The last days of Charles II / by Raymond Crawfurd.

  • Raymond Crawfurd
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The last days of Charles II / by Raymond Crawfurd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/98 page 19
    already renounced the religion of his father, he died a Roman Catholic.’ In proof of his dictum, Sir Henry called attention to the obvious signs of paralysis in the effigy of King Charles in Westminster Abbey. The appended narrative of the death-bed scene, attested by a number of eyewitnesses, whose credibility is put beyond question by their general agreement as to the circumstances, disposes at once of the assertion that ‘ every faculty of his mind was gone \ If the narrative be reliable, then there can be no question as to the truth of the death-bed conversion to Romanism.1 If any one familiar with the appearance of recent facial palsy, as it is seen in life, will study carefully the mask of the Westminster effigy (see illustration), he will see at once that the asymmetry of the face has no resemblance to that due to paralysis. It must be remembered too that the facial paralysis due to rupture of a cerebral vessel is an incomplete and ill-marked condition. As an isolated paralysis, without associated paralysis of the arm or leg of the same side, it is also of exceedingly rare occurrence. Yet we know that his speech was not paralysed, and that his hands were not paralysed—negative evidence of the utmost importance. To this we would add that the muscular relaxation of 1 I have deliberately written death-bed conversion to Romanism, not profession of Romanism. Charles’s leaning to Catholicism was an inevitable consequence of his character and of his circumstances: dour Protestantism stank in his nostrils: the Covenanters’ heaven had no attraction for him. He had, on occasion, been present at Mass during his exile. He had in 1670 definitely pledged himself to Catholicism—a pledge the sincerity of which may be gauged by perusing the dispatches of Colbert. Had there been any formal reconciliation to the Church of Rome, James or the Duchess of Portsmouth would assuredly have known it. With the question¬ able exception of Hudleston, all the Catholic accounts regard it as a death-bed conversion, though many claim that in his heart he had long espoused their creed. His life did little credit to any creed. B 2
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