Read it through once

The best part of this prince's character seems to have been his kindness towards his mistresses, and his affection for his children, and others nearly connected to him by the ties of blood. His recommendation of the Duchess of Portsmouth and Mrs. Gwyn, upon his death-bed, to his successor is much to his honour; and they who censure it seem, in their zeal to show themselves strict moralists, to have suffered their notions of vice and virtue to have fallen into strange confusion. Charles's connection with those ladies might be vicious, but at a moment when that connection was upon the point of being finally and irrevocably dissolved, to concern himself about their future welfare and to recommend them to his brother with earnest tenderness was virtue. It is not for the interest of morality that the good and evil actions, even of bad men, should be confounded. His affection for the Duke of Gloucester and for the Duchess of Orleans seems to have been sincere and cordial. To attribute, as some have done, his grief for the loss of the first to political considerations, founded upon an intended balance of power between his two brothers, would be an absurd refinement, whatever were his general disposition; but when we reflect upon that carelessness which, especially in his youth, was a conspicuous feature of his character, the absurdity becomes still more striking. And though Burnet more covertly, and Ludlow more openly, insinuate that his fondness for his sister was of a criminal nature, I never could find that there was any ground whatever for such a suspicion; nor does the little that remains of their epistolary correspondence give it the smallest countenance. Upon the whole, Charles II. was a bad man and a bad king; let us not palliate his crimes, but neither let us adopt false or doubtful imputations for the purpose of making him a monster.