of sleep when in chapel, he is known to have missed, doubtless with regret, the gentle reproof of South to Lauderdale during a general somnolency:—"My lord, my lord, you snore so loud you will wake the King."
He loved ease and quiet; and it was said, not untruly, that there was as much of laziness as of love in all those hours he passed among his mistresses. Few things, remarked Burnet,[1] ever went near his heart. It was a trouble to him to think. Unthinkingness, indeed, was said by Halifax to be one of his characteristics[2]—and
Unthinking Charles, ruled by unthinking thee,
is a line in Lord Rochester. Sauntering is an epithet applied to him by Sheffield, Saville, and Wilmot. He chose rather to be eclipsed than to be troubled, to receive a pension from France rather than ask his Parliament for subsidies.
His affection for his children was worthy of a better man. He loved the Duke of Monmouth with the fondness of a partial parent, and forgave him more than once for injuries, almost amounting to crimes of magnitude, personal and political. The Duke of Grafton, one of his sons by the Duchess of
