But now we must think about the king. Though he was a very merry man, he was far from being a good one. In the first part of his reign he listened to good advice, especially that given to him by Lord Clarendon, who had stayed with him all the time he was unhappy and poor, and while he was forced to live out of England. But it was not long before he neglected all the good and old friends of his father or of the people, and began to keep company with a number of gay men, who were always laughing and making jokes when they were seen; but they gave the king bad advice in secret, and when they were trusted by him they behaved so ill to the people, that if it had not been for fear of another civil war, they would have tried to send Charles out of England again. The Duke of Lauderdale, one of Charles’s greatest friends, was sent to Scotland to govern it for Charles. Perhaps there never was so cruel and wicked a governor anywhere before. He ordered everybody to use the English prayer-book, and to leave off their own ways of worshipping God, and to change their prayers. And when he found any persons who did not, he had them shot or hanged at their own doors; and what was worse, if anybody would not tell where the people he wanted to shoot or to hang were to be found, he would put them in prison, or torture them by putting their legs in wooden cases, and then hammering them so tight that the bones were broken; and this he did to children for saving their fathers and mothers, or to grown people for saving their children, or brothers, or sisters. I am sorry to say that another Scotchman, John Graham of Claverhouse, was his helper in all this wickedness. Scotland was therefore very miserable under Charles, and you will read in larger histories that the Scotch rebelled, and fought against the king. Ireland was treated, if possible, worse; and as to England, several parts were ready to rebel, especially when it came to be known that Charles and his four chief friends were so mean as to take money from the King of France to pay Charles for letting him conquer several other countries that England ought to have saved from him. The king’s brother, James, Duke of York, was known to approve of all the king’s cruel and wicked actions; so that the English people found, after all they had suffered in hopes of getting back their freedom, that Charles the Second wished as much to take it away as his father and grandfather did. I do not wonder, therefore, that some wise, and good, and clever men, who loved our dear England as they ought to do, met together to talk about the best means of having proper parliaments again, and preventing the cruel king from treating England, Scotland, and Ireland, so harshly.