cup presented on the knee. This absence of ceremony made on the unfortunate monarch a deeper impression than could have been expected. It was, he said, the denial of that to him, which by ancient custom was due to many of his subjects; and rather than submit to the humiliation, he chose to diminish the number of the dishes, and to take his meals in private. Of the proceedings against him he received no official intelligence; but he gleaned the chief particulars through the inquiries of Herbert, and in casual conversation with Witchcott the governor. The information was sufficient to appal the stoutest heart; but Charles was of a most sanguine temperament, and though he sought to fortify his mind against the worst, he still cherished a hope that these menacing preparations were only intended to extort from him the resignation of his crown. He relied on the interposition of the Scots, the intercession of foreign powers, and the attachment of many of his English subjects. He persuaded himself that his very enemies would blush to shed the blood of their sovereign; and that their revenge would be appeased, and their ambition sufficiently gratified, by the substitution in his place of one of his younger children on the throne.[1] But these were the dreams of a man who sought to allay his fears by voluntary delusions. The princes of Europe looked with cold indifference on his fate. The king of Spain during the whole contest had maintained a friendly correspondence with the parliament. Frederic III. king of Denmark, though he was his [Footnote 1: Herbert, 155, 157. Whitelock, 365. Sir John Temple attributed his tranquillity "to a strange conceit of Ormond's working for him in Ireland. He still hangs upon that twigg; and by the enquireys he made after his and Inchiquin's conjunction, I see he will not be beaten off it."--In Leicester's Journal, 48.] cousin-german, made no effort to save his life; and Henrietta could obtain for him no interposition from France, where the infant king had been driven from his capital by civil dissension, and she herself depended for subsistence on the charity of the Cardinal de Retz, the leader of the Fronde.[1] The Scottish parliament, indeed, made a feeble effort in his favour. The commissioners subscribed a protest against the proceedings of the Commons, by whom it was never answered; and argued the case with Cromwell, who referred them to the covenant, and maintained, that if it was their duty to punish the malignants in general, it was still more so to punish him who was the chief of the malignants.[2]