the magistrates of the city and the College of Jesuits (Jesse, iii. 286–7, from Thurloe), and there he established himself for about two years. He afterwards described the people of Cologne as the most kind and worthy he ever met with (Evelyn, Diary, 6 July 1660); and, according to Clarendon, his own life there was exemplary, divided between reading in his closet and walks on the city walls, for he was too poor to keep a coach (vii. 119). He seems, however, to have been fond of hunting and other amusements (Ellis, Orig. Letters, 2nd ser. iii. 376). He affected attachment to the church of England, and a wish to guard his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, from conversion to the church of Rome. He could afford little other encouragement to his supporters in England, though he travelled to Middelburg to be in readiness for the Salisbury rising in March 1655, for the failure of which he and the factions at his court had to bear their share of blame (Cal. 1655, 245–6). His incognito visit with his sister to Frankfort fair in September 1655, when he met Queen Christina of Sweden, was not a political manœuvre. After the Protector had concluded his alliance with France (24 Oct.), Charles naturally became anxious for the support of Spain. In March 1656 he proceeded incognito to the neighbourhood of Brussels, where he negotiated a treaty with the Archduke Leopold William, and after the latter had been superseded in the government of the Spanish Netherlands by Don John of Austria, Charles moved his court from Cologne to Bruges. But he found the new governor-general, notwithstanding the good offices of the Princess of Orange, extremely coy, and his own resources ran very low (Cal. 1656–7, xiii. 258). Yet, if report spoke true (Jesse, iv. 292, from Thurloe), shameless debauchery ran riot at Bruges, so as to justify in the eyes of puritan England the act of November 1656, which absolutely extinguished any supposed title to the throne on the part of the sons of Charles I (Cal. 1656–7, 173). At last, accompanied by a profusion of mutual compliments ({{sc|Somers Tracts, vii. 410–12), the authorisation arrived from Spain. Charles was politely received at Brussels by Don John, and the treaty was signed in its final form. Charles engaged to collect all his subjects now serving in France under his own command in Flanders, and was promised a monthly allowance, which was, however, paid as irregularly as the French had been, which Charles had now resigned (Harris, ii. 128 n., from the Ormonde Papers, and Carte's Life of Ormonde). But though he commenced the levy of four English regiments, and made a spirited offer of taking the field to the Spanish council at Brussels, he could not move it to action. The Protector's government was kept well informed by its secret agents — one of them, Sir Richard Willis, actually engaged in a plot for inveigling over to England the king whom he had long faithfully served (Clarendon, vii. 324 seq.) — and their reports give a striking picture of the sanguine supplications and sorry shifts of Charles's court at this time, and of his own gaiety in the midst of indigence (Cal. 1657–8; in the preface is a list of his officers of state). In the winter of 1657–8 he contrived to be present at the attempt upon Mardyke (Clarendon, vii. 277; cf. Pepys, 2 Jan. 1688), and at the end of February 1658 he was allowed to remove his court to Brussels. But the project of arising in the south of England for which he was holding himself in readiness was betrayed (Heath, 403); on 17 June Dunkirk fell, and Flanders was overrun by the French and English. In August Charles withdrew to Hoogstraten, near Breda, whence, on receiving news of the death of Oliver Cromwell, he in the middle of September returned to Brussels.
In the troubles which ensued in England the cry for the king's restoration was soon raised, and the royalists eagerly watched an opportunity for a rising. On receiving through John Mordaunt (afterwards Lord Avalon) a report that nearly every county in England was ready to rise in his favour, Charles, accompanied by Ormonde and Bristol, repaired to Calais, and thence to the coast of Brittany, where, however, he received the news of the frustration of his hopes by the defeat of Booth and Middleton at Nantwich (19 Aug.) Charles had done his best to make success possible, and it was probably about this time that Fox was sent with a letter to Monck in Scotland, begging him to march against the Rump (Guizot, Monck, E. Tr. 106 a.) Instead of returning to Brussels, he now resolved to carry out a former plan of his, and proceed to Fuentarabia in the Spanish Pyrenees, where Mazarin and Luis de Haro were arranging a pacification between France and Spain. Under a mistaken impression Charles penetrated as far as Saragossa, together with Ormonde and Bristol, but ultimately reached his destination. His hope was to induce the French crown to take up his cause in conjunction with the Spanish, and perhaps to send Condé with his army across the Channel. But the failure of the rising in England had its effect. Mazarin refused him an interview, though it is said Charles offered to marry the cardinal's niece, Hortensia Mancini (Macpherson, Original Papers, i. 21; her hand is said to have been
