FOOTNOTES:
The term "Roundhead," alluding to the close-cropped hair of the Puritans, which contrasted so strongly with the long locks which were then the fashion, is first found in use in the end of 1641.
The children of the Romanists were to be taken forcibly from them, and educated as Presbyterians.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CROMWELL.
1651-1660.
Power of Cromwell.
After the "crowning mercy" of Worcester fight, the rule of England lay nominally in the hands of its mutilated and discredited House of Commons, the representative of a mere fraction of the nation. But really the power to move the realm was in the hands of the army, which had made, and could as easily unmake, the mockery of representative government which sat at Westminster. And in the army Cromwell was growing more and more supreme; his old colleague Fairfax had sunk back into civil life; his mutinous subordinates the Levellers had been crushed; the colonels and generals who held power under him were for the most part his humble servants.
Cromwell had as yet no official post corresponding to his real omnipotence. He was commander of the army, and a member of the Council of State, but nothing more. His will, nevertheless, was the main factor in the governance of England.
His character and aims.
It is time to say a few words of the character of this extraordinary man, whom we have hitherto seen merely as the heaven-sent leader of the Parliamentary armies, and the guiding spirit of the Independent party. Oliver was a county gentleman of Huntingdonshire, a man of religion from his youth up, and a prominent member of the Parliaments of 1628 and 1640. He was more than forty years old before he ever drew sword or put a squadron in battle array. No general save Julius Cæsar ever started on a great military career so late in life. Cromwell himself aimed at being a reformer of the life and faith of the nation much more than a soldier. He had taken to war because the times required it, but military power and military glory was not his end in life. He wished to see England orderly, prosperous, and free, according to his ideas of freedom in things spiritual and temporal. In religion his ideal was the Independent system, in which the state tolerated most forms of worship, and was itself committed to none. In things temporal he wished to see the realm ruled by a truly representative House of Commons, where every district should be represented according to its population. He had no patience for the existing House, in which a haphazard arrangement, dating back from the middle ages, gave no fair representation to England—where the vanished boroughs of Dunwich or Sarum had as many members as Yorkshire or Norfolk. If Cromwell had found a House of Commons that agreed with his views, he would have worked smoothly with them, and lived and died no more than their first servant.
Cromwell driven into illegality.
Unfortunately, however, Cromwell's views did not happen to be shared by any large proportion of the nation. Half England was secretly Episcopalian; a large proportion of the rest was Presbyterian; among his own Independent party there were numberless sects and factions. In the constitution of England, then as now, there was no place for an over-great personality backed by a strong military force. But such a personage existed in Cromwell. The question now arose whether he would consent to see the land governed by men whom he despised, in ways of which he disapproved, or whether he would proceed to interfere. Interference would be unconstitutional; but everything had been unconstitutional in England for ten years, and the temptation to use force was irresistible to a man who had strong political theories, a self-reliant temper, and 20,000 formidable veterans at his back. He could never forget that the "Rump" was the army's creature, and that it had been created to carry out the army's views. His very energy and conscientiousness were certain to drive him into illegalities. It is customary to reproach Cromwell with dissimulation and ambition, to make his whole career turn on a settled desire to make himself despot of England. This view entirely misconceives the man. It is far more correct to look upon him as a man of strong principles and prejudices, who was carried away by his desire to work out his programme, and who struck down—often with great violence and illegality—all that stood in his way. If he finally seized autocratic power, it was because he found that in no other way could he put his plans in practice. Power, in short, was for him the means, not the end. Unfortunately for his reputation, England has always objected to being dragooned into the acceptance of any programme or set of views, and if she would not accept the theories of a Stuart, the child of a hundred kings, it was hardly likely that she would acquiesce tamely in those of a simple country gentleman of Huntingdonshire; the fact that he was the finest general of the seventeenth century did not make him an infallible law-giver.
Pretensions of the "Rump."
When Cromwell came back victorious from Worcester field, the small and one-sided House of Commons which had ruled England since Pride's purge was still supreme in the state. Before he had been three weeks in London, Oliver hinted to the members that it was time that they should dissolve themselves, and give place to a freely elected house, where every shire and borough should be represented. Such a house had not been seen since 1642, when the Royalist third of the Commons had seceded at the king's command. But the "Rump" had enjoyed its two years of power, and had no wish to disperse. It was gradually growing to believe itself to be an irresponsible oligarchy with no duties to the nation, and to forget that it purported to represent England. When the question of dissolution was mooted, it proceeded to fix a date three years off as a suitable time for its own suppression, making the excuse that it must recast the constitution of the realm before it dispersed. This gravely vexed Cromwell and all the friends of reform; still more was their anger raised when the members proceeded to waste month after month in fruitless legal discussions, without succeeding in passing any bill of importance.
Foreign relations.—Rivalry with the Dutch.
Meanwhile the country had become involved in a foreign war. All the powers of Europe looked unkindly upon the regicide Commonwealth of England, and its envoys were maltreated at more than one court. Two were actually murdered—Anthony Ascham at Madrid, Isaac Dorislaus, at the Hague; in each case the slayers were exiled English Royalists, and the foreign government gave little or no satisfaction for the crime. While English relations with Spain remained strained, those with Holland gradually grew to an open rupture. The Dutch had been interested in the Royalist cause because their stadtholder, William II., Prince of Orange, had married Mary, the eldest daughter of Charles I., and had sheltered the Prince of Wales at his court for many months. It was from Holland, too, that the Royalists had received their supplies of arms during the war. But there was more than this recent grudge in the ill-feeling between English and Dutch. They had grown of late to be rivals in the trade of East and West. Their merchants in the Spice Islands had come to blows as early as 1623, and in America the Dutch had planted the colony of "New Amsterdam," so as to cut the connection between Virginia and New England, as far back as 1625. At present they were competing for the carrying trade both of the Baltic and the Mediterranean.
The Navigation Act.
Hence it was that when the indignation of the Parliament against the Dutch came to a head, it found vent in the celebrated Navigation Act (1651). This bill provided that goods brought to England from abroad must be carried either in English ships, or in the ships of the actual country that grew or manufactured them. Thus the Dutch carrying trade would be severely maimed. It was not a wise bill, or one in accordance with the laws of political economy, but it suited the spirit of the times, and even the usually clear-headed Cromwell gave it his support. This obvious blow at Dutch interests led, as was intended, to war (July, 1652).
Dutch War.—Blake and Van Tromp.
In the struggle which followed, the English fleets were generally successful. Led by Robert Blake, a colonel of horse who became for the nonce an admiral, and showed no mean capacity in his new employment, they obtained several victories. The conflict was not without its vicissitudes, and on one occasion the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp won a battle, and sailed down the Channel with a broom at his masthead, to show that he had swept the seas clean. But his triumph was not for long; next spring Blake beat him in a fight off the North Foreland (June 3, 1653), and a final victory off the coast of Holland, in which the gallant Dutchman was slain, completed the success of the English fleet. A treaty followed in which the vanquished enemy accepted the bitter yoke of the Navigation Act, and promised to banish the Stuarts from Holland. This they did with the better grace because the republican party among them had just succeeded in excluding the House of Orange from the stadtholdership. The Orange interest, therefore, could no longer be exerted in favour of the exiled royal family of England (1654).
Discontent with Parliament.
But ere the Dutch war had come to an end, there had occurred a sweeping political change in England. The "Rump" Parliament had persevered in its unwise courses; it had carried no reforms, either in Church or State, but spent all its time in profitless debating. Nor had it improved its popularity in the country by raising taxes by a new system which recalled the "tallages" of John or Henry III. Making lists of all who had taken the Royalist side in the old civil war, it imposed heavy fines on them, for offences of six or seven years ago. The army began to grow desperately impatient with the Parliament that it had made. In August, 1653, a great body of officers petitioned Cromwell, as their chief, to insist on the Commons dissolving themselves. Somewhat frightened, the House passed a bill for a dissolution, but with the extraordinary and preposterous claim that all sitting members should appear again in the next Parliament without having to seek re-election by their constituents.
Cromwell dissolves Parliament by force.
This strange attempt to perpetuate themselves for ever provoked Cromwell's wrath to boiling-point. He resolved to take a step even more drastic than Pride's purge. On April 20, 1653, he went down to Westminster with a guard of musketeers, whom he left outside the door. Taking his seat as a private member, he presently arose and addressed his colleagues in a fiery harangue, in which he told them that they were a set of worthless talkers with no zeal for religion or reform. When shouted down by the angry Commons, he bade his soldiers enter, and thrust the dismayed politicians out of the door. The Speaker was hustled from his chair and Cromwell bade his men "take away that bauble," the great mace, which lay on the table and represented the dignity of the Commons of England.
Thus perished the last remnant of the mighty "Long Parliament," dissolved by the mere fiat of the great general. Nor did its fall cause much murmuring, for the nation had long ceased to regard it as anything more than a body of garrulous and self-seeking oligarchs.
The "Barebones'" Parliament.
For the moment there was no legal government in England, for Cromwell's position was quite unconstitutional. He felt this himself, and was anxious to create a new House, which should work with him and carry out his ideas of reform; as yet he had no intention of becoming an autocrat. Accordingly, he summoned in June an assembly which differed from all that had been before it, since the members were not elected by the shires and boroughs, but named by a committee of selection, at which Cromwell presided. This illegally created body was called the "Nominee Parliament," or more frequently "Barebones' Parliament," from a London merchant with the extraordinary name of Praise-God Barebones, who was one of its prominent members.
But Cromwell was to find by repeated experiments that it was impossible for him to discover any body of men who could work with him on exactly the lines that he chose. For his own opinions were not those of the majority of the nation, and hence any assembly that he called was bound, sooner or later, to quarrel with him. And since he possessed in his army a weapon able to dissolve any number of parliaments, he was tempted to bring every quarrel to an end by abruptly dismissing the recalcitrant House. A less self-confident man, or one who did not think that he possessed a mandate from above to reform England, might have learnt to co-operate with a Parliament. But Cromwell was so sure of his own good intentions, and so convinced that those who questioned them must be wrong-headed and factious, that he drove away three parliaments in succession with words of rebuke and of righteous anger.
Barebones' Parliament, a body full of stiff-backed and fanatical Independents, soon proved too restive for its creator. Cromwell smiled on their first efforts, when they began to codify the laws and abolished the Court of Chancery. But he began to frown when this conclave of "the Saints," as they called themselves, commenced to speak of confiscating Church-tithes—the maintenance of the clergy—and the rights both of state and of private patronage to livings. It is even said that they wished to substitute the Mosaic law from the Book of Deuteronomy for the ancient law of England. This drew down a rebuke from Cromwell, whereupon the House very honestly gave their power back into the hands from whence they had taken it, and dissolved themselves (December, 1653).
The "Instrument of Government."
The dispersion of this unconstitutional assembly was followed by another experiment in illegality. Cromwell published a paper-constitution drawn up by himself, called the "Instrument of Government." This provided that England should be governed by a "Lord Protector" and a House of Commons. Cromwell himself, of course, took the post of Protector, which was to be held for life, and had a quasi-royal character, for it was he who was to summon and dissolve Parliaments, and his assent was required to all bills; but it was stipulated that "the Protector should have no power to reject such laws as were themselves in accordance with the constitution of the commonwealth"—a vague check, since he himself would have to decide on the legality of each enactment. The new House of Commons was a fairly constituted body, for it included members from Scotland and Ireland, and among the English seats all the "rotten boroughs" were disfranchised, while their members were distributed among the rising towns, such as Leeds, Liverpool, and Halifax, and the more populous counties. The Protector was to have no power of dissolving the Commons till they had sat five months at least (December 16, 1653).
Cromwell Lord Protector.—His reforms.
For nine months Cromwell ruled as "Lord Protector" without any check on his power, for the Parliament was not to assemble till September, 1654. Pending its arrival, the Protector began to introduce many reforms; he recast the Courts of Justice, and introduced his favourite scheme for the government of the Church. This was the toleration of all Protestant sects, and the distribution of Church patronage among them by a committee of selection called "Triers." This body was only to inquire whether the candidate for a living was of a good life, and held the essential doctrines of Christianity. It was not to inquire whether he was Presbyterian, Independent, or Episcopalian; only Romanists were formally excluded. But, unfortunately for the content of the land, Cromwell's ordinance that the old Church of England Prayer-book was not to be used, effectually prevented any conscientious Episcopalian from applying to the "Triers." The Churchmen could only meet by stealth to celebrate their sacraments, and they formed at least half the nation. Cromwell's well-meant arrangements were gall and bitterness to them, and discontent was always rife.
The New-Model Parliament.
Cromwell's New-Model Parliament met on September 3, 1654, the third anniversary of Worcester fight. It was a body that well expressed the wishes of the Puritan half of the nation, but the Royalists were, of course, excluded. The sense that it was a strong and representative body made it confident and haughty; it at once began to discuss the legality of the "Instrument of Government," and to pass bills restricting the Protector's power. Cromwell with some difficulty kept his temper for the statutory five months, and then dissolved it (January 22, 1655).
Autocracy of Cromwell.—Attempted assassination.
Once more the Lord Protector was left alone as autocrat of Great Britain. He was not happy in the position; the dissolution of the New-Model Parliament had angered Independents and Presbyterians alike. They murmured that a despotic Protector was no better than a despotic King. Conspiracies began to be formed against Cromwell, both by Royalists and extreme republicans. Some were for open rebellion, some for secret murder, for autocrats are easy to make away with. No one save Guy Fawkes ever tried to slay a whole Parliament, but the power of the individual despot is often tempered by assassination. Cromwell promptly got the better of a few wild spirits who tried to raise open war, for the army was still devotedly loyal to him. But his spirit was sorely tried by the assassination plots; the pamphlet which Colonel Sexby, the Leveller, published, under the title of Killing no Murder, especially incensed him. For the future he went on his way resolute, but nervously expecting a pistol-shot from every dark corner.
Military despotism established.
For eighteen months after the dissolution of the New-Model Parliament Cromwell ruled as autocrat without any House of Commons to check him (January, 1655, to September, 1656). This time he tried another unconstitutional experiment for the governance of the realm. He divided England into twelve districts, and set over them twelve major-generals picked from the army, whose despotic power replaced that of lords-lieutenant and sheriffs. This expedient made even more evident than before the fact that the army was holding down the nation by force, and provoked much adverse comment. As a matter of fact, Cromwell's rule, though utterly illegal, was very efficient. He gathered around him many capable men: the poet Milton—though a convinced republican—served as his foreign secretary; Thurlow, a very able man, was his Secretary of State. Both Monk, who governed Scotland, and Henry Cromwell, the Lord-Deputy of Ireland, the Protector's youngest son, were skilled administrators; and Blake, who had charge of the fleet, was the greatest admiral that England had yet seen. But no amount of good governance suffices to content a nation held down by armed force against its will, and Cromwell's rule could never be popular.
Scotland and Ireland.
It was, however, successful and glorious, both in neighbouring lands and far abroad, if it was hated at home. Scotland was orderly and prosperous; Cromwell had much in common with the Covenanters, though he had suppressed them so sternly, and after 1651 there was not much opposition to him. In Ireland the matter was very different; Cromwell loathed Romanists with the hatred of the old Protestants of the Elizabethan age. His scheme of government for that realm was the drastic and cruel expedient of thrusting all the native Irish into the single province of Connaught, and of dividing up the rest of the land among English and Scots settlers, just as Ulster had been treated in the time of James I. The expulsion was carried out with merciless rigour, and thousands of Cromwell's discharged veterans and other colonists were planted in Munster and Leinster. But the settlement was only to be a very partial success; the old soldiers did not make good farmers in a pastoral country, and the native Irish gradually crept back to act as the servants and labourers of the conquerors, so that a homogeneous English and Protestant colony was never established. When the Protector died a few years later, many of the colonists departed, others were merged in the Irish masses, and only in limited districts did traces of his cruel work survive. But the "curse of Cromwell" remained the bitterest oath in the Irish peasant's mouth.
Cromwell's foreign policy.
Master of Great Britain, the Lord Protector resolved that this country should resume the great place in the counsels of Europe which it had held in the time of Elizabeth. His foreign policy was the same as that of the great queen—resolute opposition to Spain as the foe of Protestantism and the monopolist of the trade of the Indies. In 1655 Cromwell declared war on Philip IV., and sent forth his fleets under Blake to prey on the Spaniards. The great admiral stormed the strongly fortified harbour of Teneriffe, in the Canary Islands, and sent home several silver-laden galleons from America which were lying therein (April, 1656). After several other successes he died at sea, just as he was returning to England. Another expedition under Venables captured the fertile island of Jamaica, in the West Indies, though it failed to get possession of the larger and stronger island of San Domingo. On the European continent Cromwell allied himself with France, the eternal enemy of Spain, and sent a strong brigade of his formidable regulars to aid the troops of the young Lewis XIV. This force much distinguished itself in the war, and won the ports of Dunkirk and Mardyke in Flanders (1657-58), which by agreement with the French were kept as English possessions. At this time Cromwell's arm reached so far that he was even able to interfere to prevent the Duke of Savoy from persecuting his Protestant subjects the Waldenses (1655), an event which called forth Milton's celebrated sonnet, commencing—
"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered o'er the Alpine valleys cold."
Constitutional experiments.—A House of Lords.
But though victorious abroad, the Lord Protector was still vexed that he could not build up a stable constitution at home. In the midst of his successes he summoned his third and last Parliament in September, 1656. He had now resolved to experiment in the direction of restoring many of the time-honoured arrangements of the monarchy. He had determined to create a second chamber, like the old House of Lords, and to assimilate his own position as Protector to that of the old kings. By excluding from election about a hundred persons who had been active in the Parliaments of 1653 and 1654, he obtained a House of Commons somewhat more docile than either of his earlier assemblies. In an address called "the humble Petition and Advice," they besought him to assume all the old prerogatives of royalty, and even the name of king. The last he refused, knowing the discontent it would arouse among his sternly republican followers in the army. But he accepted a status which gave him all that the regal name would have implied. At the same time he endeavoured to make his position less unconstitutional, by abolishing the major-generals, and giving the Commons complete control over taxation. But even with this loyal and obedient house the Lord Protector could not long agree. They fell out upon the question of the setting up of his new House of Lords, a body whose authority they utterly refused to acknowledge. On this point the Commons proved so recalcitrant that Oliver dissolved them after they had sat sixteen months (January, 1658).
Death of Cromwell.
This would not have been the last of his constitutional experiments if his life had been spared. But in the summer of the same year, while designs for a new Parliament were already being mooted, he was taken ill. His health had been broken by the constant nervous strain of facing perpetual assassination plots, and wrangling with refractory Parliaments. He died on September 3, 1658, the seventh anniversary of the "crowning mercy" of Worcester.
He left England great and prosperous, but discontented and unhappy. An autocrat, however well meaning, is never pardoned if he fails to understand and obey the feeling of the nation. Oliver was so much out of sympathy with the majority that he could not escape bitter hatred. Therefore all his work was built on the sand, and all that he had accomplished vanished with his death, save the mere material gains of commerce and colonies that he had won for England. His name, very unjustly, became a byword for ambition and religious cant. A whole generation had to pass before men dared speak well of him.
Richard Cromwell Protector.
The moment that Cromwell died, his system began to break up; in six months it had disappeared; in eighteen months England once more was ruled by a Stuart king. The Lord Protector had named no successor, but the Council of State took the step of nominating his son Richard to his place, as being the man who would divide parties the least. Richard Cromwell was an easy-going country gentleman, without any of his father's characteristics. He was neither self-confident, nor a soldier, nor a man of fervent religion. When saluted as Protector, he observed that he would never make anything more than a fair chief-constable. He bore himself modestly and discreetly, and proceeded at once to endeavour to put himself right with the nation by calling a Parliament. It met in January, 1659, and was found to contain many concealed Royalists, and many more stiff republicans of the old Presbyterian type, who objected on principle to the protectorship. Such a body was bound to fall into internal quarrels; all parties in it concurred in treating the unfortunate Richard with disregard.
Richard and the army.—He resigns.
But it was not the Parliament which was to upset the new Lord Protector. The army saw that with Oliver's death their old power was gone, for neither Richard nor the two Houses had any sympathy with them. A council of officers met, and resolved to seize control of affairs. They petitioned for the appointment of a general-in-chief who should represent them and act as their leader. When this was refused, a deputation of colonels called on the weak Richard, and hectored him, by threats of violence, into dissolving Parliament (April, 1659). Equally unwilling and unable to become a military autocrat, the Lord Protector immediately after resigned his office, and went off in joy to his quiet country seat of Hursley. He lived there as an obscure squire for more than forty years, and survived till the reign of Queen Anne.
Revival of the "Rump."
England was now without a Protector and without a Parliament, left in the hands of a ring of ambitious and fanatical military men. Looking round for the fittest tool to serve their purposes, the committee of officers resolved on restoring the old "Rump Parliament" which had disappeared so ignominiously six years before. Accordingly, they sought out the Independent members who had once sat in that body, and restored them to Westminster Hall. Forty survivors under Speaker Lenthall took their old places, and claimed to be the governing power of England (May 9).
Quarrels of the military leaders.
Of all the bodies which had ever ruled England, the "Rump" had been the most incapable and the most despised. The whole nation was indignant at seeing its miserable remnant replaced in power. Meanwhile the officers began to fall out with each other: Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, had each his party among the soldiery, and aspired to fill Oliver's vacant place. Eight months of anarchy followed; the various generals bullied the Parliament and intrigued against each other. Royalist risings took place in Cheshire and the West. Finally Lambert, the most vigorous of the military men, entered London with his regiments and drove out the Parliament, just as Oliver had done six years before. But Lambert was no Cromwell; he only ruled a fraction of the soldiery, and had no party among the people (October, 1659).
Popular wish for a Restoration.
The divisions of the army had at last broken the formidable military power which had so long repressed the wishes of the nation. Commonwealths and Protectors had been tried in the balance and found wanting. There was a general feeling that the only way out of anarchy was the restoration of the old constitution of England, with King, Lords, and Commons. The majority even of the original Parliamentarians of 1642 were ready to acknowledge that they had done unwisely, in breaking up the foundations of law and order by abolishing the monarchy. Calvinistic fervour had worked itself out; the majority of the old Puritans of the days of Charles I. had come to realize that Levellers, Fifth-monarchy men, and military saints were even more objectionable and impracticable than the Episcopalians whom they had once hated so sorely.
Monk marches to London.
Meanwhile there was a man who saw clearly the one way to restore a stable government and to content the nation. George Monk, a calm, self-reliant soldier who commanded the army in Scotland, had resolved to use his regiments, on whose obedience he could implicitly count, to restore legal and constitutional rule. His own private ambition lay in the direction of a quiet and assured competence, not of an unsteady grasp on supreme power. He put himself secretly in communication with the exiled Prince of Wales and the chiefs of the English Royalists. No one else knew his design. Crossing the Tweed with 7000 men, he scattered the troops of Lambert and seized London. Then he summoned all the surviving members of the old "Long Parliament," as it had sat in 1642, to meet at Westminster, on the ground that it had been the last undoubtedly legal and constitutional government that England had possessed. The members met, now for the most part elderly men, cured of their old fanaticisms by ten years of military despotism, and ready for any reasonable compromise. By Monk's direction they issued writs for a new Parliament, and then formally dissolved themselves.
The Convention Parliament.—Declaration of Breda.
The new or Convention Parliament met on April 26, 1660; it was full of Royalists, who for the first time since the civil war dared show themselves and avow their opinions. Monk now openly began to negotiate with Prince Charles for a restoration of the monarchy, on the basis of oblivion of the past, and toleration and constitutional government for the future. The exiled Stuart promised these things in his "Declaration of Breda," though there were in his promises certain reservations, which cautious men regarded with distrust.
Return of Charles II.
But the realm was yearning for repose and peace, and the Parliament accepted Charles's offer with haste and effusion. Lambert and a few fanatical regiments vainly attempted to struggle against the popular will, but Monk crushed them with ease. In May 1660, the Prince of Wales was formally invited to return and resume his hereditary rights. On the 29th of the month he landed at Dover, and was saluted as Charles II. by the unanimous voice of a rejoicing nation.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHARLES II.
1660-1685.
Character of Charles.
Charles Stuart, who now returned to fill the English throne, was a young man of thirty. He had spent the last fourteen years of his life in exile, the penniless guest of many unwilling hosts in Holland, France, and Germany. Save eighteen uncomfortable months passed in the camp of the Scottish Covenanters, none of the days of his manhood had been spent on this side of the sea. He was continental in his manners, thoughts, and life. He had picked up his personal morals at the French court, and his political morals from the group of intriguing exiles who had formed his wandering and impecunious court. He laughed at purity in women and honesty in men. He was grossly selfish and ungrateful. Knowing by long experience how bitter is the bread doled out by the exile's host, "how steep to climb another's stair," he had one fixed idea—"he would never," as he phrased it, "go on his travels again." He had resolved to stay in England at all costs, to enjoy the Promised Land, now, contrary to all expectation, fallen into his hands. Accordingly, he wished to get as much out of his kingdom as was compatible with the necessity of never offending the majority of the nation. His personal leanings lay in the direction of absolute power and Right Divine, but he was perfectly ready to sacrifice them to his prudence. If he had any religious bias, it led him in the direction of Romanism—a comfortable creed for kings—but he was quite prepared to pose as a zealous Anglican, just as during his stay in Scotland he had become a conforming Presbyterian.
Charles, though destitute of personal beauty—his features were thin and harsh—had an affable address, a lively wit, and perfect manners. Supple and suave, he could make himself agreeable among any company. He had the careless good-humour that so often accompanies selfishness, and his character was too light and easy to make him a good hater. He was quite prepared to take to himself any allies who might appear, and to sell himself to any bidder whose terms were high enough.
Charles and the Convention Parliament.
Charles appeared in England as the representative of legality and constitutional rule, as the saviour of society who was to lay once more the foundations of peace and order, after ten years of military despotism. He was ready to accept just so much power as might be offered him, with the full intention of ultimately gaining as much more as he could safely assume. The "Convention Parliament," with which he had at first to deal, was a cautious body, containing many elderly men, who had fought against Charles I. and only accepted his son because of the dismal experience of ten years of rule by military "saints." The new king was therefore bound to be careful at first. Any unwise movement of opposition might upset his still unsteady throne.
The Parliament, however, was prepared to deal very liberally with Charles. They disbanded the old Cromwellian standing army. They granted him an annual revenue of £1,200,000 for life, to be raised from customs and excise. In return, the old vexatious feudal dues of the crown from reliefs, wardships, alienations, etc., were abolished. An amnesty was voted to all who had fought against the king in the old wars, with the single exception of those who had sat in the "High Court of Justice" of 1649, and been concerned in the execution of Charles I. Eighty-seven persons, of whom twenty-four were dead, came under this category. Of the survivors some score fled over-seas; the remainder were tried before a court of High Commission. Thirteen were executed, [43] twenty-five imprisoned for life, the rest punished with less rigour; at the same time the Earl of Argyle, the chief of the Scottish Covenanters, was executed at Edinburgh. The bodies of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton were ordered to be disinterred and gibbeted—an unworthy and uncomely act for which the spirit of the time is no sufficient excuse. An "Act of Oblivion and Indemnity" was passed to cover acts of the governments of the last twelve years. It stipulated that Crown and Church lands which the Commonwealth had granted away should be restored by their present holders, who were not, however, to suffer any other penalty. Private lands were to be restored if they had been actually confiscated by the government, but not if they had been sold by the Cavalier owners under pressure of war or debt. Thus many who had served Charles I. to the best of their ability got no compensation from his son. Gratitude was not the new king's strong point.
The Church question.
There was a third problem on which the Convention Parliament found the gravest difficulty in arriving at an agreement—the settlement of the Church. The benefices of England were at the moment in the hands of Presbyterian and Independent ministers of various shades of creed. Many of them had replaced incumbents of the Church of England thrust out by the Long Parliament. Others had succeeded in more peaceful wise. On the other hand, the extruded clergy of the old Church were claiming restoration to the cures from which they had been so ruthlessly ejected. What was to be done between the old holders and the new? Was the Church of England to be restored in all its ancient organization, and to become Anglican and Episcopal once more, or was it to be a lax organization including all manner of beliefs within its fold? The Parliament included many who were for "comprehension," and many who were pledged to a rigid restoration of the old order. It had been unable to come to any conclusion when it was dissolved in December, 1660. The king, however, had issued a declaration that a conference should be held between an equal number of Presbyterian and Episcopal divines, with the object of arriving at a compromise.
The Cavalier Parliament.
The new House of Commons which met in the spring of 1661 was a very different body from the "Convention." Elected in the full flush of Royalist enthusiasm at the restoration of law and order, it contained a very small proportion of the old Roundhead party. Its members, young and old, were for the most part such zealous adorers of Church and King, that they received the name of the "Cavalier Parliament." Charles was ready to take all they cared to give him, while his prime minister Clarendon was a High Churchman, and an advocate of hereditary divine right; but even they found it necessary to restrain from time to time the exuberant loyalty of the Commons.
The "Cavalier Parliament" showed the blindest confidence in the king, whose real character his subjects had not yet discovered. They passed bills asserting the incompetency of the two Houses to legislate without the sovereign's consent, declaring that under no circumstances was it lawful to levy war against the king, and placing all the military and naval forces of the realm in his hands. The "Solemn League and Covenant," which had been the shibboleth of the old Roundheads, they ordered to be burnt by the common hangman.
The Act of Uniformity.
These comparatively harmless beginnings were followed by a series of bills prompted by a spirit of unwise rancour against the men who had ruled England from 1648 to 1660. The Cavaliers had twelve years of spiritual and temporal oppression to revenge, and were determined to do as they had been done by. The Church settlement, which had been left pending by the Convention, they carried out in the most summary way. The king had promised that a meeting between divines of the old Church and Presbyterian ministers should be held, in order to endeavour to bring about a union. But the scheme came to nothing; at the "Savoy Conference" of 1661, each side refused to move an inch from its position. The Parliament then proceeded to pass the "Act of Uniformity," to force the Puritans either to conform or to leave the Church. The Book of Common Prayer, slightly revised, and the Thirty-nine Articles were to be the rule of faith, and every minister was ordered to use and abide by them. Every incumbent was to declare his assent to them by August 24, 1662, or to vacate his benefice; such was also to be the fate of all who refused to accept Episcopal ordination. This left the Puritan ministers three months to choose between conformity and expulsion—a longer shrift than they had allowed the Anglican clergy in the days of the triumph of Presbyterianism. The large majority of them conformed, and accepted Episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer; these men became the parents of the "Low Church" party of the succeeding age. The more stubborn souls refused obedience; about 2000 of them were expelled from their livings on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662. They and their followers are the original progenitors of the dissenting sects of modern England. The extrusion of the Puritans was most thoroughly carried out, not only in the case of beneficed clergy, but in the Universities and schools. No University professor and no schoolmaster was to be allowed to teach, unless he got a certificate of orthodoxy from his bishop.
The Corporation Act.
Not content with thrusting out the Puritan ministers from the livings they had held, the Parliament went on to legislate against the Puritan laity. The "Corporation Act" of 1661 enacted that all mayors, aldermen, and other office-holders in the cities and boroughs of England should, on assuming their functions, abjure the Covenant, take the oath of supremacy and allegiance to the king, and receive the Holy Communion according to the rites of the Anglican Church. Thus the Sacrament was made into a political test, a scandalous perversion of the Holy Table. This bill excluded all sectarians of the more conscientious and honest sort from municipal authority, but it also produced the unsatisfactory class of "occasional conformists," dissenters who took the oaths and the Communion according to law, but remained outside the Church.
The Conventicle Act and the Five-Mile Act.
Before passing on to matters outside the sphere of things ecclesiastical, we must mention two other persecuting bills passed, at a somewhat later date, by the "Cavalier Parliament." The "Conventicle Act" of 1664 forbade religious meetings of dissenters. Family worship was to be allowed, but if any number of persons more than five were present, beyond the members of the family, such a gathering was to be held a "conventicle," and the hearers to be punished. Lastly, the "Five-Mile Act" of 1665 forbade any minister who had refused to sign the "Act of Uniformity" to dwell within five miles of any city or corporate borough. It also prohibited such men from acting as tutors or schoolmasters, unless they took an oath "to attempt no alteration of the constitution in Church or State." These acts were purely vexatious and spiteful, as the Nonconformists were now completely crushed and harmless. Their numbers were already rapidly dwindling, and by the end of the century they did not number a fifth of the population of the realm. The vast majority of them had gone to swell the Low Church party within the Anglican establishment.
Clarendon.
For the first seven years of the reign of Charles II., the days of the "Cavalier Parliament," the chief minister of the realm was Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon. He was a survivor from the days of the Long Parliament, being one of the original reforming members of that body who had gone over to the royal side when the Puritan majority commenced to attack the Church. He had been one of the wiser and more moderate councillors of Charles I., and had followed Charles II. all through the days of his exile. His daughter, Anne Hyde, had married James, Duke of York, the king's brother. Fourteen years of exile had put him somewhat out of touch of English politics, and his political ideals were more like those of the Elizabethan monarchy than those of his own day. He was an honest and capable, but not a very strong man. All through his life he preserved the theories which had guided him in the early days of the Long Parliament, wishing to keep a balance between the royal Prerogative and the power of the two Houses. Of course he failed to satisfy either king or Parliament, Charles thought that he was not so zealous a servant as he might have been; while the advocates of stringent checks on the monarchy thought him too subservient to his master. Clarendon was a strong Churchman, and must bear his share of the responsibility for the iniquitous "Conventicle" and "Five-Mile" acts. In secular matters he was more judicious; he always opposed the attempts of the king or Parliament to slur over the "Act of Oblivion and Indemnity" and hunt down the adherents of the Commonwealth. In foreign affairs he was a strong advocate of the old Elizabethan policy of war with Spain and friendship with France, a system which was rapidly becoming very dangerous, owing to the growing preponderance of France under the vigorous and ambitious young king, Lewis XIV. The first sign of his views was the sale of Dunkirk, Cromwell's old conquest, to the French for 5,000,000 francs.
Profligacy of the court.
Clarendon's great fault was that he had no influence over his master, the king. He allowed Charles to develop his unworthy personal habits without remonstrance. The king filled both his palace and the public service with disreputable favourites. He neglected his amiable but unattractive wife, Catherine of Portugal, [44] and filled his court with a perfect harem of mistresses, whose sons he made dukes and earls. England had never seen shameless immorality in high places so rampant in any previous age. The king's companions and servants were, as might have been expected, men of scandalous life, and quite unfit for the offices into which he thrust them. The tone of the court had a profound and unhappy influence on the manners of the day. Never were the private vices displayed so unblushingly; as if in protest against the formal piety and bleak austerity of the days of the Puritans, England—or at least its governing classes—plunged into extravagance and evil living of all sorts. Drunkenness, profanity, thriftless luxury, gambling, duelling, shameless lust, were accounted no discredit. The literature, and more especially the drama, of the Restoration is coarse and foul beyond belief. Even great poets like Dryden felt constrained to be scurrilous when they wished to please. The days of the great civil war had brought out the sterner virtues of Englishmen; the Restoration and the reign of domestic peace were marked by the outburst of all the folly and lewd frivolity which had so long been dormant beneath the surface.
The Dutch war.—1665-67.
The chief political event of Clarendon's administration was the second Dutch war, a struggle into which the minister was forced somewhat against his will. It was an unwise war, for, in spite of the fact that their commercial interests often clashed, England and Holland needed each other's aid against the dangerous and restless power of France. Narrow trade jealousy, however, sufficed to bring on a conflict which ended with little credit to England. The fleet was very unsuccessful at sea, not so much owing to its own fault, as to the unskilful hands of its admirals. Charles gave the command to two old military men—General Monk, the author of the Restoration, and Prince Rupert. These gallant cavalry officers were wholly unable to handle a fleet; they led their ships into battle, whatever the odds against them, and then left the day to be decided by hard fighting. At a great three-days' engagement in the Downs (January 1-2-3, 1666) Monk was totally defeated by the Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, and his ill-success was very insufficiently revenged by some predatory descents on the coast of Holland in the next autumn.
The Plague—1665.
The days of the Dutch war were some of the most unhappy that England has ever known. In the summer and autumn of 1665, the land was smitten with the worst outbreak of pestilence that it has ever suffered. The "Great Plague" raged in London with awful severity. The crowded and ill-built city, utterly destitute of any sanitary appliances, and foul with the accumulated filth of centuries, became a very hotbed of contagion. Whole streets and parishes were swept clear of their inhabitants by death or desertion; the clergy fled from their cures, the physicians from their patients. All who could escape removed into the country, and London in the late autumn looked like a city of the dead, the grass growing high in its streets. The great plague-pits by St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and Mile-end had been filled one after another, as fast as they could be opened, with huddled bodies gathered in the dreaded death-cart. At least a hundred thousand persons perished; contemporary rumour named an even greater figure.
The Fire in London.—1666.
London had hardly recovered from the Plague, when in the next year it suffered a fresh calamity, the Great Fire. A chance conflagration, bursting out in the heart of the city, was carried west and north by a strong wind, and swept away two-thirds of the inhabited houses of the capital. All the great buildings of mediaeval London perished in the flames, the old Gothic Cathedral of St. Paul's, eighty-eight other churches, the Guildhall, the historic mansions of the nobility, the halls of the rich City Companies, hospitals, old monastic remains, all were swept away. Hence it comes that central London is poorer in ancient architectural monuments than many a country town. The popular dismay at such an unexampled catastrophe was so great that a rumour went abroad that the conflagration was no accident, but had been planned and spread by the Papists, who were believed capable of any enormity since the wild attempt of Guy Fawkes. The Great Fire was not without its benefits; it swept away for ever a thousand mediaeval fever-dens, and allowed of the rebuilding of the city with wider streets and more direct communications. Perhaps we may add that it gave a unique opportunity to the great architect Christopher Wren, to display his talents in the new St. Paul's and the many other churches which he was commissioned to rebuild.
The Peace of Breda.
London was hardly beginning to rise again from its ashes, when the Dutch war ended, in some disgrace, but no loss to England. The English fleet had not recovered from the disaster in the Downs, for Charles II. had squandered on his palace and harem the liberal grants which Parliament made him to repair his navy. While the seas were unguarded, a Dutch squadron slipped up the Thames, burnt the English dockyard and ships at Chatham, and held the port of London blockaded for some days. But negotiations were already on foot before this disaster was suffered, and the Peace of Breda (1667) put an end to the war. The terms were less unfavourable than might have been expected; England modified the Navigation Act of Cromwell's day in favour of Holland, but kept the valuable conquest of New Amsterdam, a Dutch colony in North America, which lay between New England and Virginia. The settlement changed its name, and was called in the future New York, after the king's brother, James, Duke of York.
Fall of Clarendon.
Just after the Peace of Breda, Clarendon lost his place as the king's chief minister. The disasters and mismanagement of the war were, very unjustly, imputed to him rather than to his master. The Commons impeached him for permitting corruption among the public servants, and for wilfully misconducting the war. Bowing to the storm, he left England and dwelt in exile till his death.
The Cabal.
No one was more glad than the king at Clarendon's departure. He filled the place of his well-intentioned, if narrow-minded, minister with a clique of his disreputable friends. This administration was called the "Cabal" (from Cabala, the Hebrew word for strange and occult knowledge), as being the depository of the king's secrets. The name became popular because it chanced that the initials of the names of the five men who formed it spelt the word "Cabal." They were Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Lord Clifford and the Earl of Arlington were Romanists, a fact which brought much odium and suspicion on their doings. George, Duke of Buckingham, the son of the favourite of Charles I., a volatile, insincere man—
"Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long,"
as Dryden wrote. He was the most profligate and unscrupulous man in England. Lauderdale, an ambitious Scottish peer, was a renegade Covenanter who had sold himself to the king for power. Anthony Ashley, Lord Shaftesbury, was also an old Roundhead, whose love of office and preferment had overcome his principles. He was an active, unscrupulous man, whose ready talents were only prevented from achieving greatness by his want of honesty and clear judgment.
Policy of Charles.
In replacing Clarendon by the "Cabal," Charles had two objects. So far as he cared for anything beyond his own pleasures, he was set on attaining two ends which he knew to be hateful to the nation: one was to render himself independent of Parliamentary control; the other to secure toleration, and if possible predominance, in England for Romanism. He thought that his new ministers were sufficiently free from scruples to aid him in his projects.
Schemes of Lewis XIV.
His main helper in the scheme was to be his cousin Lewis XIV., the zealous champion of Roman Catholicism on the continent, and the most busy and ambitious monarch that France had ever known. Lewis had already started on his long career of aggression against Spain, Holland, and Austria. He was set on seizing for himself the frontier of the Rhine, the dream of all French statesmen since his day. To achieve this, he wished to conquer the Spanish Netherlands—the modern Belgium—and the petty principalities of the middle and lower Rhine. At the same time he was set on striking a blow against Protestantism, whenever he had the chance, and most especially against the Protestant power of Holland—for the "United Provinces" were both republican and Calvinist, the two things that he hated most in the world.
The Treaty of Dover.
After diverting suspicions from his object for a moment, by concluding a treaty of alliance with Holland and Sweden, which met with universal approval, the king began to broach his scheme. It was worked out in the iniquitous "Treaty of Dover" (May, 1670). By this Charles undertook to join Lewis in destroying Holland and dividing up the Spanish Netherlands. In return for this service he was to receive a subsidy of £200,000 a year from France, and to have the aid of 6000 French troops to crush any rebellion that might arise in England when he took in hand the great project of restoring Catholic predominance in the realm. This last clause was only known to the king, and to Arlington and Clifford, the Romanist members of the Cabal. It was concealed from Lauderdale, Buckingham, and Shaftesbury, who only knew of the plan for the partition of Holland and the Spanish dominions.
Second Dutch war.
Having concluded this iniquitous agreement with his cousin, Charles prorogued Parliament—he kept it from meeting for two years—and declared war on the Dutch, without any ostensible cause or reason. At the same time the French king launched a great army over his northern frontier, overran the Spanish Netherlands, and penetrated far into Holland. The Dutch were only saved from destruction by their desperate resistance. Their fleet fought a drawn battle with the English at Southwold, and staved off a naval invasion. Meanwhile the young William of Orange, the heir of the old stadtholders, saved Amsterdam from the French by breaking down the dykes and inundating South Holland. Driven back by the floods, the French had to evacuate their Dutch conquests (1672).
The Declaration of Indulgence.
Meanwhile Charles began to carry out his agreement with Lewis for restoring Romanism, by issuing his "Declaration of Indulgence," suspending all the penal laws which imposed penalties on Roman Catholics. To cloak his design, he made the proclamations cover Protestant Nonconformists, as well as dissidents belonging to the older creed.
Popular indignation.—The Test Act.
But the king had miscalculated the feeling of England. The "Declaration of Indulgence" raised a storm about his ears which he dared not face. So wrathful were the Churchmen, Low Church and High Church alike, that he felt in serious danger of deposition. The Parliament met in February, 1673, and passed an address requiring the king to withdraw the "Declaration." Charles felt his nerve give way; instead of standing his ground, and calling in his French auxiliaries, he yielded, and withdrew his edict of toleration. The Parliament then passed the "Test Act," which excluded all Nonconformists, Protestant and Romanist alike, from all official positions. This made it impossible for Charles to retain his Catholic ministers, Arlington and Clifford, and caused the downfall of the Cabal, which went out of office in the end of 1673. The Test Act also drove from his place as Lord High Admiral the king's brother James, who had become an avowed Romanist.
Peace with Holland.—Danby chief minister.
The failure of the king's schemes was still further marked by the conclusion of peace with Holland in February, 1674, and the appointment as chief minister of Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby, a good Churchman and an enemy of France. Determined "not to go on his travels again," Charles gave way on all points, to the deep disgust of his cousin of France, who despised him greatly for his craven desertion of the cause of Romanism.
Marriage of Princess Mary and William of Orange.
But the king had not really given up his design. He was quite ready to renew his alliance with France when the times should be more favourable. Meanwhile he was compelled to profess an attachment to Holland, and married his heiress, the Princess Mary, his brother James's daughter, to the young Prince of Orange, the sworn foe of France (1677). By such means he was able to keep himself safe, and to laugh at the efforts of the Low Church party in Parliament.
Shaftesbury and the "country party."
This faction, the "country party," as it called itself, was now headed by the unscrupulous adventurer Shaftesbury, who from being a minister had become the king's deadly enemy, and was trying to stir up trouble by warning the nation to beware of the Romanist and absolutist tendencies of his old master—of whose reality none had a better knowledge than himself.
Fall of Danby.
Danby was driven from office in 1678, owing to the discovery of some of the king's secret negotiations with France, to which he had been weak enough to give his assent for the moment, though his own views were opposed to the alliance with Lewis XIV. The French king knew this fact, and treacherously made the negotiations known, in order that Danby might be discredited, and replaced by a minister more suited to his tastes. His wily scheme was successful; Danby was hounded from office, impeached, and condemned to imprisonment in the Tower, though he produced the king's warrant for all he had done. But the Parliament voted that the king could do no wrong, and that a minister was responsible for all his acts, even when he acted under the strongest pressure from his master. Thus the theory of "ministerial responsibility" was fixedly and unequivocally proclaimed as part of the Constitution.
Shaftesbury's schemes.
The fact that secret treaties with France were again in the air, gave Shaftesbury and his friends, the ultra-Protestants, a fine opportunity for a demonstration. Soon after Danby's fall, they raised a cry that the kingdom was in danger from a plot to restore Romanism by the aid of armed force from France. This was true enough, and the criminal was the King of England. But Shaftesbury did not strike at the king; he feared the loyalty of the Churchmen to the heir of Charles I., and thought that his sovereign was so supple and weak that he might be terrorized into becoming his instrument. The king was to be reduced to nullity, not removed.
The Popish Plot.
When the cry against the Romanists was growing strong, there came forward a certain depraved clergyman named Titus Oates, who had been for a time perverted to Romanism, and had dwelt much with the Jesuits. He made himself Shaftesbury's tool, by declaring that he had gained knowledge of a great conspiracy against the peace of the realm. This "Popish Plot" was, he said, an agreement by a number of English Catholics to slay the king and introduce a French army into the realm in order to place James of York, the king's Romanist brother, on the throne. Now, it is probable enough that some of the accused were in correspondence with France, and letters were discovered from Coleman, secretary to the Duchess of York, written to friends abroad, which spoke of an approaching blow to the Protestant cause. But the blow was really to be dealt by Charles, not against him. It was he who was in truth conspiring to bring over the French and conquer his own realm by their aid.
Popular panic.
Oates, however, perjured himself up to the hilt, bringing forward accusations against all the leading English Romanists, and hinting that even Queen Catherine herself was privy to a plot to murder her husband. Many minor informers also sprang up to corroborate the venomous tale of Oates. The nation was seriously alarmed. A perfect outburst of frenzy followed, and every Romanist in England was denounced as a disciple of Guy Fawkes. Charles, to his shame, pretended to take the story seriously, though none knew better than he its folly.
The Exclusion Bill.—The Habeas Corpus Act.
A new Parliament met in March, 1679; it was elected in the full flood of indignation against the "Plot," and Shaftesbury found that he could command a clear majority of its votes. He used his power to bring in a bill excluding the Duke of York, as an avowed Romanist, from the throne. To save his brother's rights, Charles dissolved the Commons before they could pass it. The only work that this Parliament had succeeded in carrying through was the Habeas Corpus Act, a very important enactment prohibiting arbitrary imprisonment without a trial. No man was to be kept in gaol untried, and penalties were imposed on the gaoler who should detain him, and the judge who should refuse to hear him plead. This principle required to be explicitly reasserted under the later Stuarts, though it is found formulated in Magna Carta itself.
Pretensions of the Duke of Monmouth.
The second Parliament of 1679 was, to the king's disgust, almost as much under the influence of Shaftesbury and the alarmists as the first. The nation was still in a ferment; month after month prominent Catholics were imprisoned on the evidence of Oates and his gang, tried, and condemned to death. So great was the fear felt of the Romanist Duke of York, that a preposterous plan was formed by Shaftesbury and his friends to replace him as heir to the throne by the Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of the natural sons of King Charles. This was a manifest injustice to the Princess Mary, the Protestant daughter of Duke James. Her father's religion could not vitiate her rights. But Monmouth was a popular youth, of fair parts and abilities. He had won some military reputation by putting down a dangerous rebellion of the Scottish Covenanters, who had murdered the Archbishop of St. Andrews, risen in arms, and got possession of the Western Lowlands. After routing them at Bothwell Brig (June, 1679), Monmouth was saluted as a conquering hero, and rumours were put about that his mother, Lucy Walters, had been secretly married to the king. Charles himself hastened to deny this lie, but it had its effect, and a serious effort was made to substitute Monmouth for his uncle.
Shaftesbury loses ground.
All through 1680 the struggle was at its height, though Shaftesbury was gradually losing ground, owing to the unwise violence of his conduct, and the growing disrepute of his tool, Titus Oates, whose reckless falsehoods were beginning to be detected by sober men. The contest turned on the fate of the Exclusion Bill, which declared James incapable of reigning, and transferred his rights to his daughter Mary, the Princess of Orange, though many suspected that Shaftesbury intended to substitute Monmouth for the princess.
"Petitioners and Abhorrers."—Whigs and Tories.
It is at this moment that the famous political names which were to rule England for the next century and a half come into sight. At first the opponents of the Exclusion Bill, the supporters of the divine right of hereditary succession, and the defenders of the Duke of York, were called "Abhorrers," from the numerous addresses which they sent to the king declaring their abhorrence of the Exclusion Bill. On the other hand, the supporters of Shaftesbury, and the believers in the Popish Plot, were called "Petitioners," from the petitions which they kept signing in favour of the bill. But soon two less cumbrous, if stranger, names were found for the two parties. The "Abhorrers" were nicknamed "Tories" by their enemies, from the appellation of a horde of banditti, who lurked in the bogs of Ireland. The Petitioners, on the other hand, were christened "Whigs" by their rivals, after the name of a fanatical sect of Scottish Covenanters. These titles, bestowed in ridicule at first, were finally accepted in earnest, and became the usual denomination of the two great parties.
The Exclusion Bill was passed by Shaftesbury and his majority of Whigs in the Commons, once in 1679, and once in 1680. But the House of Lords threw it out, and Charles dissolved the Parliament once and again, till in 1681 the fear of the Popish Plot began to blow over, and the violence of Shaftesbury to disgust the moderate members of his own party. The cruel execution, in December, 1680, of Lord Stafford, an old Romanist peer of blameless life, whose innocence was known to all, was the last and most damaging triumph of the Whigs. Its injustice caused many of Shaftesbury's supporters to fall away. His intrigues in favour of Monmouth, and the open support which he gave to the lying Oates, had ruined him.
Fall of Shaftesbury.—The Rye-House Plot.
In 1681 the king accused him of high treason for collecting armed followers to overawe Parliament. A London jury refused to convict him, and he plunged into still more desperate courses. Conspiring with Lord William Russell and Algernon Sydney to raise rebellion, he was detected and fled over-sea to escape punishment. Some of his more desperate followers went on with his plot, which they developed into a plan for assassinating Charles as he passed the Rye House in Hertfordshire, on his way to Newmarket. The disclosure of this reckless conspiracy ruined the Whigs; the whole party was believed to have been privy to it, though it was in truth the work of a very small clique, headed by one Colonel Rumbold, an old Cromwellian officer (1682).
Execution of Russell and Sydney.
The king, finding that public opinion was veering round to his side, was emboldened to strike a blow at the whole Whig faction. Mixing up the Rye-House Plot with Shaftesbury's abortive plans, he seized all their chief leaders, and had them tried for high treason. Subservient judges and a packed jury made their fall easy. Lord William Russell and Algernon Sydney were beheaded; Lord Essex committed suicide in prison. The evidence connecting Russell and Sydney with the assassination plot was trivial, and their execution little else than a judicial murder (1683).
Death of Charles.
Charles was now in a better position to carry out his long-concealed plan for the restoration of arbitrary government and the furthering of Romanism than at any previous time in his reign. He left Parliament unsummoned for more than two years, prepared to renew his alliance with France, endeavoured to collect a body of ministers who would second his views, and largely increased his standing army. He made several unconstitutional encroachments on the liberty of his subjects—such as forfeiting the charters of many cities, including London itself—and was cautiously feeling his way towards more decisive measures. But on February 6, 1685, his plans were suddenly interrupted by a fatal apoplectic stroke, which carried him off before he had attained the age of fifty-five. On his death-bed he had himself openly received into the Roman Catholic faith, of which he had so long been the secret partisan. It was fortunate that his schemes were brought to such an untimely end, for if a cautious foe to the liberties of England, he was a very clever and insidious one. Of the stubborn folly which ruined his successor, he would never have been guilty.