The foundation of this measure lay much deeper,
and was of the utmost consequence.
The king, during his exile, had imbibed strong prejudices a favor of
the Catholic religion; and, according to the most probable accounts,
had already been secretly reconciled in form to the church of Rome. The
great zeal expressed by the parliamentary party against all Papists,
had always, from a spirit of opposition, inclined the court and all the
royalists to adopt more favorable sentiments towards that sect, which,
through the whole course of the civil wars, had strenuously supported
the rights of the sovereign. The rigor, too, which the king, during his
abode in Scotland, had experienced from the Presbyterians, disposed him
to run into the other extreme, and to bear a kindness to the party
most opposite in its genius to the severity of those religionists. The
solicitations and importunities of the queen mother, the contagion of
the company which he frequented, the view of a more splendid and courtly
mode of worship, the hopes of indulgence in pleasure, all these causes
operated powerfully on a young prince, whose careless and dissolute
temper made him incapable of adhering closely to the principles of his
early education.
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