On the 12th of October the King left Shrewsbury, and quartered for the night at Bridgnorth, where, Clarendon observes, “there was a rendezvous of the whole army, which appeared very cheerful.” [_Vol. 2, p. 42._] Here the king stayed three days; and I am one of those who feel, that our town and Castle were never so honoured by a royal visit as on this occasion. Many of the Monarchs of England have been here; many crowned heads have entered the portals of our Castle, and rested within its walls—Normans, Plantagenets, and Lancastrians—but to none of them, in my mind, attaches the same deep interest, and to none is due the same tribute of veneration, as to this unhappy monarch of the House of Stuart. Not only was he by far the most accomplished Prince that ever sat on the English throne, and endowed with considerable intellectual powers,[48] as his successful controversy with Henderson, the Presbyterian Minister, clearly proved; but he was distinguished in all the relations of private life by the highest moral principle: by a purity, fidelity, and love, which are rarely seen in king’s courts, and have seldom been equalled in retired domestic circles; and these virtues in him were combined with a deep-seated reverence for religion. He was not blameless in his public conduct; far from it. There was a weakness and want of stability in him, which justly exposed him to the charge of inconstancy, if not of insincerity. He was subtle and evasive, and it may be at times, under the pressure of very trying circumstances, disingenuous in his transactions with his opponents, so that they complained that they could not depend upon him. But he was refined in the furnace of affliction. “Sweet” to him, as they have been to others, were “the uses of adversity”; so that when his end drew nigh,[49] there appeared in him, as his enemies allow, a calm heroic fortitude—saintly magnanimity—a firmness, combined with a gentleness and forgiving love—which we do not often find surpassed even in the early Martyrologies. No memorial then connected with our Castle, is to me of equal interest to that of its having been occasionally, during his declining fortunes, the residence of Charles I. [48] In proof of the intellectual power of Charles, additional to that of his successful controversy with Henderson, the following statement may be given in the words of Mr Tytler:—“In the two months’ negotiations which followed, Charles, unassisted, carried on a contest of argument on arduous political topics with these fifteen of the ablest senators of the day; and the commissioners were not more struck with the ravages which persecution and suffering had wrought in his appearance, (his hair had become entirely grey) than with the clearness of intellect, the readiness of elocution, and the dignity of deportment, which he displayed at these important conferences.”—_Trials of Charles I., p. 8._