House; my father lost his head by such compliance, but as for me, I intend to die another way."[1]
While Prince, seeing a soldier of the parliament—one of Cromwell's officers, and one active against the King—led through the streets of Oxford as a prisoner, he asked what they designed to do with him. They said they were carrying him to the King, his father; "Carry him rather to the gallows and hang him up," was the reply; "for if you carry him to my father he'll surely pardon him."[2] This was assuredly not cruelty in Charles—but merely an odd specimen of his ever playful temperament.
He was altogether in favour of extempore preaching, and was unwilling to listen to the delivery of a written sermon. Patrick excused himself from a chaplaincy, "finding it very difficult to get a sermon without book."[3] On one occasion the King asked the famous Stillingfleet, "How it was that he always read his sermons before him, when he was informed that he always preached without book elsewhere?" Stillingfleet answered something about the awe of so noble a congregation, the presence of so great and wise a prince, with which the King himself was very well contented. "But pray," continued Stillingfleet,
