of his brilliant military exploits, in consideration of his past, and the hopes that were based upon him. But the position at which he had arrived was far above his merits. His birth and the attractions of his person had raised him to it. As long as his father lived he maintained himself in it, supported by the interested affection of the Whigs, and never having to display any qualities but those he was liberally endowed with. When, at the death of Charles II., it was necessary for him to exhibit not only the gifts which had made him the idol of the people, but the talents requisite to accomplish a revolution, and to seize upon a crown, the mediocrity of his faculties soon became apparent. Intrepid upon the field of battle, he lacked decision in the council, and wavered irresolute between contrary suggestions. His natural kindness, which had won him the love of the people, sometimes degenerated into weakness. Of a very malleable disposition, he yielded too easily to the influence of others, and was often only the executant of their will. His ardour in action, above all, arose from the contact of those surrounding him. He hardly ever derived it from his own powers, and, left to himself, he readily sank into indolence. When he learnt in Holland the accession of James II., which closed England to him, he could form no manly resolution, and forgot[151] in the company of a loved woman[152] that he was the hope of a numerous party, the support of a great cause, the pretender to a throne. This inaction had its source in his carelessness and in his indolence of mind, much more than in a taste for obscurity; for he did not long resist the prayers of his friends when they came to drag him from his retreat and arm him against James II.,[153] and not having had sufficient energy to conceive the enterprise himself, he equally lacked the resolution to object to it. Such was the man whose coming a notable part of the English nation longed for, who was about to shake a throne, but without succeeding in overthrowing it; because he had neither the profound views nor the persevering audacity with which great ambitions ripen and execute their projects. On June 11, 1685, Monmouth, accompanied by eighty men well armed, landed on the coast of Dorsetshire, near the little port of Lyme. The result of this expedition is a matter of history. There is no need to recount the triumphant march to Taunton, the enthusiasm of the West, the fatal field of Sedgemoor, and the ignominious flight of the leader of the insurgents.[154] Some days afterwards a man in tattered garments, with haggard face and hair prematurely white, is dragged from a ditch, at the bottom of which he was crouching, half hidden by the long grass and nettles, trembling and livid with fear, his pockets filled with peas gathered to satisfy the cravings of ravenous hunger. It was the darling of Charles’s court, the hero of Bothwell Brig, “King Monmouth.”