entry into Salisbury, an honest cavalier pressed forward to see him, coming so near that his Majesty kindly cautioned the poor man not to cling to the door, lest one of the little black spaniels should chance to bite him. The loyalist still persisted, whereupon one of the spaniels seized him by the finger. In great pain he cried with a loud voice, "God bless your Majesty, but damn your dogs!"
There can be no doubt that King Charles was an able man, and, as Bishop Burnett said of him, "he knew the architecture of ships so perfectly, that in that respect, he was more exact than became a Prince." He supervised the smallest details relating to his dockyards, selecting all the ships chartered for special purposes. Pepys, early in his diary, reflects upon the King's "sauntering," but later discovered reason to commend Charles for his industry and interest in naval affairs. When he came to understand him better, he writes in the Naval Minutes concerning Charles, as one "which best understood the Business of the Sea of any Prince the world ever had."
When King Charles came to the throne, England had lately passed through a hurricane of political and religious strife. She was like a dismasted ship in mid-ocean after a storm; for, although the fierce whirlwind of passion had died out, the cross-seas of political and social factions still ran high, and often broke with sullen fury. With philosophical, good-humored contempt for human nature, Charles saw that he could do nothing to quiet these discordant elements; that time
