He permitted beastly butchers to commit unmentionable horrors on the feeble, unarmed, and disunited Covenanters of Scotland, but checked them when they would fain have endeavoured to play the same game on the numerous, united, dogged, and warlike Independents of England.

To show his filial piety, he bade the hangman dishonour the corpses of some of his father's judges, before whom, when alive, he ran like a screaming hare; but permitted those who had lost their all in supporting his father's cause, to pine in misery and want.
He would give to a painted harlot a thousand pounds for a loathsome embrace, and to a player or buffoon a hundred for a trumpery pun, but would refuse a penny to the widow or orphan of an old Royalist soldier.
He was the personification of selfishness; and as he loved and cared for no one, so did no one love or care for him.

So little had he gained the respect or affection of those who surrounded him, that after his body had undergone an after-death examination, parts of it were thrown down the sinks of the palace, to become eventually the prey of the swine and ducks of Westminster.
His brother, who succeeded him, James the Second, was a Papist, but sufficiently honest to acknowledge his Popery, but, upon the whole, he was a poor creature; though a tyrant, he was cowardly, had he not been a coward he would never have lost his throne.

There were plenty of lovers of tyranny in England who would have stood by him, provided he would have stood by them, and would, though not Papists, have encouraged him in his attempt to bring back England beneath the sway of Rome, and perhaps would eventually have become Papists themselves; but the nation raising a cry against him, and his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange invading the country, he forsook his friends, of whom he had a host, but for whom he cared little--left his throne, for which he cared a great deal--and Popery in England, for which he cared yet more, to their fate, and escaped to France, from whence, after taking a little heart, he repaired to Ireland, where he was speedily joined by a gallant army of Papists whom he basely abandoned at the Boyne, running away in a most lamentable condition, at the time when by showing a little courage he might have enabled them to conquer.

This worthy, in his last will, bequeathed his heart to England--his right arm to Scotland--and his bowels to Ireland.
What the English and Scotch said to their respective bequests is not known, but it is certain that an old Irish priest, supposed to have been a great grand-uncle of the present Reverend Father Murtagh, on hearing of the bequest to Ireland, fell into a great passion, and having been brought up at "Paris and Salamanca," expressed his indignation in the following strain:--"Malditas sean tus tripas! teniamos bastante del olor de tus tripas al tiempo de tu nuida dela batalla del Boyne!" His son, generally called the Old Pretender, though born in England, was carried in his infancy to France, where he was brought up in the strictest principles of Popery, which principles, however, did not prevent him becoming (when did they ever prevent any one ?) a worthless and profligate scoundrel; there are some doubts as to the reality of his being a son of James, which doubts are probably unfounded, the grand proof of his legitimacy being the thorough baseness of his character.