This important mark of respect and confidence had never been extended to the ill-fated predecessor in James’s favour, the Earl of Somerset. If Villiers were at that period of his life unworthy of the trust, James, endowed as he was with all the experience which his own vicious Court could bestow, was criminal beyond measure to place his only son, on whom the hopes of the nation rested, in contaminated society. James must, in that case, have been either grossly deceived, or immeasurably culpable. The friendship, thus commenced between the prince and the favourite, in youth, was fraught with consequences so important to this country, that few points of historical biography can offer greater domestic interest than the early intimacy between Charles and Villiers. Charles, Prince of Wales, was eight years younger than the man whom he afterwards admitted to an intimacy such as has been rarely permitted between a monarch and a subject, and which ceased only when Villiers expired. The superstitious, when they remembered, in aftertimes, the perils of the young prince’s infancy, saw in them a type of his fate. “He was born,” says the historian Kennet, “and baptized, in somewhat of surprise and confusion, as it were beginning the world in a sort of presage how he was to end it.”[132] So feeble was he, that even afterwards, although in process of time there were many great ladies suitors for the keeping of the infant Prince, yet when they saw how sickly and fragile he was, their hearts failed, and none of them consented to undertake so important a charge.[133] Little, indeed, could it have been anticipated that the delicate boy was fated, not only to outlive his energetic and robust brother, Henry, but even to become, in times of danger, one of the hardiest and healthiest of those who fought on Edgehill, and at Naseby. The constitution of Charles was invigorated in his vicissitudes, and perfected by the toils of a soldier’s life. Footnote 132: Kennet’s Hist. England, p. 1. Footnote 133: Sir Robert Carey’s Memoirs, p. 201. That he should reign over this country was foretold by second sight. When James the First was preparing to remove from Scotland, there came to the Court an aged Highland chief, to take a solemn leave of his sovereign. The Queen and her children were present. The old man, after addressing a great deal of affectionate and sage advice to the King, turned to the children, and passing by Henry, he kissed with great ardour and deep respect the hands of his younger brother, the Duke Charles, as then he was called.