Carlyle had no doubt that Charles was not the author. 'My reading progresses with or without fixed hope. I struggled through the "Eikon Basilike" yesterday; one of the paltriest pieces of vapid, shovel-hatted, clear-starched, immaculate falsity and cant I have ever read. It is to me an amazement how any mortal could ever have taken that for a genuine book of King Charles's. Nothing but a surpliced Pharisee, sitting at his ease afar off, could have got up such a set of meditations. It got Parson Gauden a bishopric.'--Letter of November 26, 1840 (Froude's _Thomas Carlyle_, 1884, vol. i, p. 199).
Page 57, l. 4. Thomas Herbert (1606-82), made a baronet in 1660. Appointed by Parliament in 1647 to attend the King, he was latterly his sole attendant, and accompanied him with Juxon to the scaffold. His _Threnodia Carolina_, reminiscences of Charles's captivity, was published in 1702 under the title, _Memoirs of the Two last Years of the Reign of that unparalleled Prince, of ever Blessed Memory, King Charles I_. It was 'printed for the first time from the original MS.' (now in private possession), but in modernized spelling, in Allan Fea's _Memoirs of the Martyr King_, 1905, pp. 74-153.
l. 10. Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), bishop of Salisbury, 1689, the historian whose characters are given in the later part of this volume. His _Mémoires of the Lives and Actions of James and William Dukes of Hamilton_, 1677, his first historical work, appeared while Warwick was writing his _Mémoires of Charles_. It attracted great attention, as its account of recent events was furnished with authentic documents. 'It was the first political biography of the modern type, combining a narrative of a man's life with a selection from his letters' (C.H. Firth, introduction to Clarke and Foxcroft's _Life of Burnet_, 1907, p. xiii).
l. 15. _affliction gives understanding_. Compare Proverbs 29. 15, and Ecclesiasticus 4. 17 and 34. 9; the exact words are not in the Authorised Version.
l. 30. Robert Sanderson (1587-1663), Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, 1642, Bishop of Lincoln, 1660. Izaak Walton wrote his _Life_, 1678.
Page 58, l. 20. Sir Dudley Carleton (1573-1632), created Baron Carleton, 1626, and Viscount Dorchester, 1628; Secretary of State, 1628.