CHAP. II - Repulse of the Refugees

Summary

Monmouth was still cherishing the hope of a speedy return, and enjoying to the full the hospitality which the Prince and Princess of Orange vouchsafed to him in this expectation at the Hague, when the news of the death of Charles II arrived there. In his memoirs he adds to the mention of the letter of Halifax in which that event was announced to him the exclamation ‘O cruel fate!’ an expression of anguish of which he felt the whole bitterness; for he had lost the most loving and indulgent of fathers; one who amid all the changes of their public relations had at heart been his friend; to whose secret directions he owed it, that he was well treated, and who just then allowed him to expect a change for the better in his fortunes. Nowhere was Charles II more heartily and deeply mourned for than there in the Hague by Monmouth; for what every one laments in the death of another is merely his own loss. What hopes could Monmouth still cherish for his career? There was no lack of entreaties preferred on the part of his old friends in England and of both the English and the Scottish refugees who lived in Holland, that he would put himself at their head. He listened to them, readily affected as he had always been by the persuasions of others; but his feeling nevertheless was, that considering the state of affairs which presented itself at the moment in England there was no reasonable prospect for himself and his friends of effecting anything.