The character was published in Leonard Howard’s Collection of Letters, from the Original Manuscripts, 1753, pp. 152-5, and was reprinted in The Gentleman’s Magazine for April 1754, pp. 160-1, and again in The Connoisseur, No. 81, August 14, 1755. The Gentleman’s Magazine (1754, p. 215) is responsible for the error that it is to be found in Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa.

Hastings was Shaftesbury’s neighbour in Dorsetshire.  A full-length portrait of him in his old age, clad in green cloth and holding a pike-staff in his right hand, is at St. Giles, the seat of the Shaftesbury family.  It is reproduced in Hutchins’s History of Dorset, ed. 1868, vol. iii, p. 152.

PAGE 44, ll. 24-26.  He was the second son of George fourth Earl of Huntingdon.  Shaftesbury is describing his early associates after his marriage in 1639:  ’The eastern part of Dorsetshire had a bowling-green at Hanley, where the gentlemen went constantly once a week, though neither the green nor accommodation was inviting, yet it was well placed for to continue the correspondence of the gentry of those parts.  Thither resorted Mr. Hastings of Woodland,’ &c.

Page 47, l. 12. ‘my part lies therein-a.’  As was pointed out by E.F.  Rimbault in Notes and Queries, 1859, Second Series, vol. vii, p. 323, this is part of an old catch printed with the music in Pammelia.  Musicks Miscellanie.  Or, Mixed Varietie of Pleasant Roundelayes, and delightfull Catches, 1609: 

  There lies a pudding in the fire,
    and my parte lies therein a: 
  whome should I call in,
    O thy good fellowes and mine a.

Pammelia, ’the earliest collection of rounds, catches, and canons printed in England’, was brought out by Thomas Ravenscroft.  Another edition appeared in 1618.

15.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 383-4; History, Bk.  XI, ed. 1704, vol. iii, pp. 197-9; ed.  Macray, vol. iv, pp. 488-92.

The sense of Fate overhangs the portrait in which Clarendon paints for posterity the private virtues of his unhappy master.  The easy dignity of the style adapts itself to the grave subject.  This is one of Clarendon’s greatest passages.  It was written twenty years after Charles’s death, but Time had not dulled his feelings.  ’But ther shall be only incerted the shorte character of his person, as it was found in the papers of that person whose life is heare described, who was so nerely trusted by him, and who had the greatest love for his person, and the greatest reverence for his memory, that any faythfull servant could exspresse.’  So he wrote at first in the account of his own life.  On transferring the passage to the History he substituted the more impersonal sentence (p. 48, l. 27—­p. 49, l. 5) which the general character of the History demanded.

Page 48, l. 15. our blessed Savyour.  Compare ’The Martyrdom of King Charls I. or His Conformity with Christ in his Sufferings.  In a Sermon preached at Bredah, Before his Sacred Majesty King Charls The Second, And the Princess of Orange.  By the Bishop of Downe.  Printed at the Hage 1649, and reprinted at London ... 1660’.  Clarendon probably heard this sermon.