L. TRUSTING MAKETH ONE TRUSTY.

CHARLES the Second,⁴⁶⁴⁶From the mouth of my worthy friend, now gone to God, D. Clare, chaplain then to his Highness. King of the Scots, when a child, was much troubled with a weakness in his legs, and was appointed to wear steel boots for the strengthening of them.

The weight of these so clogged the child, that he enjoyed not himself in any degree, but 290moaned himself, fasting at feasts, yea, his very play being work unto him, he may be said to be a prisoner in his own palace.

It happened that an aged rocker, which waited on him, took the steel boots from his legs, and cast them in a place where it was hard to find them there, and impossible to fetch them thence, promising the Countess of Dorset (governess of the prince) that, if any anger arised thereof, she would take all the blame on herself.

Not long after, the king, coming into the nursery, and beholding the boots taken from his legs, was offended thereat, demanding, in some anger, who had done it.

” It was I, sir,” said the rocker, “who had the honour, some thirty years since, to attend on your Highness in your infancy, when you had the same infirmity wherewith now the prince, your very own son, is troubled. And then the Lady Gary (afterwards Countess of Monmouth) commanded your steel boots to be taken off, who, blessed be God, since have gathered strength and arrived at a good stature.”

The nation is too noble, when his Majesty (who hitherto hath had a short course, but a long pilgrimage) shall return from foreign parts, to impose any other steel boots upon him than the observing the laws of the land, (which are 291his own stockings,) that so with joy and comfort he may enter on what was his own inheritance.

But I remember, when Luther began first to mislike some errors in the Romish Church, and complained thereof to Staupitius, his confessor, he used to say unto him, Albi in cellam et ora, Get you gone into your cell and pray. So will I do, (who have now done,) and leave the managing of the rest to those to whom it is most proper to advance God’s glory and their country’s good. Amen.