being turned papist, that unless it be suddenly contradicted, and the world disabused by something coming expressly from him, it is likely, in this extraordinary conjuncture, to do him very great injury amongst his friends both in city and country, in both which his constancy all this while hath rendered him many considerable proselytes."[1] This letter justly represents the position of affairs, and the state of public feeling ; and Clarendon took his measures to undeceive his party and to silence their enemies.
Yet, although political interest forbade a public declaration, there was truth in the reports circulated in England, and so stoutly contradicted by the royalists. It is certain that Charles had, during the last years of his exiled secretly adopted the Catholic faith, although the fear of detection prevented a formal abjuration of Protestantism. Burnet says he was received before he left Paris, and that Cardinal de Retz and Aubigny had a hand in it. This information he had obtained from two sources, and indirectly, he affirms, from Retz himself. When Charles was at Paris, after the flight from Worcester, he received instruction in religion from Olier, the celebrated founder of the seminary of St. Sulpice. His conferences were no secret, for Olier had informed his friends of his hopes, and entreated their prayers. They probably gave occasion to the exaggerated report of Burnet. Charles, it is true, wrote from Paris to the Pope to ask for assistance in recovering his dominions. Innocent would have been satisfied, under the circumstances, with a private abjuration ; but this was refused, and the king could not even obtain an answer to his application.[2] But although he was not received into the Church, he had advanced so far in his opinions that he might, as Thurloe affirmed, in his communications with the Spanish Government have declared himself in private to them to be a Catholic.[3] Neither France nor Spain had any inducement
