A Child's History of England.214

Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter were not to be spared either, though they had been most excellent women. The base clergy of that time gave up their bodies, which had been buried in the Abbey, and - to the eternal disgrace of England - they were thrown into a pit, together with the mouldering [腐烂] bones of Pym and of the brave and bold old Admiral Blake.

The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they hoped to get the nonconformists, or dissenters [不信奉国/新教的], thoroughly put down in this reign, and to have but one prayer-book and one service [宗教仪式] for all kinds of people, no matter what their private opinions were. This was pretty well, I think, for a Protestant Church, which had displaced the Romish Church because people had a right to their own opinions in religious matters. However, they carried it with a high hand [in an overbearing/domineering manner], and a prayer-book was agreed upon, in which the extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud were not forgotten. An Act was passed, too, preventing any dissenter from holding any office [职位] under any corporation [市行政机关]. So, the regular clergy in their triumph were soon as merry as the King. The army being by this time disbanded, and the King crowned, everything was to go on easily for evermore [for ever].

I must say a word here about the King's family. He had not been long upon the throne when his brother the Duke of Gloucester, and his sister the Princess of Orange, died within a few months of each other, of smallpox [天花]. His remaining sister, the Princess Henrietta, married the Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis the Fourteenth, King of France. His brother James, Duke of York, was made High Admiral, and by-and-by [later] became a Catholic. He was a gloomy [unhappy and have no hope], sullen, bilious [bad-tempered] sort of man, with a remarkable partiality [bias] for the ugliest women in the country. He married, under very discreditable [improper] circumstances, Anne Hyde, the daughter of Lord Clarendon, then the King's principal Minister - not at all a delicate minister either, but doing much of the dirty work of a very dirty palace. It became important now that the King himself should be married; and divers [several] foreign Monarchs, not very particular [挑剔] about the character of their son-in-law, proposed their daughters to him. The King of Portugal offered his daughter, Catherine of Braganza, and fifty thousand pounds: in addition to which, the French King, who was favourable to that match [婚姻], offered a loan of another fifty thousand. The King of Spain, on the other hand, offered any one out of a dozen of Princesses, and other hopes of gain. But the ready money carried the day [现金为王], and Catherine came over in state [盛大礼仪] to her merry marriage.

The whole Court was a great flaunting [炫耀] crowd of debauched men and shameless women; and Catherine's merry husband insulted and outraged [触犯] her in every possible way, until she consented to receive those worthless creatures as her very good friends, and to degrade herself by their companionship. A Mrs. Palmer, whom the King made Lady Castlemaine, and afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the most powerful of the bad women about the Court, and had great influence with the King nearly all through his reign. Another merry lady named Moll Davies, a dancer at the theatre, was afterwards her rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange [采桔子] girl and then an actress, who really had good [behavior, attitudes, forces etc that are morally right] in her, and of whom one of the worst things I know is, that actually she does seem to have been fond of the King. The first Duke of St. Albans was this orange girl's child. In like manner the son of a merry waiting-lady, whom the King created Duchess Of Portsmouth, became the Duke of Richmond. Upon the whole it is not so bad a thing to be a commoner.

Someone who is debauched behaves in a bad or immoral way, for example by drinking too much alcohol, taking drugs, or having sex with many people.

六级/考研单词: superb, clergy, eternal, pit, bold, dissent, thorough, reign, displace, secular, regulate, triumph, merry, throne, princess, catholic, gloom, headmaster, delicate, dirt, dive, shame, insult, outrage, consent, degrade, potent, rival, actress, fond