father a martyr did die. CHARING.--Tho’ he changed his religion, I hope he’s so civil Not to think his own father has gone to the devil.” Upon the brazen horse being asked his opinion of the Duke of York, it replies with terrible truth and force:-- “The same that the frogs had of Jupiter’s stork. With the Turk in his head and the Pope in his heart, Father Patrick’s disciple will make England smart. If e’er he be king, I know Britain’s doom: We must all to the stake or be converts to Rome. Ah! Tudor! ah! Tudor! of Stuarts enough. None ever reigned like old Bess in her ruff. * * * * * WOOLCHURCH.--But can’st thou devise when kings will be mended? CHARING.--When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended.” In April 1810 the sword, buckles, and straps fell from the statue.[385] The king’s sword was stolen on the day on which Queen Victoria went to open the Royal Exchange.