In 1660 the ideal of life was changed, or rather all ideal had perished, and the Courtiers imitated their master in his attempt to lounge through life with as much pleasure and as little inconvenience to themselves as possible. The relaxation of all moral restraint was due, in a great measure, to the inevitable reaction from Puritan rigidity and hypocrisy; but it was due still more to the years of exile, during which the Royalists had been "strangely tossed about on the fickle waves of fortune."[1] The Civil War had been a check on all education; it had released boys from school and students from college to throw them, at an early age, into the perils and temptations of a camp. At the same time, it had deprived them of the care and guidance of parents and guardians. Later, these boys, grown men before their time, had led a precarious existence on the Continent, living how and where they could, and snatching consolation for sorrow and privation in such illicit pleasures as came in their way. This life had ruined Charles II, and it is not wonderful that it ruined other men.
Rupert had been young too in those days,--he was only eight years Charles's senior, but the precarious life had not affected him in the same way. He had never drifted; it was not in his nature to drift, and his own strength and earnestness had kept him ever hard at work, with some definite end before him. Yet it cannot be denied that his character had suffered. The edge of it was, as it were, blunted. His ideals had perished in the stress of toil and anxiety. His chivalry had given place to common-sense. His hopefulness was gone, and his youthful eagerness had been replaced by a coldly sardonic view of life. "Blessed are those who expect nothing" was Rupert's motto now.
In all things he had grown coarser, and yet his standard { 334} of life remained, for those times, high. He had imbibed in his youth, says an admiring contemporary, "such beautiful ideas of virtue that he hath ever since esteemed it, notwithstanding the contempt the world hath put upon it; nor could he abhor the debaucheries of the age as he doth, had not his prejudice against it been of long duration. Such virtue is not formed in a day, and it is to his education that he owes the glory of a life so noble and so Christian."[2] Rupert had in truth too much self-respect, it may be too much religion, to sink to the depths to which Charles's court was sunk, and he held himself aloof with lofty disdain. "Mon cousin", as the mocking courtiers called him, in imitation of the King, was at once the object of their fear and of their merriment. So great was their terror of him that, mock though they might behind his back, not one of them dared, as they owned, make him the object of open satire, from which the King and the Duke of York did not escape.