Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 2 of 3

by Henry Hallam

CHAPTER XI

FROM THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES THE SECOND TO THE FALL OF THE CABAL ADMINISTRATION

Popular joy at the restoration.—It is universally acknowledged that no measure was ever more national, or has ever produced more testimonies of public approbation, than the restoration of Charles II. Nor can this be attributed to the usual fickleness of the multitude. For the late government, whether under the parliament or the protector, had never obtained the sanction of popular consent, nor could have subsisted for a day without the support of the army. The king's return seemed to the people the harbinger of a real liberty, instead of that bastard commonwealth which had insulted them with its name; a liberty secure from enormous assessments, which, even when lawfully imposed, the English had always paid with reluctance, and from the insolent despotism of the soldiery. The young and lively looked forward to a release from the rigours of fanaticism, and were too ready to exchange that hypocritical austerity of the late times for a licentiousness and impiety that became characteristic of the present. In this tumult of exulting hope and joy, there was much to excite anxious forebodings in calmer men; and it was by no means safe to pronounce that a change so generally demanded, and in most respects so expedient, could be effected without very serious sacrifices of public and particular interests.

Proceedings of the convention parliament.—Four subjects of great importance, and some of them very difficult, occupied the convention parliament from the time of the king's return till their dissolution in the following December; a general indemnity and legal oblivion of all that had been done amiss in the late interruption of government; an adjustment of the claims for reparation which the Crown, the church, and private royalists had to prefer; a provision for the king's revenue, consistent with the abolition of military tenures; and the settlement of the church. These were, in effect, the articles of a sort of treaty between the king and the nation, without some legislative provisions as to which, no stable or tranquil course of law could be expected.

Act of indemnity.—The king, in his well-known declaration from Breda, dated the 14th of April, had laid down, as it were, certain bases of his restoration, as to some points which he knew to excite much apprehension in England. One of these was a free and general pardon to all his subjects, saving only such as should be excepted by parliament. It had always been the king's expectation, or at least that of his chancellor, that all who had been immediately concerned in his father's death should be delivered up to punishment;[523] and, in the most unpropitious state of his fortunes, while making all professions of pardon and favour to different parties, he had constantly excepted the regicides.[524] Monk, however, had advised in his first messages to the king, that none, or at most not above four, should be excepted on this account;[525] and the Commons voted that not more than seven persons should lose the benefit of the indemnity, both as to life and estate.[526] Yet, after having named seven of the late king's judges, they proceeded in a few days to add several more, who had been concerned in managing his trial, or otherwise forward in promoting his death.[527] They went on to pitch upon twenty persons, whom, on account of their deep concern in the transactions of the last twelve years, they determined to affect with penalties, not extending to death, and to be determined by some future act of parliament.[528] As their passions grew warmer, and the wishes of the court became better known, they came to except from all benefit of the indemnity such of the king's judges as had not rendered themselves to justice according to the late proclamation.[529] In this state the bill of indemnity and oblivion was sent up to the Lords.[530] But in that house, the old royalists had a more decisive preponderance than among the Commons. They voted to except all who had signed the death-warrant against Charles the First, or sat when sentence was pronounced, and five others by name, Hacker, Vane, Lambert, Haslerig, and Axtell. They struck out, on the other hand, the clause reserving Lenthall and the rest of the same class for future penalties. They made other alterations in the bill to render it more severe;[531] and with these, after a pretty long delay, and a positive message from the king, requesting them to hasten their proceedings (an irregularity to which they took no exception, and which in the eyes of the nation was justified by the circumstances), they returned the bill to the Commons.

The vindictive spirit displayed by the upper house was not agreeable to the better temper of the Commons, where the presbyterian or moderate party retained great influence. Though the king's judges (such at least as had signed the death-warrant) were equally guilty, it was consonant to the practice of all humane governments to make a selection for capital penalties; and to put forty or fifty persons to death for that offence, seemed a very sanguinary course of proceeding, and not likely to promote the conciliation and oblivion so much cried up. But there was a yet stronger objection to this severity. The king had published a proclamation, in a few days after his landing, commanding his father's judges to render themselves up within fourteen days, on pain of being excepted from any pardon or indemnity, either as to their lives or estates. Many had voluntarily come in, having put an obvious construction on this proclamation. It seems to admit of little question, that the king's faith was pledged to those persons, and that no advantage could be taken of any ambiguity in the proclamation, without as real perfidiousness as if the words had been more express. They were at least entitled to be set at liberty, and to have a reasonable time allowed for making their escape, if it were determined to exclude them from the indemnity.[532] The Commons were more mindful of the king's honour and their own than his nearest advisers.[533] But the violent royalists were gaining ground among them, and it ended in a compromise. They left Hacker and Axtell, who had been prominently concerned in the king's death, to their fate. They even admitted the exceptions of Vane and Lambert; contenting themselves with a joint address of both houses to the king, that, if they should be attainted, execution as to their lives might be remitted. Haslerig was saved on a division of 141 to 116, partly through the intercession of Monk, who had pledged his word to him. Most of the king's judges were entirely excepted; but with a proviso in favour of such as had surrendered according to the proclamation, that the sentence should not be executed without a special act of parliament.[534] Others were reserved for penalties not extending to life, to be inflicted by a future act. About twenty enumerated persons, as well as those who had pronounced sentence of death in any of the late illegal high courts of justice, were rendered incapable of any civil or military office. Thus after three months' delay, which had given room to distrust the boasted clemency and forgiveness of the victorious royalists, the act of indemnity was finally passed.

Execution of regicides.—Ten persons suffered death soon afterwards for the murder of Charles the First; and three more who had been seized in Holland, after a considerable lapse of time.[535] There can be no reasonable ground for censuring either the king or the parliament for their punishment; except that Hugh Peters, though a very odious fanatic, was not so directly implicated in the king's death as many who escaped; and the execution of Scrope, who had surrendered under the proclamation, was an inexcusable breach of faith.[536] But nothing can be more sophistical than to pretend that such men as Hollis and Annesley, who had been expelled from parliament by the violence of the same faction who put the king to death, were not to vote for their punishment, or to sit in judgment on them, because they had sided with the Commons in the civil war.[537] It is mentioned by many writers, and in the Journals, that when Mr. Lenthall, son of the late speaker, in the very first days of the convention parliament, was led to say that those who had levied war against the king were as blamable as those who had cut off his head, he received a reprimand from the chair, which the folly and dangerous consequence of his position well deserved; for such language, though it seems to have been used by him in extenuation of the regicides, was quite in the tone of the violent royalists.[538]

Restitution of crown and church lands.—A question, apparently far more difficult, was that of restitution and redress. The Crown lands, those of the church, the estates in certain instances of eminent royalists, had been sold by the authority of the late usurpers; and that not at very low rates, considering the precariousness of the title. This naturally seemed a material obstacle to the restoration of ancient rights, especially in the case of ecclesiastical corporations, whom men are commonly less disposed to favour than private persons. The clergy themselves had never expected that their estates would revert to them in full propriety; and would probably have been contented, at the moment of the king's return, to have granted easy leases to the purchasers. Nor were the House of Commons, many of whom were interested in these sales, inclined to let in the former owners without conditions. A bill was accordingly brought into the house at the beginning of the session to confirm sales, or to give indemnity to the purchasers. I do not find its provisions more particularly stated. The zeal of the royalists soon caused the Crown lands to be excepted.[539] But the house adhered to the principle of composition as to ecclesiastical property, and kept the bill a long time in debate. At the adjournment in September, the chancellor told them, his majesty had thought much upon the business, and done much for the accommodation of many particular persons, and doubted not but that, before they met again, a good progress would be made, so that the persons concerned would be much to blame if they received not full satisfaction; promising also to advise with some of the Commons as to that settlement.[540] These expressions indicate a design to take the matter out of the hands of parliament. For it was Hyde's firm resolution to replace the church in the whole of its property, without any other regard to the actual possessors than the right owners should severally think it equitable to display. And this, as may be supposed, proved very small. No further steps were taken on the meeting of parliament after the adjournment; and by the dissolution the parties were left to the common course of law. The church, the Crown, the dispossessed royalists, re-entered triumphantly on their lands; there were no means of repelling the owners' claim, nor any satisfaction to be looked for by the purchasers under so defective a title. It must be owned that the facility with which this was accomplished, is a striking testimony to the strength of the new government, and the concurrence of the nation. This is the more remarkable, if it be true, as Ludlow informs us, that the chapter lands had been sold by the trustees appointed by parliament at the clear income of fifteen or seventeen years' purchase.[541]

Discontent of the royalists.—The great body however of the suffering cavaliers, who had compounded for their delinquency under the ordinances of the Long Parliament, or whose estates had been for a time in sequestration, found no remedy for these losses by any process of law. The act of indemnity put a stop to any suits they might have instituted against persons concerned in carrying these illegal ordinances into execution. They were compelled to put up with their poverty, having the additional mortification of seeing one class, namely, the clergy, who had been engaged in the same cause, not alike in their fortune, and many even of the vanquished republicans undisturbed in wealth which, directly or indirectly, they deemed acquired at their own expense.[542] They called the statute an act of indemnity for the king's enemies, and of oblivion for his friends. They murmured at the ingratitude of Charles, as if he were bound to forfeit his honour and risk his throne for their sakes. They conceived a deep hatred of Clarendon, whose steady adherence to the great principles of the act of indemnity is the most honourable act of his public life. And the discontent engendered by their disappointed hopes led to some part of the opposition afterwards experienced by the king, and still more certainly to the coalition against the minister.

Settlement of the revenue.—No one cause had so eminently contributed to the dissensions between the Crown and parliament in the two last reigns, as the disproportion between the public revenues under a rapidly increasing depreciation in the value of money, and the exigencies, at least on some occasions, of the administration. There could be no apology for the parsimonious reluctance of the Commons to grant supplies, except the constitutional necessity of rendering them the condition of redress of grievances; and in the present circumstances, satisfied, as they seemed at least to be, with the securities they had obtained, and enamoured of their new sovereign, it was reasonable to make some further provision for the current expenditure. Yet this was to be meted out with such prudence as not to place him beyond the necessity of frequent recurrence to their aid. A committee was accordingly appointed "to consider of settling such a revenue on his majesty as may maintain the splendour and grandeur of his kingly office, and preserve the Crown from want, and from being undervalued by his neighbours." By their report it appeared that the revenue of Charles I. from 1637 to 1641 had amounted on an average to about £900,000, of which full £200,000 arose from sources either not warranted by law or no longer available. The house resolved to raise the present king's income to £1,200,000 per annum; a sum perhaps sufficient in those times for the ordinary charges of government. But the funds assigned to produce this revenue soon fell short of the parliament's calculation.[543]

Abolition of military tenures. Excise granted instead.—One ancient fountain that had poured its stream into the royal treasury, it was now determined to close up for ever. The feudal tenures had brought with them at the conquest, or not long after, those incidents, as they were usually called, or emoluments of signiory, which remained after the military character of fiefs had been nearly effaced; especially the right of detaining the estates of minors holding in chivalry, without accounting for the profits. This galling burthen, incomparably more ruinous to the tenant than beneficial to the lord, it had long been determined to remove. Charles, at the treaty of Newport, had consented to give it up for a fixed revenue of £100,000; and this was almost the only part of that ineffectual compact which the present parliament were anxious to complete. The king, though likely to lose much patronage and influence, and what passed with lawyers for a high attribute of his prerogative, could not decently refuse a commutation so evidently advantageous to the aristocracy. No great difference of opinion subsisting as to the expediency of taking away military tenures, it remained only to decide from what resources the commutation revenue should spring. Two schemes were suggested; the one, a permanent tax on lands held in chivalry (which, as distinguished from those in socage, were alone liable to the feudal burthens); the other, an excise on beer and some other liquors. It is evident that the former was founded on a just principle; while the latter transferred a particular burthen to the community. But the self-interest which so unhappily predominates even in representative assemblies, with the aid of the courtiers who knew that an excise increasing with the riches of the country was far more desirable for the Crown than a fixed land-tax, caused the former to be carried, though by the very small majority of two voices.[544] Yet even thus, if the impoverishment of the gentry, and dilapidation of their estates through the detestable abuses of wardship, was, as cannot be doubted, very mischievous to the inferior classes, the whole community must be reckoned gainers by the arrangement, though it might have been conducted in a more equitable manner. The statute 12 Car. II. c. 24. takes away the court of wards, with all wardships and forfeitures for marriage by reason of tenure, all primer seisins, and fines for alienation, aids, escuages, homages, and tenures by chivalry without exception, save the honorary services of grand sergeanty; converting all such tenures into common socage. The same statute abolishes those famous rights of purveyance and pre-emption, the fruitful theme of so many complaining parliaments; and this relief of the people from a general burthen may serve in some measure as an apology for the imposition of the excise. This act may be said to have wrought an important change in the spirit of our constitution, by reducing what is emphatically called the prerogative of the Crown, and which, by its practical exhibition in these two vexatious exercises of power, wardship, and purveyance, kept up in the minds of the people a more distinct perception, as well as more awe, of the monarchy, than could be felt in later periods, when it has become, as it were, merged in the common course of law, and blended with the very complex mechanism of our institutions. This great innovation however is properly to be referred to the revolution of 1641, which put an end to the court of star-chamber, and suspended the feudal superiorities. Hence, with all the misconduct of the two last Stuarts, and all the tendency towards arbitrary power that their government often displayed, we must perceive that the constitution had put on, in a very great degree, its modern character during that period; the boundaries of prerogative were better understood; its pretensions, at least in public, were less enormous; and not so many violent and oppressive, certainly not so many illegal, acts were committed towards individuals as under the two first of their family.

Army disbanded.—In fixing upon £1,200,000 as a competent revenue for the Crown, the Commons tacitly gave it to be understood that a regular military force was not among the necessities for which they meant to provide. They looked upon the army, notwithstanding its recent services, with that apprehension and jealousy which becomes an English House of Commons. They were still supporting it by monthly assessments of £70,000, and could gain no relief by the king's restoration till that charge came to an end. A bill therefore was sent up to the Lords before their adjournment in September, providing money for disbanding the land forces. This was done during the recess; the soldiers received their arrears with many fair words of praise, and the nation saw itself, with delight and thankfulness to the king, released from its heavy burthens and the dread of servitude.[545] Yet Charles had too much knowledge of foreign countries, where monarchy flourished in all its plenitude of sovereign power under the guardian sword of a standing army, to part readily with so favourite an instrument of kings. Some of his counsellors, and especially the Duke of York, dissuaded him from disbanding the army, or at least advised his supplying its place by another. The unsettled state of the kingdom after so momentous a revolution, the dangerous audacity of the fanatical party, whose enterprises were the more to be guarded against, that they were founded on no such calculation as reasonable men would form, and of which the insurrection of Venner in November 1660 furnished an example, did undoubtedly appear a very plausible excuse for something more of a military protection to the government than yeomen of the guard and gentlemen pensioners. General Monk's regiment, called the Coldstream, and one other of horse, were accordingly retained by the king in his service; another was formed out of troops brought from Dunkirk; and thus began, under the name of guards, the present regular army of Great Britain.[546] In 1662 these amounted to about 5000 men; a petty force according to our present notions, or to the practice of other European monarchies in that age, yet sufficient to establish an alarming precedent, and to open a new source of contention between the supporters of power and those of freedom.

So little essential innovation had been effected by twenty years' interruption of the regular government in the common law or course of judicial proceedings, that, when the king and House of Lords were restored to their places, little more seemed to be requisite than a change of names. But what was true of the state could not be applied to the church. The revolution there had gone much farther, and the questions of restoration and compromise were far more difficult.

Clergy restored to their benefices.—It will be remembered that such of the clergy as steadily adhered to the episcopal constitution had been expelled from their benefices by the long parliament under various pretexts, and chiefly for refusing to take the covenant. The new establishment was nominally presbyterian. But the presbyterian discipline and synodical government were very partially introduced; and, upon the whole, the church, during the suspension of the ancient laws, was rather an assemblage of congregations than a compact body, having little more unity than resulted from their common dependency on the temporal magistrate. In the time of Cromwell, who favoured the independent sectaries, some of that denomination obtained livings; but very few, I believe, comparatively, who had not received either episcopal or presbyterian ordination. The right of private patronage to benefices, and that of tithes, though continually menaced by the more violent party, subsisted without alteration. Meanwhile the episcopal ministers, though excluded from legal toleration along with papists, by the instrument of government under which Cromwell professed to hold his power, obtained, in general, a sufficient indulgence for the exercise of their function.[547] Once, indeed, on discovery of the royalist conspiracy in 1655, he published a severe ordinance, forbidding every ejected minister or fellow of a college to act as domestic chaplain or schoolmaster. But this was coupled with a promise to show as much tenderness as might consist with the safety of the nation towards such of the said persons as should give testimony of their good affection to the government; and, in point of fact, this ordinance was so far from being rigorously observed, that episcopalian conventicles were openly kept in London.[548] Cromwell was of a really tolerant disposition, and there had perhaps, on the whole, been no period of equal duration wherein the catholics themselves suffered so little molestation as under the protectorate.[549] It is well known that he permitted the settlement of Jews in England, after an exclusion of nearly three centuries, in spite of the denunciations of some bigoted churchmen and lawyers.

Hopes of the presbyterians from the king.—The presbyterian clergy, though co-operating in the king's restoration, experienced very just apprehensions of the church they had supplanted; and this was in fact one great motive of the restrictions that party was so anxious to impose on him. His character and sentiments were yet very imperfectly known in England; and much pains were taken on both sides, by short pamphlets, panegyrical or defamatory, to represent him as the best Englishman and best protestant of the age, or as one given up to profligacy and popery.[550] The caricature likeness was, we must now acknowledge, more true than the other; but at that time it was fair and natural to dwell on the more pleasing picture. The presbyterians remembered that he was what they called a covenanted king; that is, that, for the sake of the assistance of the Scots, he had submitted to all the obligations, and taken all the oaths, they thought fit to impose.[551] But it was well known that, on the failure of those prospects, he had returned to the church of England, and that he was surrounded by its zealous adherents. Charles, in his declaration from Breda, promised to grant liberty of conscience, so that no man should be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of religion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom, and to consent to such acts of parliament as should be offered for him for confirming that indulgence. But he was silent as to the church establishment; and the presbyterian ministers, who went over to present the congratulations of their body, met with civil language, but no sort of encouragement to expect any personal compliance on the king's part with their mode of worship.

Projects for a compromise.—The moderate party in the convention parliament, though not absolutely of the presbyterian interest, saw the danger of permitting an oppressed body of churchmen to regain their superiority without some restraint. The actual incumbents of benefices were, on the whole, a respectable and even exemplary class, most of whom could not be reckoned answerable for the legal defects of their title. But the ejected ministers of the Anglican church, who had endured for their attachment to its discipline and to the Crown so many years of poverty and privation, stood in a still more favourable light, and had an evident claim to restoration. The Commons accordingly, before the king's return, prepared a bill for confirming and restoring ministers; with the twofold object of replacing in their benefices, but without their legal right to the intermediate profits, the episcopal clergy who by ejection or forced surrender had made way for intruders, and at the same time of establishing the possession, though originally usurped, of those against whom there was no claimant living to dispute it, as well as of those who had been presented on legal vacancies.[552] This act did not pass without opposition of the cavaliers, who panted to retaliate the persecution that had afflicted their church.[553]

This legal security however for the enjoyment of their livings gave no satisfaction to the scruples of conscientious men. The episcopal discipline, the Anglican liturgy and ceremonies having never been abrogated by law, revived of course with the constitutional monarchy; and brought with them all the penalties that the act of uniformity and other statutes had inflicted. The nonconforming clergy threw themselves on the king's compassion, or gratitude, or policy, for relief. The independents, too irreconcilable to the established church for any scheme of comprehension, looked only to that liberty of conscience which the king's declaration from Breda had held forth.[554] But the presbyterians soothed themselves with hopes of retaining their benefices by some compromise with their adversaries. They had never, generally speaking, embraced the rigid principles of the Scottish clergy, and were willing to admit what they called a moderate episcopacy. They offered, accordingly, on the king's request to know their terms, a middle scheme, usually denominated Bishop Usher's Model; not as altogether approving it, but because they could not hope for anything nearer to their own views. This consisted, first, in the appointment of a suffragan bishop for each rural deanery, holding a monthly synod of the presbyters within his district; and, secondly, in an annual diocesan synod of suffragans and representatives of the presbyters, under the presidency of the bishop, and deciding upon all matters before them by plurality of suffrages.[555] This is, I believe, considered by most competent judges as approaching more nearly than our own system to the usage of the primitive church, which gave considerable influence and superiority of rank to the bishop, without destroying the aristocratical character and co-ordinate jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical senate.[556] It lessened also the inconveniences supposed to result from the great extent of some English dioceses. But, though such a system was inconsistent with that parity which the rigid presbyterians maintained to be indispensable, and those who espoused it are reckoned, in a theological division, among episcopalians, it was, in the eyes of equally rigid churchmen, little better than a disguised presbytery, and a real subversion of the Anglican hierarchy.[557]

The presbyterian ministers, or rather a few eminent persons of that class, proceeded to solicit a revision of the liturgy, and a consideration of the numerous objections which they made to certain passages, while they admitted the lawfulness of a prescribed form. They implored the king also to abolish, or at least not to enjoin as necessary, some of those ceremonies which they scrupled to use, and which in fact had been the original cause of their schism; the surplice, the cross in baptism, the practice of kneeling at the communion, and one or two more. A tone of humble supplication pervades all their language, which some might invidiously contrast with their unbending haughtiness in prosperity. The bishops and other Anglican divines, to whom their propositions were referred, met the offer of capitulation with a scornful and vindictive smile. They held out not the least overture towards a compromise.

The king however deemed it expedient, during the continuance of a parliament, the majority of whom were desirous of union in the church, and had given some indications of their disposition,[558] to keep up the delusion a little longer, and prevent the possible consequences of despair. He had already appointed several presbyterian ministers his chaplains, and given them frequent audiences. But during the recess of parliament he published a declaration, wherein, after some compliments to the ministers of the presbyterian opinion, and an artful expression of satisfaction that he had found them no enemies to episcopacy or a liturgy, as they had been reported to be, he announces his intention to appoint a sufficient number of suffragan bishops in the larger dioceses; he promises that no bishop should ordain or exercise any part of his spiritual jurisdiction without advice and assistance of his presbyters; that no chancellors or officials of the bishops should use any jurisdiction over the ministry, nor any archdeacon without the advice of a council of his clergy; that the dean and chapter of the diocese, together with an equal number of presbyters, annually chosen by the clergy, should be always advising and assisting at all ordinations, church censures, and other important acts of spiritual jurisdiction. He declared also that he would appoint an equal number of divines of both persuasions to revise the liturgy; desiring that in the meantime none would wholly lay it aside, yet promising that no one should be molested for not using it till it should be reviewed and reformed. With regard to ceremonies, he declared that none should be compelled to receive the sacrament kneeling, nor to use the cross in baptism, nor to bow at the name of Jesus, nor to wear the surplice, except in the royal chapel and in cathedrals, nor should subscription to articles not doctrinal be required. He renewed also his declaration from Breda, that no man should be called in question for differences of religious opinion, not disturbing the peace of the kingdom.[559]

Though many of the presbyterian party deemed this modification of Anglican episcopacy a departure from their notions of an apostolic church, and inconsistent with their covenant, the majority would doubtless have acquiesced in so extensive a concession from the ruling power. If faithfully executed, according to its apparent meaning, it does not seem that the declaration falls very short of their own proposal, the scheme of Usher.[560] The high churchmen indeed would have murmured, had it been made effectual. But such as were nearest the king's councils well knew that nothing else was intended by it than to scatter dust in men's eyes, and prevent the interference of parliament. This was soon rendered manifest, when a bill to render the king's declaration effectual was vigorously opposed by the courtiers, and rejected on a second reading by 183 to 157.[561] Nothing could more forcibly demonstrate an intention of breaking faith with the presbyterians than this vote. For the king's declaration was repugnant to the act of uniformity and many other statutes, so that it could not be carried into effect without the authority of parliament, unless by means of such a general dispensing power as no parliament would endure.[562] And it is impossible to question that a bill for confirming it would have easily passed through this House of Commons, had it not been for the resistance of the government.

Convention parliament dissolved.—Charles now dissolved the convention parliament, having obtained from it what was immediately necessary, but well aware that he could better accomplish his objects with another. It was studiously inculcated by the royalist lawyers that as this assembly had not been summoned by the king's writ, none of its acts could have any real validity, except by the confirmation of a true parliament.[563] This doctrine being applicable to the act of indemnity left the kingdom in a precarious condition till an undeniable security could be obtained, and rendered the dissolution almost necessary. Another parliament was called of very different composition from the last. Possession and the standing ordinances against royalists had enabled the secluded members of 1648, that is, the adherents of the long parliament, to stem with some degree of success the impetuous tide of loyalty in the last elections, and put them almost upon an equality with the court. But, in the new assembly, cavaliers, and the sons of cavaliers, entirely predominated; the great families, the ancient gentry, the episcopal clergy, resumed their influence; the presbyterians and sectarians feared to have their offences remembered; so that we may rather be surprised that about fifty or sixty who had belonged to the opposite side found places in such a parliament, than that its general complexion should be decidedly royalist. The presbyterian faction seemed to lie prostrate at the feet of those on whom they had so long triumphed, without any force of arms or civil convulsion, as if the king had been brought in against their will. Nor did the cavaliers fail to treat them as enemies to monarchy, though it was notorious that the restoration was chiefly owing to their endeavours.[564]

Different complexion of the new parliament.—The new parliament gave the first proofs of their disposition by voting that all their members should receive the sacrament on a certain day according to the rites of the church of England, and that the solemn league and covenant should be burned by the common hangman.[565] They excited still more serious alarm by an evident reluctance to confirm the late act of indemnity, which the king at the opening of the session had pressed upon their attention. Those who had suffered the sequestrations and other losses of a vanquished party, could not endure to abandon what they reckoned a just reparation. But Clarendon adhered with equal integrity and prudence to this fundamental principle of the restoration; and, after a strong message from the king on the subject, the Commons were content to let the bill pass with no new exceptions.[566] They gave indeed some relief to the ruined cavaliers, by voting £60,000 to be distributed among that class; but so inadequate a compensation did not assuage their discontents.

Condemnation of Vane.—It has been mentioned above, that the late House of Commons had consented to the exception of Vane and Lambert from indemnity on the king's promise that they should not suffer death. They had lain in the Tower accordingly, without being brought to trial. The regicides who had come in under the proclamation were saved from capital punishment by the former act of indemnity. But the present parliament abhorred this lukewarm lenity. A bill was brought in for the execution of the king's judges in the Tower; and the attorney-general was requested to proceed against Vane and Lambert.[567] The former was dropped in the House of Lords; but those formidable chiefs of the commonwealth were brought to trial. Their indictments alleged as overt acts of high treason against Charles II. their exercise of civil and military functions under the usurping government; though not, as far as appears, expressly directed against the king's authority, and certainly not against his person. Under such an accusation, many who had been the most earnest in the king's restoration might have stood at the bar. Thousands might apply to themselves, in the case of Vane, the beautiful expressions of Mrs. Hutchinson, as to her husband's feelings at the death of the regicides, that he looked on himself as judged in their judgment and executed in their execution. The stroke fell upon one, the reproach upon many.

The condemnation of Sir Henry Vane was very questionable even according to the letter of the law. It was plainly repugnant to its spirit. An excellent statute enacted under Henry VII., and deemed by some great writers to be only declaratory of the common law, but occasioned, no doubt, by some harsh judgments of treason which had been pronounced during the late competition of the house of York and Lancaster, assured a perfect indemnity to all persons obeying a king for the time being, however defective his title might come to be considered, when another claimant should gain possession of the throne. It established the duty of allegiance to the existing government upon a general principle; but in its terms it certainly presumed that government to be a monarchy. This furnished the judges upon the trial of Vane with a distinction, of which they willingly availed themselves. They proceeded however beyond all bounds of constitutional precedents and of common sense, when they determined that Charles the Second had been king de facto as well as de jure from the moment of his father's death, though, in the words of their senseless sophistry, "kept out of the exercise of his royal authority by traitors and rebels." He had indeed assumed the title during his exile, and had granted letters patent for different purposes, which it was thought proper to hold good after his restoration; thus presenting the strange anomaly, and as it were contradiction in terms, of a king who began to govern in the twelfth year of his reign. But this had not been the usage of former times. Edward IV., Richard III., Henry VII., had dated their instruments either from their proclamation, or at least from some act of possession. The question was not whether a right to the Crown descended according to the laws of inheritance; but whether such a right, divested of possession, could challenge allegiance as a bounden duty by the law of England. This is expressly determined in the negative by Lord Coke in his third Institute, who maintains a king "that hath right, and is out of possession," not to be within the statute of treasons. He asserts also that a pardon granted by him would be void; which by parity of reasoning must extend to all his patents.[568] We may consider therefore the execution of Vane as one of the most reprehensible actions of this bad reign. It not only violated the assurance of indemnity, but introduced a principle of sanguinary proscription, which would render the return of what is called legitimate government, under any circumstances, an intolerable curse to a nation.[569]

The king violated his promise by the execution of Vane, as much as the judges strained the law by his conviction. He had assured the last parliament, in answer to their address, that, if Vane and Lambert should be attainted by law he would not suffer the sentence to be executed. Though the present parliament had urged the attorney-general to bring these delinquents to trial, they had never, by an address to the king, given him a colour for retracting his promise of mercy. It is worthy of notice that Clarendon does not say a syllable about Vane's trial; which affords a strong presumption that he thought it a breach of the act of indemnity. But we have on record a remarkable letter of the king to his minister, wherein he expresses his resentment at Vane's bold demeanour during his trial, and intimates a wish for his death, though with some doubts whether it could be honourably done.[570] Doubts of such a nature never lasted long with this prince; and Vane suffered the week after. Lambert, whose submissive behaviour had furnished a contrast with that of Vane, was sent to Guernsey; and remained a prisoner for thirty years. The royalists have spoken of Vane with extreme dislike; yet it should be remembered that he was not only incorrupt, but disinterested, inflexible in conforming his public conduct to his principles, and averse to every sanguinary or oppressive measure: qualities not very common in revolutionary chiefs, and which honourably distinguished him from the Lamberts and Haslerigs of his party.[571]

Acts replacing the Crown in its prerogatives.—No time was lost, as might be expected from the temper of the Commons, in replacing the throne on its constitutional basis after the rude encroachments of the long parliament. They declared that there was no legislative power in either or both houses without the king; that the league and covenant was unlawfully imposed; that the sole supreme command of the militia, and of all forces by sea and land, had ever been by the laws of England the undoubted right of the Crown; that neither house of parliament could pretend to it, nor could lawfully levy any war offensive or defensive against his majesty.[572] These last words appeared to go to a dangerous length, and to sanction the suicidal doctrine of absolute non-resistance. They made the law of high treason more strict during the king's life in pursuance of a precedent in the reign of Elizabeth.[573] They restored the bishops to their seats in the House of Lords; a step which the last parliament would never have been induced to take, but which met with little opposition from the present.[574] The violence that had attended their exclusion seemed a sufficient motive for rescinding a statute so improperly obtained, even if the policy of maintaining the spiritual peers were somewhat doubtful. The remembrance of those tumultuous assemblages which had overawed their predecessors in the winter of 1641, and at other times, produced a law against disorderly petitions. This statute provides that no petition or address shall be presented to the king or either house of parliament by more than ten persons; nor shall any one procure above twenty persons to consent or set their hands to any petition for alteration of matters established by law in church or state, unless with the previous order of three justices of the county, or the major part of the grand jury.[575]

Corporation act.—Thus far the new parliament might be said to have acted chiefly on a principle of repairing the breaches recently made in our constitution, and of re-establishing the just boundaries of the executive power; nor would much objection have been offered to their measures, had they gone no farther in the same course. The act for regulating corporations is much more questionable, and displayed a determination to exclude a considerable portion of the community from their civil rights. It enjoined all magistrates and persons bearing offices of trust in corporations to swear that they believed it unlawful, on any pretence whatever, to take arms against the king, and that they abhorred the traitorous position of bearing arms by his authority against his person, or against those that are commissioned by him. They were also to renounce all obligation arising out of the oath called the solemn league and covenant; in case of refusal, to be immediately removed from office. Those elected in future were, in addition to the same oaths, to have received the sacrament within one year before their election according to the rites of the English church.[576] These provisions struck at the heart of the presbyterian party, whose strength lay in the little oligarchies of corporate towns, which directly or indirectly returned to parliament a very large proportion of its members. Yet it rarely happens that a political faction is crushed by the terrors of an oath. Many of the more rigid presbyterians refused the conditions imposed by this act; but the majority found pretexts for qualifying themselves.

Repeal of the triennial act.—It could not yet be said that this loyal assembly had meddled with those safeguards of public liberty which had been erected by their great predecessors in 1641. The laws that Falkland and Hampden had combined to provide, those bulwarks against the ancient exorbitance of prerogative, stood unscathed; threatened from afar, but not yet betrayed by the garrison. But one of these, the bill for triennial parliaments, wounded the pride of royalty, and gave scandal to his worshippers; not so much on account of its object, as of the securities provided against its violation. If the king did not summon a fresh parliament within three years after a dissolution, the peers were to meet and issue writs of their own accord; if they did not within a certain time perform this duty, the sheriffs of every county were to take it on themselves; and, in default of all constituted authorities the electors might assemble without any regular summons to choose representatives. It was manifest that the king must have taken a fixed resolution to trample on a fundamental law, before these irregular tumultuous modes of redress could be called into action; and that the existence of such provisions could not in any degree weaken or endanger the legal and limited monarchy. But the doctrine of passive obedience had now crept from the homilies into the statute-book; the parliament had not scrupled to declare the unlawfulness of defensive war against the king's person; and it was but one step more to take away all direct means of counteracting his pleasure. Bills were accordingly more than once ordered to be brought in for repealing the triennial act; but no further steps were taken till the king thought it at length necessary in the year 1664 to give them an intimation of his desires.[577] A vague notion had partially gained ground that no parliament, by virtue of that bill, could sit for more than three years. In allusion to this, he told them, on opening the session of 1664, that he "had often read over that bill; and, though there was no colour for the fancy of the determination of the parliament, yet he would not deny that he had always expected them to consider the wonderful clauses in that bill, which passed in a time very uncareful for the dignity of the Crown or the security of the people. He requested them to look again at it. For himself, he loved parliaments; he was much beholden to them; he did not think the Crown could ever be happy without frequent parliaments. But assure yourselves," he concluded, "if I should think otherwise I would never suffer a parliament to come together by the means prescribed by that bill."[578]

So audacious a declaration, equivalent to an avowed design, in certain circumstances, of preventing the execution of the laws by force of arms, was never before heard from the lips of an English king; and would in any other times have awakened a storm of indignation from the Commons. They were however sufficiently compliant to pass a bill for the repeal of that which had been enacted with unanimous consent in 1641, and had been hailed as the great palladium of constitutional monarchy. The preamble recites the said act to have been "in derogation of his majesty's just rights and prerogative inherent in the imperial Crown of this realm for the calling and assembling of parliaments." The bill then repeals and annuls every clause and article in the fullest manner; yet, with an inconsistency not unusual in our statutes, adds a provision that parliaments shall not in future be intermitted for above three years at the most. This clause is evidently framed in a different spirit from the original bill, and may be attributed to the influence of that party in the house, which had begun to oppose the court, and already showed itself in considerable strength.[579] Thus the effect of this compromise was, that the law of the long parliament subsisted as to its principle, without those unusual clauses which had been enacted to render its observance secure. The king assured them, in giving his assent to the repeal, that he would not be a day more without a parliament on that account. But the necessity of those securities, and the mischiefs of that false and servile loyalty which abrogated them, became manifest at the close of the present reign; nearly four years having elapsed between the dissolution of Charles's last parliament and his death.

Clarendon, the principal adviser, as yet, of the king since his restoration (for Southampton rather gave reputation to the administration than took that superior influence which belonged to his place of treasurer), has thought fit to stigmatise the triennial bill with the epithet of infamous. So wholly had he divested himself of the sentiments he entertained at the beginning of the long parliament that he sought nothing more ardently than to place the Crown again in a condition to run into those abuses and excesses against which he had once so much inveighed. "He did never dissemble," he says, "from the time of his return with the king, that the late rebellion could never be extirpated and pulled up by the roots till the king's regal and inherent power and prerogative should be fully avowed and vindicated, and till the usurpations in both houses of parliament, since the year 1640, were disclaimed and made odious; and many other excesses, which had been affected by both before that time under the name of privileges, should be restrained or explained. For all which reformation the kingdom in general was very well disposed, when it pleased God to restore the king to it. The present parliament had done much, and would willingly have prosecuted the same method, if they had had the same advice and encouragement."[580] I can only understand these words to mean that they might have been led to repeal other statutes of the long parliament, besides the triennial act, and that excluding the bishops from the House of Peers; but more especially, to have restored the two great levers of prerogative, the courts of star-chamber and high-commission. This would indeed have pulled up by the roots the work of the long parliament, which, in spite of such general reproach, still continued to shackle the revived monarchy. There had been some serious attempts at this in the House of Lords during the session of 1661-2. We read in the Journals[581] that a committee was appointed to prepare a bill for repealing all acts made in the parliament begun the 3rd day of November 1640, and for re-enacting such of them as should be thought fit. This committee some time after[582] reported their opinion, "that it was fit for the good of the nation, that there be a court of like nature to the late court called the star-chamber; but desired the advice and directions of the house in these particulars following: Who should be judges? What matters should they be judges of? By what manner of proceedings should they act?" The house, it is added, thought it not fit to give any particular directions therein, but left it to the committee to proceed as they would. It does not appear that anything further was done in this session; but we find the bill of repeal revived next year.[583] It is however only once mentioned. Perhaps it may be questionable whether, even amidst the fervid loyalty of 1661, the House of Commons would have concurred in re-establishing the star-chamber. They had taken marked precautions in passing an act for the restoration of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, that it should not be construed to restore the high-commission court, or to give validity to the canons of 1640, or to enlarge in any manner the ancient authority of the church.[584] A tribunal still more formidable and obnoxious would hardly have found favour with a body of men, who, as their behaviour shortly demonstrated, might rather be taxed with passion and vindictiveness towards a hostile faction, than a deliberate willingness to abandon their English rights and privileges.

The striking characteristic of this parliament was a zealous and intolerant attachment to the established church, not losing an atom of their aversion to popery in their abhorrence of protestant dissent. In every former parliament since the reformation, the country party (if I may use such a word, by anticipation, for those gentlemen of landed estates who owed their seats to their provincial importance, as distinguished from courtiers, lawyers, and dependents on the nobility), had incurred with rigid churchmen the reproach of puritanical affections. They were implacable against popery, but disposed to far more indulgence with respect to nonconformity than the very different maxims of Elizabeth and her successors would permit. Yet it is obvious that the puritan Commons of James I. and the high church Commons of Charles II. were composed, in a great measure, of the same families, and entirely of the same classes. But, as the arrogance of the prelates had excited indignation, and the sufferings of the scrupulous clergy begotten sympathy in one age, so the reversed scenes of the last twenty years had given to the former, or their adherents, the advantage of enduring oppression with humility and fortitude, and displayed in the latter, or at least many of their number, those odious and malevolent qualities which adversity had either concealed or rendered less dangerous. The gentry, connected for the most part by birth or education with the episcopal clergy, could not for an instant hesitate between the ancient establishment, and one composed of men whose eloquence in preaching was chiefly directed towards the common people, and presupposed a degree of enthusiasm in the hearer which the higher classes rarely possessed. They dreaded the wilder sectaries, foes to property, or at least to its political influence, as much as to the regal constitution; and not unnaturally, though without perfect fairness, confounded the presbyterian or moderate nonconformist in the motley crowd of fanatics, to many of whose tenets he at least more approximated than the church of England minister.

Presbyterians deceived by the king.—There is every reason to presume, as I have already remarked, that the king had no intention but to deceive the presbyterians and their friends in the convention parliament by his declaration of October 1660.[585] He proceeded, after the dissolution of that assembly, to fill up the number of bishops, who had been reduced to nine, but with no further mention of suffragans, or of the council of presbyters, which had been announced in that declaration.[586] It does indeed appear highly probable that this scheme of Usher would have been found inconvenient and even impracticable; and reflecting men would perhaps be apt to say that the usage of primitive antiquity, upon which all parties laid so much stress, was rather a presumptive argument against the adoption of any system of church-government, in circumstances so widely different, than in favour of it. But inconvenient and impracticable provisions carry with them their own remedy; and the king might have respected his own word, and the wishes of a large part of the church, without any formidable danger to episcopal authority. It would have been, however, too flagrant a breach of promise (and yet hardly greater than that just mentioned) if some show had not been made of desiring a reconciliation on the subordinate details of religious ceremonies and the liturgy. This produced a conference held at the Savoy, in May 1661, between twenty-one Anglican and as many presbyterian divines: the latter were called upon to propose their objections; it being the part of the others to defend. They brought forward so long a list as seemed to raise little hope of agreement. Some of these objections to the service, as may be imagined, were rather captious and hypercritical; yet in many cases they pointed out real defects. As to ceremonies, they dwelt on the same scruples as had from the beginning of Elizabeth's reign produced so unhappy a discordance, and had become inveterate by so much persecution. The conference was managed with great mutual bitterness and recrimination; the one party stimulated by vindictive hatred and the natural arrogance of power; the other irritated by the manifest design of breaking the king's faith, and probably by a sense of their own improvidence in ruining themselves by his restoration. The chief blame, it cannot be dissembled, ought to fall on the churchmen. An opportunity was afforded of healing, in a very great measure, that schism and separation which, if they are to be believed, is one of the worst evils that can befall a christian community. They had it in their power to retain, or to expel, a vast number of worthy and laborious ministers of the gospel, with whom they had, in their own estimation, no essential ground of difference. They knew the king, and consequently themselves, to have been restored with (I might almost say by) the strenuous co-operation of those very men who were now at their mercy. To judge by the rules of moral wisdom, or of the spirit of Christianity (to which, notwithstanding what might be satirically said of experience, it is difficult not to think we have a right to expect that a body of ecclesiastics should pay some attention), there can be no justification for the Anglican party on this occasion. They have certainly one apology, the best very frequently that can be offered for human infirmity; they had sustained a long and unjust exclusion from the emoluments of their profession, which begot a natural dislike towards the members of the sect that had profited at their expense, though not, in general, personally responsible for their misfortunes.[587]

The Savoy conference broke up in anger, each party more exasperated and more irreconcilable than before. This indeed has been the usual consequence of attempts to bring men to an understanding on religious differences by explanation or compromise. The public is apt to expect too much from these discussions; unwilling to believe either that those who have a reputation for piety can be wanting in desire to find the truth, or that those who are esteemed for ability can miss it. And this expectation is heightened by the language rather too strongly held by moderate and peaceable divines, that little more is required than an understanding of each other's meaning, to unite conflicting sects in a common faith. But as it generally happens that the disputes of theologians, though far from being so important as they appear to the narrow prejudices and heated passions of the combatants, are not wholly nominal, or capable of being reduced to a common form of words, the hopes of union and settlement vanish upon that closer enquiry which conferences and schemes of agreement produce. And though this may seem rather applicable to speculative controversies than to such matters as were debated between the church and the presbyterians at the Savoy conference, and which are in their nature more capable of compromise than articles of doctrine; yet the consequence of exhibiting the incompatibility and reciprocal alienation of the two parties in a clearer light was nearly the same.

A determination having been taken to admit of no extensive comprehension, it was debated by the government whether to make a few alterations in the liturgy, or to restore the ancient service in every particular. The former advice prevailed, though with no desire or expectation of conciliating any scrupulous persons by the amendments introduced.[588] These were by no means numerous, and in some instances rather chosen in order to irritate and mock the opposite party than from any compliance with their prejudices. It is indeed very probable, from the temper of the new parliament, that they would not have come into more tolerant and healing measures.

Act of uniformity.—When the act of uniformity was brought into the House of Lords, it was found not only to restore all the ceremonies and other matters to which objection had been taken, but to contain fresh clauses more intolerable than the rest to the presbyterian clergy. One of these enacted that not only every beneficed minister, but fellow of a college, or even schoolmaster, should declare his unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained in the book of common prayer.[589] These words, however capable of being eluded and explained away, as such subscriptions always are, seemed to amount, in common use of language, to a complete approbation of an entire volume, such as a man of sense hardly gives to any book, and which, at a time when scrupulous persons were with great difficulty endeavouring to reconcile themselves to submission, placed a new stumbling-block in their way, which, without abandoning their integrity, they found it impossible to surmount.

The malignity of those who chiefly managed church affairs at this period displayed itself in another innovation tending to the same end. It had been not unusual, from the very beginnings of our reformation, to admit ministers ordained in foreign protestant churches to benefices in England. No re-ordination had ever been practised with respect to those who had received the imposition of hands in a regular church; and hence it appears that the church of England, whatever tenets might latterly have been broached in controversy, did not consider the ordination of presbyters invalid. Though such ordinations as had taken place during the late troubles, and by virtue of which a great part of the actual clergy were in possession, were evidently irregular, on the supposition that the English episcopal church was then in existence; yet, if the argument from such great convenience as men call necessity was to prevail, it was surely worth while to suffer them to pass without question for the present, enacting provisions, if such were required, for the future. But this did not fall in with the passion and policy of the bishops, who found a pretext for their worldly motives of action in the supposed divine right and necessity of episcopal succession; a theory naturally more agreeable to arrogant and dogmatical ecclesiastics than that of Cranmer, who saw no intrinsic difference between bishops and priests; or of Hooker, who thought ecclesiastical superiorities, like civil, subject to variation; or of Stillingfleet, who had lately pointed out the impossibility of ascertaining beyond doubtful conjecture the real constitution of the apostolical church, from the scanty, inconclusive testimonies that either Scripture or antiquity furnish. It was therefore enacted in the statute for uniformity, that no person should hold any preferment in England, without having received episcopal ordination. There seems to be little or no objection to this provision, if ordination be considered as a ceremony of admission into a particular society; but, according to the theories which both parties had embraced in that age, it conferred a sort of mysterious indelible character, which rendered its repetition improper.[590]

Ejection of nonconformist clergy.—The new act of uniformity succeeded to the utmost wishes of its promoters. It provided that every minister should, before the feast of St. Bartholomew, 1662, publicly declare his assent and consent to everything contained in the book of common prayer, on pain of being ipso facto deprived of his benefice.[591] Though even the long parliament had reserved a fifth of the profits to those who were ejected for refusing the covenant, no mercy could be obtained from the still greater bigotry of the present; and a motion to make that allowance to nonconforming ministers was lost by 94 to 87.[592] The Lords had shown a more temperate spirit, and made several alterations of a conciliating nature. They objected to extending the subscription required by the act to schoolmasters. But the Commons urged in a conference the force of education, which made it necessary to take care for the youth. The upper house even inserted a proviso, allowing the king to dispense with the surplice and the sign of the cross; but the Commons resolutely withstanding this and every other alteration, they were all given up.[593] Yet next year, when it was found necessary to pass an act for the relief of those who had been prevented involuntarily from subscribing the declaration in due time, a clause was introduced, declaring that the assent and consent to the book of common prayer required by the said act should be understood only as to practice and obedience, and not otherwise. The Duke of York and twelve lay peers protested against this clause, as destructive to the church of England as now established; and the Commons vehemently objecting to it, the partisans of moderate councils gave way as before.[594] When the day of St. Bartholomew came, about 2000 persons resigned their preferments rather than stain their consciences by compliance—an act to which the more liberal Anglicans, after the bitterness of immediate passions had passed away, have accorded that praise which is due to heroic virtue in an enemy. It may justly be said that the episcopal clergy had set an example of similar magnanimity in refusing to take the covenant. Yet, as that was partly of a political nature, and those who were ejected for not taking it might hope to be restored through the success of the king's arms, I do not know that it was altogether so eminent an act of self-devotion as the presbyterian clergy displayed on St. Bartholomew's day. Both of them afford striking contrasts to the pliancy of the English church in the greater question of the preceding century, and bear witness to a remarkable integrity and consistency of principle.[595]

No one who has any sense of honesty and plain dealing can pretend that Charles did not violate the spirit of his declarations, both that from Breda, and that which he published in October 1660. It is idle to say that those declarations were subject to the decision of parliament, as if the Crown had no sort of influence in that assembly, nor even any means of making its inclinations known. He had urged them to confirm the act of indemnity, wherein he thought his honour and security concerned: was it less easy to obtain, or at least to ask for, their concurrence in a comprehension or toleration of the presbyterian clergy? Yet, after mocking those persons with pretended favour, and even offering bishoprics to some of their number, by way of purchasing their defection, the king made no effort to mitigate the provisions of the act of uniformity; and Clarendon strenuously supported them through both houses of parliament.[596] This behaviour in the minister sprung from real bigotry and dislike of the presbyterians; but Charles was influenced by a very different motive, which had become the secret spring of all his policy. This requires to be fully explained.

Hopes of the catholics.—Charles, during his misfortunes, had made repeated promises to the pope and the great catholic princes of relaxing the penal laws against his subjects of that religion—promises which he well knew to be the necessary condition of their assistance. And, though he never received any succour which could demand the performance of these assurances, his desire to stand well with France and Spain, as well as a sense of what was really due to the English catholics, would have disposed him to grant every indulgence which the temper of his people should permit. The laws were highly severe, in some cases sanguinary; they were enacted in very different times, from plausible motives of distrust, which it would be now both absurd and ungrateful to retain. The catholics had been the most strenuous of the late king's adherents, the greatest sufferers for their loyalty. Out of about 500 gentlemen who lost their lives in the royal cause, one-third, it has been said, were of that religion.[597] Their estates had been selected for confiscation, when others had been admitted to compound. It is however certain that after the conclusion of the war, and especially during the usurpation of Cromwell, they declined in general to provoke a government which showed a good deal of connivance towards their religion by keeping up any connection with the exiled family.[598] They had, as was surely very natural, one paramount object in their political conduct, the enjoyment of religious liberty; whatever debt of gratitude they might have owed to Charles I. had been amply paid; and perhaps they might reflect that he had never scrupled, in his various negotiations with the parliament, to acquiesce in any prescriptive measures suggested against popery. This apparent abandonment however of the royal interests excited the displeasure of Clarendon, which was increased by a tendency some of the catholics showed to unite with Lambert, who was understood to be privately of their religion, and by an intrigue carried on in 1659, by the machinations of Buckingham with some priests, to set up the Duke of York for the Crown. But the king retained no resentment of the general conduct of this party; and was desirous to give them a testimony of his confidence, by mitigating the penal laws against their religion. Some steps were taken towards this by the House of Lords in the session of 1661; and there seems little doubt that the statutes at least inflicting capital punishment would have been repealed without difficulty, if the catholics had not lost the favourable moment by some disunion among themselves, which the never-ceasing intrigues of the Jesuits contrived to produce.[599]

There can be no sort of doubt that the king's natural facility, and exemption from all prejudice in favour of established laws, would have led him to afford every indulgence that could be demanded to his catholic subjects, many of whom were his companions or his counsellors, without any propensity towards their religion. But it is morally certain that, during the period of his banishment, he had imbibed, as deeply and seriously as the character of his mind would permit, a persuasion that, if any scheme of Christianity were true, it could only be found in the bosom of an infallible church; though he was never reconciled, according to the formal profession which she exacts, till the last hours of his life. The secret however of his inclinations, though disguised to the world by the appearance, and probably sometimes more than the appearance, of carelessness and infidelity, could not be wholly concealed from his court. It appears the most natural mode of accounting for the sudden conversion of the Earl of Bristol to popery, which is generally agreed to have been insincere. An ambitious intriguer, holding the post of secretary of state, would not have ventured such a step without some grounds of confidence in his master's wishes; though his characteristic precipitancy hurried him forward to destroy his own hopes. Nor are there wanting proofs that the protestantism of both the brothers was greatly suspected in England before the restoration.[600] These suspicions acquired strength after the king's return, through his manifest intention not to marry a protestant; and still more through the presumptuous demeanour of the opposite party, which seemed to indicate some surer grounds of confidence than were yet manifest. The new parliament in its first session had made it penal to say that the king was a papist or popishly affected; whence the prevalence of that scandal may be inferred.[601]

Resisted by Clarendon and the parliament.—Charles had no assistance to expect, in his scheme of granting a full toleration to the Roman faith, from his chief adviser Clarendon. A repeal of the sanguinary laws, a reasonable connivance, perhaps in some cases a dispensation—to these favours he would have acceded. But, in his creed of policy, the legal allowance of any but the established religion was inconsistent with public order, and with the king's ecclesiastical prerogative. This was also a fixed principle with the parliament, whose implacable resentment towards the sectaries had not inclined them to abate in the least of their abhorrence and apprehension of popery. The church of England, distinctly and exclusively, was their rallying-point; the Crown itself stood only second in their affections. The king therefore had recourse to a more subtle and indirect policy. If the terms of conformity had been so far relaxed as to suffer the continuance of the presbyterian clergy in their benefices, there was every reason to expect from their known disposition a determined hostility to all approaches towards popery, and even to its toleration. It was therefore the policy of those who had the interests of that cause at heart, to permit no deviation from the act of uniformity, to resist all endeavours at a comprehension of dissenters within the pale of the church, and to make them look up to the king for indulgence in their separate way of worship. They were to be taught that, amenable to the same laws as the Romanists, exposed to the oppression of the same enemies, they must act in concert for a common benefit.[602] The presbyterian ministers, disheartened at the violence of the parliament, had recourse to Charles, whose affability and fair promises they were loth to distrust; and implored his dispensation for their nonconformity. The king, naturally irresolute, and doubtless sensible that he had made a bad return to those who had contributed so much towards his restoration, was induced, at the strong solicitation of Lord Manchester, to promise that he would issue a declaration suspending the execution of the statute for three months. Clarendon, though he had been averse to some of the rigorous clauses inserted in the act of uniformity, was of opinion that, once passed, it ought to be enforced without any connivance; and told the king likewise that it was not in his power to preserve those who did not comply with it from deprivation. Yet, as the king's word had been given, he advised him rather to issue such a declaration than to break his promise. But, the bishops vehemently remonstrating against it, and intimating that they would not be parties to a violation of the law, by refusing to institute a clerk presented by the patron on an avoidance for want of conformity in the incumbent, the king gave way, and resolved to make no kind of concession. It is remarkable that the noble historian does not seem struck at the enormous and unconstitutional prerogative which a proclamation suspending the statute would have assumed.[603]

Declaration for indulgence.—Instead of this very objectionable measure, the king adopted one less arbitrary, and more consonant to his own secret policy. He published a declaration in favour of liberty of conscience, for which no provision had been made, so as to redeem the promises he had held forth at his accession. Adverting to these, he declared that, "as in the first place he had been zealous to settle the uniformity of the church of England in discipline, ceremony, and government, and should ever constantly maintain it; so as for what concerns the penalties upon those who, living peaceably, do not conform themselves thereto, he should make it his special care, so far as in him lay, without invading the freedom of parliament, to incline their wisdom next approaching sessions to concur with him in making some such act for that purpose as may enable him to exercise with a more universal satisfaction that power of dispensing, which he conceived to be inherent in him."[604]

The aim of this declaration was to obtain from parliament a mitigation at least of all penal statutes in matters of religion, but more to serve the interests of catholic than of protestant nonconformity.[605] Except however the allusion to the dispensing power, which yet is very moderately alleged, there was nothing in it, according to our present opinions, that should have created offence. But the Commons, on their meeting in February 1663, presented an address, denying that any obligation lay on the king by virtue of his declaration from Breda, which must be understood to depend on the advice of parliament, and slightly intimating that he possessed no such dispensing prerogative as was suggested. They strongly objected to the whole scheme of indulgence, as the means of increasing sectaries, and rather likely to occasion disturbance than to promote peace.[606] They remonstrated, in another address, against the release of Calamy, an eminent dissenter, who, having been imprisoned for transgressing the act of uniformity, was irregularly set at liberty by the king's personal order.[607] The king, undeceived as to the disposition of this loyal assembly to concur in his projects of religious liberty, was driven to more tedious and indirect courses in order to compass his end. He had the mortification of finding that the House of Commons had imbibed, partly perhaps in consequence of this declaration, that jealous apprehension of popery, which had caused so much of his father's ill fortune. On this topic the watchfulness of an English parliament could never be long at rest. The notorious insolence of the Romish priests, who, proud of the court's favour, disdained to respect the laws enough to disguise themselves, provoked an address to the king, that they might be sent out of the kingdom; and bills were brought in to prevent the further growth of popery.[608]

Meanwhile, the same remedy, so infallible in the eyes of legislators, was not forgotten to be applied to the opposite disease of protestant dissent. Some had believed, of whom Clarendon seems to have been, that all scruples of tender conscience in the presbyterian clergy being faction and hypocrisy, they would submit very quietly to the law, when they found all their clamour unavailing to obtain a dispensation from it. The resignation of 2000 beneficed ministers at once, instead of extorting praise, rather inflamed the resentment of their bigoted enemies; especially when they perceived that a public and perpetual toleration of separate worship was favoured by part of the court.

Act against conventicles.—Rumours of conspiracy and insurrection, sometimes false, but gaining credit from the notorious discontent both of the old commonwealth's party, and of many who had never been on that side, were sedulously propagated, in order to keep up the animosity of parliament against the ejected clergy;[609] and these are recited as the pretext of an act passed in 1664 for suppressing seditious conventicles (the epithet being in this place wantonly and unjustly insulting), which inflicted on all persons above the age of sixteen, present at any religious meeting in other manner than is allowed by the practice of the church of England, where five or more persons besides the household should be present, a penalty of three months' imprisonment for the first offence, of six for the second, and of seven years' transportation for the third, on conviction before a single justice of peace.[610] This act, says Clarendon, if it had been vigorously executed, would no doubt have produced a thorough reformation.[611] Such is ever the language of the supporters of tyranny; when oppression does not succeed, it is because there has been too little of it. But those who suffered under this statute report very differently as to its vigorous execution. The gaols were filled, not only with ministers who had borne the brunt of former persecutions, but with the laity who attended them; and the hardship was the more grievous, that the act being ambiguously worded, its construction was left to a single magistrate, generally very adverse to the accused.

It is the natural consequence of restrictive laws to aggravate the disaffection which has served as their pretext; and thus to create a necessity for a legislature that will not retrace its steps, to pass still onward in the course of severity. In the next session accordingly held at Oxford in 1665, on account of the plague that ravaged the capital, we find a new and more inevitable blow aimed at the fallen church of Calvin. It was enacted that all persons in holy orders who had not subscribed the act of uniformity, should swear that it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the king; and that they did abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against those that are commissioned by him, and would not at any time endeavour any alteration of government in church or state. Those who refused this oath were not only made incapable of teaching in schools, but prohibited from coming within five miles of any city, corporate town, or borough sending members to parliament.[612]

This infamous statute did not pass without the opposition of the Earl of Southampton, lord treasurer, and other peers. But Archbishop Sheldon, and several bishops, strongly supported the bill, which had undoubtedly the sanction also of Clarendon's authority.[613] In the Commons, I do not find that any division took place; but an unsuccessful attempt was made to insert the word "legally" before commissioned; the lawyers, however, declared that this word must be understood.[614] Some of the nonconforming clergy took the oath upon this construction. But the far greater number refused. Even if they could have borne the solemn assertion of the principles of passive obedience in all possible cases, their scrupulous consciences revolted from a pledge to endeavour no kind of alteration in church and state; an engagement, in its extended sense, irreconcilable with their own principles in religion, and with the civil duties of Englishmen. Yet to quit the towns where they had long been connected, and where alone they had friends and disciples, for a residence in country villages, was an exclusion from the ordinary means of subsistence. The church of England had doubtless her provocations; but she made the retaliation much more than commensurate to the injury. No severity, comparable to this cold-blooded persecution, had been inflicted by the late powers, even in the ferment and fury of a civil war. Encouraged by this easy triumph, the violent party in the House of Commons thought it a good opportunity to give the same test a more sweeping application. A bill was brought in imposing this oath upon the whole nation; that is, I presume (for I do not know that its precise nature is anywhere explained), on all persons in any public or municipal trust. This however was lost on a division by a small majority.[615]

It has been remarked that there is no other instance in history, where men have suffered persecution on account of differences, which were admitted by those who inflicted it to be of such small moment. But, supposing this to be true, it only proves, what may perhaps be alleged as a sort of extenuation of these severe laws against nonconformists, that they were merely political, and did not spring from any theological bigotry. Sheldon indeed, their great promoter, was so free from an intolerant zeal that he is represented as a man who considered religion chiefly as an engine of policy. The principles of religious toleration had already gained considerable ground over mere bigotry; but were still obnoxious to the arbitrary temper of some politicians, and wanted perhaps experimental proof of their safety to recommend them to the caution of others. There can be no doubt that all laws against dissent and separation from an established church, those even of the inquisition, have proceeded in a greater or less degree from political motives; and these appear to me far less odious than the disinterested rancour of superstition. The latter is very common among the populace, and sometimes among the clergy. Thus the presbyterians exclaimed against the toleration of popery, not as dangerous to the protestant establishment, but as a sinful compromise with idolatry; language which, after the first heat of the reformation had abated, was never so current in the Anglican church.[616] In the case of these statutes against nonconformists under Charles II., revenge and fear seem to have been the unmixed passions that excited the church party against those, whose former superiority they remembered, and whose disaffection and hostility it was impossible to doubt.[617]

Dissatisfaction increases.—A joy so excessive and indiscriminating had accompanied the king's restoration, that no prudence or virtue in his government could have averted that reaction of popular sentiment, which inevitably follows the disappointment of unreasonable hope. Those who lay their account upon blessings, which no course of political administration can bestow, live, according to the poet's comparison, like the sick man, perpetually changing posture in search of the rest which nature denies; the dupes of successive revolutions, sanguine as children with the novelties of politics, a new constitution, a new sovereign, a new minister, and as angry with the playthings when they fall short of their desires. What then was the discontent that must have ensued upon the restoration of Charles II.? The neglected cavalier, the persecuted presbyterian, the disbanded officer, had each his grievance; and felt that he was either in a worse situation than he had formerly been, or at least than he had expected to be. Though there were not the violent acts of military power which had struck every man's eyes under Cromwell, it cannot be said that personal liberty was secure, or that the magistrates had not considerable power of oppression, and that pretty unsparingly exercised towards those suspected of disaffection. The religious persecution was not only far more severe than it was ever during the commonwealth, but perhaps more extensively felt than under Charles I. Though the monthly assessments for the support of the army ceased soon after the restoration, several large grants were made by parliament, especially during the Dutch war; and it appears, that in the first seven years of Charles II. the nation paid a greater sum in taxes than in any preceding period of the same duration. If then the people compared the national fruits of their expenditure, what a contrast they found, how deplorable a falling off in public honour and dignity since the days of the magnanimous usurper![618] They saw with indignation, that Dunkirk, acquired by Cromwell, had been chaffered away by Charles (a transaction justifiable perhaps on the mere balance of profit and loss, but certainly derogatory to the pride of a great nation); that a war, needlessly commenced, had been carried on with much display of bravery in our seamen and their commanders, but no sort of good conduct in the government; and that a petty northern potentate, who would have trembled at the name of the commonwealth, had broken his faith towards us out of mere contempt of our inefficiency.

Private life of the king.—These discontents were heightened by the private conduct of Charles, if the life of a king can in any sense be private, by a dissoluteness and contempt of moral opinion, which a nation, still in the main grave and religious, could not endure. The austere character of the last king had repressed to a considerable degree the common vices of a court which had gone to a scandalous excess under James. But the cavaliers in general affected a profligacy of manners, as their distinction from the fanatical party, which gained ground among those who followed the king's fortunes in exile, and became more flagrant after the restoration. Anecdotes of court excesses, which required not the aid of exaggeration, were in daily circulation through the coffee-houses; those who cared least about the vice, not failing to inveigh against the scandal. It is in the nature of a limited monarchy that men should censure very freely the private likes of their princes, as being more exempt from that immoral servility which blinds itself to the distinctions of right and wrong in elevated rank. And as a voluptuous court will always appear prodigal, because all expense in vice is needless, they had the mortification of believing that the public revenues were wasted on the vilest associates of the king's debauchery. We are however much indebted to the memory of Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, Louisa, Duchess of Portsmouth, and Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn. We owe a tribute of gratitude to the Mays, the Killigrews, the Chiffinches, and the Grammonts. They played a serviceable part in ridding the kingdom of its besotted loyalty. They saved our forefathers from the star-chamber, and the high-commission court; they laboured in their vocation against standing armies and corruption; they pressed forward the great ultimate security of English freedom, the expulsion of the house of Stuart.[619]

Opposition in parliament.—Among the ardent loyalists who formed the bulk of the present parliament, a certain number of a different class had been returned, not sufficient of themselves to constitute a very effective minority, but of considerable importance as a nucleus, round which the lesser factions that circumstances should produce, might be gathered. Long sessions, and a long continuance of the same parliament, have an inevitable tendency to generate a systematic opposition to the measures of the Crown, which it requires all vigilance and management to hinder from becoming too powerful. The sense of personal importance, the desire of occupation in business (a very characteristic propensity of the English gentry), the various inducements of private passion and interest, bring forward so many active spirits, that it was, even in that age, as reasonable to expect that the ocean should always be tranquil, as that a House of Commons should continue long to do the king's bidding, with any kind of unanimity or submission. Nothing can more demonstrate the incompatibility of the tory scheme, which would place the virtual and effective, as well as nominal, administration of the executive government in the sole hands of the Crown, with the existence of a representative assembly, than the history of this long parliament of Charles II. None has ever been elected in circumstances so favourable for the Crown, none ever brought with it such high notions of prerogative; yet in this assembly a party soon grew up, and gained strength in every successive year, which the king could neither direct nor subdue. The methods of bribery, to which the court had largely recourse, though they certainly diverted some of the measures, and destroyed the character, of this opposition, proved in the end like those dangerous medicines which palliate the instant symptoms of a disease that they aggravate. The leaders of this parliament were, in general, very corrupt men; but they knew better than to quit the power which made them worth purchase. Thus the House of Commons matured and extended those rights of enquiring into and controlling the management of public affairs, which had caused so much dispute in former times; and, as the exercise of these functions became more habitual, and passed with little or no open resistance from the Crown, the people learned to reckon them unquestionable or even fundamental; and were prepared for that more perfect settlement of the constitution on a more republican basis, which took place after the revolution. The reign of Charles II., though displaying some stretches of arbitrary power, and threatening a great deal more, was, in fact, the transitional state between the ancient and modern schemes of the English constitution; between that course of government where the executive power, so far as executive, was very little bounded except by the laws, and that where it can only be carried on, even within its own province, by the consent and co-operation, in a great measure, of the parliament.

Appropriation of supplies.—The Commons took advantage of the pressure which the war with Holland brought on the administration, to establish two very important principles on the basis of their sole right of taxation. The first of these was the appropriation of supplies to limited purposes. This indeed was so far from an absolute novelty, that it found precedents in the reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV.; a period when the authority of the House of Commons was at a very high pitch. No subsequent instance, I believe, was on record till the year 1624, when the last parliament of James I., at the king's own suggestion, directed their supply for the relief of the Palatinate to be paid into the hands of commissioners named by themselves. There were cases of a similar nature in the year 1641, which, though of course they could no longer be upheld as precedents, had accustomed the house to the idea that they had something more to do than simply to grant money, without any security or provision for its application. In the session of 1665, accordingly, an enormous supply, as it then appeared, of £1,250,000, after one of double that amount in the preceding year, having been voted for the Dutch war, Sir George Downing, one of the tellers of the exchequer, introduced into the subsidy bill a proviso, that the money raised by virtue of that act should be applicable only to the purposes of the war.[620] Clarendon inveighed with fury against this, as an innovation derogatory to the honour of the Crown; but the king himself, having listened to some who persuaded him that the money would be advanced more easily upon this better security for speedy repayment, insisted that it should not be thrown out.[621] That supplies, granted by parliament, are only to be expended for particular objects specified by itself, became, from this time, an undisputed principle, recognised by frequent and at length constant practice. It drew with it the necessity of estimates regularly laid before the House of Commons; and, by exposing the management of the public revenues, has given to parliament, not only a real and effective control over an essential branch of the executive administration, but, in some measure, rendered them partakers in it.[622]

Commission of public accounts.—It was a consequence of this right of appropriation, that the House of Commons should be able to satisfy itself as to the expenditure of their monies in the services for which they were voted. But they might claim a more extensive function, as naturally derived from their power of opening and closing the public purse, that of investigating the wisdom, faithfulness, and economy with which their grants had been expended. For this too there was some show of precedents in the ancient days of Henry IV.; but what undoubtedly had most influence was the recollection, that during the late civil war, and in the times of the commonwealth, the house had superintended, through its committees, the whole receipts and issues of the national treasury. This had not been much practised since the restoration. But in the year 1666, the large cost and indifferent success of the Dutch war begetting vehement suspicions, not only of profuseness but of diversion of the public money from its proper purposes, the house appointed a committee to inspect the accounts of the officers of the navy, ordnance, and stores, which were laid before them, as it appears, by the king's direction. This committee after some time, having been probably found deficient in powers, and particularly being incompetent to administer an oath, the house determined to proceed in a more novel and vigorous manner; and sent up a bill, nominating commissioners to inspect the public accounts, who were to possess full powers of enquiry, and to report with respect to such persons as they should find to have broken their trust. The immediate object of this enquiry, so far as appears from Lord Clarendon's mention of it, was rather to discover whether the treasurers had not issued money without legal warrant than to enter upon the details of its expenditure. But that minister, bigoted to his Tory creed of prerogative, thought it the highest presumption for a parliament to intermeddle with the course of government. He spoke of this bill as an encroachment and usurpation that had no limits, and pressed the king to be firm in his resolution never to consent to it.[623] Nor was the king less averse to a parliamentary commission of this nature, as well from a jealousy of its interference with his prerogative, as from a consciousness which Clarendon himself suggests, that great sums had been issued by his orders, which could not be put in any public account; that is (for we can give no other interpretation), that the monies granted for the war, and appropriated by statute to that service, had been diverted to supply his wasteful and debauched course of pleasures.[624] It was the suspicion, or rather private knowledge of this criminal breach of trust, which had led to the bill in question. But such a slave was Clarendon to his narrow prepossessions, that he would rather see the dissolute excesses which he abhorred suck nourishment from that revenue which had been allotted to maintain the national honour and interests, and which, by its deficiencies thus aggravated, had caused even in this very year the navy to be laid up, and the coasts to be left defenceless, than suffer them to be restrained by the only power to which thoughtless luxury would submit. He opposed the bill therefore in the House of Lords, as he confesses, with much of that intemperate warmth which distinguished him, and with a contempt of the lower house and its authority, as imprudent in respect to his own interests as it was unbecoming and unconstitutional. The king prorogued parliament while the measure was depending; but in hopes to pacify the House of Commons, promised to issue a commission under the great seal for the examination of public accountants;[625] an expedient which was not likely to bring more to light than suited his purpose. But it does not appear that this royal commission, though actually prepared and sealed, was ever carried into effect; for in the ensuing session, the great minister's downfall having occurred in the meantime, the House of Commons brought forward again their bill, which passed into a law. It invested the commissioners therein nominated with very extensive and extraordinary powers, both as to auditing public accounts, and investigating the frauds that had taken place in the expenditure of money, and employment of stores. They were to examine upon oath, to summon inquests if they thought fit, to commit persons disobeying their orders to prison without bail, to determine finally on the charge and discharge of all accountants; the barons of the exchequer, upon a certificate of their judgment, were to issue process for recovering money to the king's use, as if there had been an immediate judgment of their own court. Reports were to be made of the commissioners' proceedings from time to time to the king and to both houses of parliament. None of the commissioners were members of either house. The king, as may be supposed, gave way very reluctantly to this interference with his expenses. It brought to light a great deal of abuse and misapplication of the public revenues, and contributed doubtless in no small degree to destroy the house's confidence in the integrity of government, and to promote a more jealous watchfulness of the king's designs.[626] At the next meeting of parliament, in October 1669, Sir George Carteret, treasurer of the navy, was expelled the house for issuing money without legal warrant.

Decline of Clarendon's power.—Sir Edward Hyde, whose influence had been almost annihilated in the last years of Charles I. through the inveterate hatred of the queen and those who surrounded her, acquired by degrees the entire confidence of the young king, and baffled all the intrigues of his enemies. Guided by him, in all serious matters, during the latter years of his exile, Charles followed his counsels almost implicitly in the difficult crisis of the restoration. The office of chancellor and the title of Earl of Clarendon were the proofs of the king's favour; but in effect, through the indolence and ill-health of Southampton, as well as their mutual friendship, he was the real minister of the Crown.[627] By the clandestine marriage of his daughter with the Duke of York, he changed one brother from an enemy to a sincere and zealous friend, without forfeiting the esteem and favour of the other. And, though he was wise enough to dread the invidiousness of such an elevation, yet for several years it by no means seemed to render his influence less secure.[628]

Both in their characters, however, and turn of thinking, there was so little conformity between Clarendon and his master, that the continuance of his ascendancy can only be attributed to the power of early habit over the most thoughtless tempers. But it rarely happens that kings do not ultimately shake off these fetters, and release themselves from the sort of subjection which they feel in acting always by the same advisers. Charles, acute himself and cool-headed, could not fail to discover the passions and prejudices of his minister, even if he had wanted the suggestion of others who, without reasoning on such broad principles as Clarendon, were perhaps his superiors in judging of temporary business. He wished too, as is common, to depreciate a wisdom, and to suspect a virtue, which seemed to reproach his own vice and folly. Nor had Clarendon spared those remonstrances against the king's course of life, which are seldom borne without impatience or resentment. He was strongly suspected by the king as well as his courtiers (though, according to his own account, without any reason) of having promoted the marriage of Miss Stewart with the Duke of Richmond.[629] But above all he stood in the way of projects, which, though still probably unsettled, were floating in the king's mind. No one was more zealous to uphold the prerogative at a height where it must overtop and chill with its shadow the privileges of the people. No one was more vigilant to limit the functions of parliament, or more desirous to see them confiding and submissive. But there were landmarks which he could never be brought to transgress. He would prepare the road for absolute monarchy, but not introduce it; he would assist to batter down the walls, but not to march into the town. His notions of what the English constitution ought to be, appear evidently to have been derived from the times of Elizabeth and James I., to which he frequently refers with approbation. In the history of that age, he found much that could not be reconciled to any liberal principles of government. But there were two things which he certainly did not find; a revenue capable of meeting an extraordinary demand without parliamentary supply, and a standing army. Hence he took no pains, if he did not even, as is asserted by Burnet, discourage the proposal of others, to obtain such a fixed annual revenue for the king on the restoration, as would have rendered it very rarely necessary to have recourse to parliament,[630] and did not advise the keeping up any part of the army. That a few troops were retained, was owing to the Duke of York. Nor did he go the length that was expected in procuring the repeal of all the laws that had been enacted in the long parliament.[631]

These omissions sank deep in Charles's heart, especially when he found that he had to deal with an unmanageable House of Commons, and must fight the battle for arbitrary power; which might have been achieved, he thought, without a struggle by his minister. There was still less hope of obtaining any concurrence from Clarendon in the king's designs as to religion. Though he does not once hint at it in his writings, there can be little doubt that he must have suspected his master's inclinations towards the church of Rome. The Duke of York considered this as the most likely cause of his remissness in not sufficiently advancing the prerogative.[632] He was always opposed to the various schemes of a general indulgence towards popery, not only from his strongly protestant principles and his dislike of all toleration, but from a prejudice against the body of the English catholics, whom he thought to arrogate more on the ground of merit than they could claim. That interest, so powerful at court, was decidedly hostile to the chancellor; for the Duke of York, who strictly adhered to him, if he had not kept his change of religion wholly secret, does not at least seem to have hitherto formed any avowed connection with the popish party.[633]

Loss of the king's favour—Coalition against Clarendon.—This estrangement of the king's favour is sufficient to account for Clarendon's loss of power; but his entire ruin was rather accomplished by a strange coalition of enemies, which his virtues, or his errors and infirmities, had brought into union. The cavaliers hated him on account of the act of indemnity, and the presbyterians for that of uniformity. Yet the latter were not in general so eager in his prosecution as the others.[634] But he owed great part of the severity with which he was treated to his own pride and ungovernable passionateness, by which he had rendered very eminent men in the House of Commons implacable, and to the language he had used as to the dignity and privileges of the house itself.[635] A sense of this eminent person's great talents as well as general integrity and conscientiousness on the one hand, an indignation at the king's ingratitude, and the profligate counsels of those who supplanted him, on the other, have led most writers to overlook his faults in administration, and to treat all the articles of accusation against him as frivolous or unsupported. It is doubtless impossible to justify the charge of high treason, on which he was impeached; but there are matters that never were or could be disproved; and our own knowledge enables us to add such grave accusations as must show Clarendon's unfitness for the government of a free country.[636]

1. Illegal imprisonments.—It is the fourth article of his impeachment, that he "had advised and procured divers of his majesty's subjects to be imprisoned against law, in remote islands, garrisons, and other places, thereby to prevent them from the benefit of the law, and to produce precedents for the imprisoning any other of his majesty's subjects in like manner." This was undoubtedly true. There was some ground for apprehension on the part of the government from those bold spirits who had been accustomed to revolutions, and drew encouragement from the vices of the court and the embarrassments of the nation. Ludlow and Algernon Sidney, about the year 1665, had projected an insurrection, the latter soliciting Louis XIV. and the pensionary of Holland for aid.[637] Many officers of the old army, Wildman, Creed, and others, suspected, perhaps justly, of such conspiracies, had been illegally detained in prison for several years, and only recovered their liberty on Clarendon's dismissal.[638] He had too much encouraged the hateful race of informers, though he admits that it had grown a trade by which men got money, and that many were committed on slight grounds.[639] Thus Colonel Hutchinson died in the close confinement of a remote prison, far more probably on account of his share in the death of Charles I., from which the act of indemnity had discharged him, than any just pretext of treason.[640] It was difficult to obtain a habeas corpus from some of the judges in this reign. But to elude that provision by removing men out of the kingdom, was such an offence against the constitution as may be thought enough to justify the impeachment of any minister.

2. The first article, and certainly the most momentous, asserts, "That the Earl of Clarendon hath designed a standing army to be raised, and to govern the kingdom thereby, and advised the king to dissolve this present parliament, to lay aside all thoughts of parliaments for the future, to govern by a military power, and to maintain the same by free quarter and contribution." This was prodigiously exaggerated; yet there was some foundation for a part of it. In the disastrous summer of 1667, when the Dutch fleet had insulted our coasts, and burned our ships in the Medway, the exchequer being empty, it was proposed in council to call together immediately the parliament, which then stood prorogued to a day at the distance of some months. Clarendon, who feared the hostility of the House of Commons towards himself, and had pressed the king to dissolve it, maintained that they could not legally be summoned before the day fixed; and, with a strange inconsistency, attaching more importance to the formalities of law than to its essence, advised that the counties where the troops were quartered should be called upon to send in provisions, and those where there were no troops to contribute money, which should be abated out of the next taxes. And he admits that he might have used the expression of raising contributions, as in the late civil war. This unguarded and unwarrantable language, thrown out at the council-table where some of his enemies were sitting, soon reached the ears of the Commons, and, mingled up with the usual misrepresentations of faction, was magnified into a charge of high treason.[641]

3. Sale of Dunkirk.—The eleventh article charged Lord Clarendon with having advised and effected the sale of Dunkirk to the French king, being part of his majesty's dominions, for no greater value than the ammunition, artillery, and stores were worth. The latter part is generally asserted to be false. The sum received is deemed the utmost that Louis would have given, who thought he had made a hard bargain. But it is very difficult to reconcile what Clarendon asserts in his defence, and much more at length in his Life (that the business of Dunkirk was entirely decided before he had anything to do in it, by the advice of Albemarle and Sandwich), with the letters of d'Estrades, the negotiator in this transaction on the part of France. In these letters, written at the time to Louis XIV., Clarendon certainly appears not only as the person chiefly concerned, but as representing himself almost the only one of the council favourable to the measure, and having to overcome the decided repugnance of Southampton, Sandwich, and Albemarle.[642] I cannot indeed see any other explanation than that he magnified the obstacles in the way of this treaty, in order to obtain better terms; a management, not very unusual in diplomatical dealing, but, in the degree at least to which he carried it, scarcely reconcilable with the good faith we should expect from this minister. For the transaction itself, we can hardly deem it honourable or politic. The expense of keeping up Dunkirk, though not trifling, would have been willingly defrayed by parliament; and could not well be pleaded by a government which had just encumbered itself with the useless burthen of Tangier. That its possession was of no great direct value to England must be confessed; but it was another question whether it ought to have been surrendered into the hands of France.

4. This close connection with France is indeed a great reproach to Clarendon's policy, and was the spring of mischiefs to which he contributed, and which he ought to have foreseen. What were the motives of these strong professions of attachment to the interests of Louis XIV. which he makes in some of his letters, it is difficult to say, since he had undoubtedly an ancient prejudice against that nation and its government. I should incline to conjecture that his knowledge of the king's unsoundness in religion led him to keep at a distance from the court of Spain, as being far more zealous in its popery, and more connected with the Jesuit faction, than that of France; and this possibly influenced him also with respect to the Portuguese match, wherein, though not the first adviser, he certainly took much interest; an alliance as little judicious in the outset, as it proved eventually fortunate.[643] But the capital misdemeanour that he committed in this relation with France was the clandestine solicitation of pecuniary aid for the king. He first taught a lavish prince to seek the wages of dependence in a foreign power, to elude the control of parliament by the help of French money.[644] The purpose for which this aid was asked, the succour of Portugal, might be fair and laudable; but the precedent was most base, dangerous, and abominable. A king who had once tasted the sweets of dishonest and clandestine lucre would, in the words of the poet, be no more capable afterwards of abstaining from it, than a dog from his greasy offal.

Clarendon's faults as a minister.—These are the errors of Clarendon's political life; which, besides his notorious concurrence in all measures of severity and restraint towards the nonconformists, tend to diminish our respect from his memory, and to exclude his name from that list of great and wise ministers, where some are willing to place him near the head. If I may seem to my readers less favourable to so eminent a person than common history might warrant, it is at least to be said that I have formed my decision from his own recorded sentiments, or from equally undisputable sources of authority. The publication of his life, that is, of the history of his administration, has not contributed to his honour. We find in it little or nothing of that attachment to the constitution for which he had acquired credit, and some things which we must struggle hard to reconcile with his veracity, even if the suppression of truth is not to be reckoned an impeachment of it in an historian.[645] But the manifest profligacy of those who contributed most to his ruin, and the measures which the court took soon afterwards, have rendered his administration comparatively honourable, and attached veneration to his memory. We are unwilling to believe that there was anything to censure in a minister, whom Buckingham persecuted, and against whom Arlington intrigued.[646]

A distinguished characteristic of Clarendon had been his firmness, called indeed by most pride and obstinacy, which no circumstances, no perils, seemed likely to bend. But his spirit sunk all at once with his fortune. Clinging too long to office, and cheating himself against all probability with a hope of his master's kindness when he had lost his confidence, he abandoned that dignified philosophy which ennobles a voluntary retirement, that stern courage which innocence ought to inspire; and hearkening to the king's treacherous counsels, fled before his enemies into a foreign country. Though the impeachment, at least in the point of high treason, cannot be defended, it is impossible to deny that the act of banishment, under the circumstances of his flight, was capable, in the main, of full justification. In an ordinary criminal suit, a process of outlawry goes against the accused who flies from justice; and his neglect to appear within a given time is equivalent, in cases of treason or felony, to a conviction of the offence; can it be complained of, that a minister of state, who dares not confront a parliamentary impeachment, should be visited with an analogous penalty? But, whatever injustice and violence may be found in this prosecution, it established for ever the right of impeachment, which the discredit into which the long parliament had fallen exposed to some hazard; the strong abettors of prerogative, such as Clarendon himself, being inclined to dispute this responsibility of the king's advisers to parliament. The Commons had, in the preceding session, sent up an impeachment against Lord Mordaunt, upon charges of so little public moment, that they may be suspected of having chiefly had in view the assertion of this important privilege.[647] It was never called in question from this time; and indeed they took care during the remainder of this reign, that it should not again be endangered by a paucity of precedents.[648]

Cabal ministry.—The period between the fall of Clarendon in 1667, and the commencement of Lord Danby's administration in 1673, is generally reckoned one of the most disgraceful in the annals of our monarchy. This was the age of what is usually denominated the Cabal administration, from the five initial letters of Sir Thomas Clifford, first commissioner of the treasury, afterwards Lord Clifford and high treasurer, the Earl of Arlington, secretary of state, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Ashley, chancellor of the exchequer, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury and lord chancellor, and lastly, the Duke of Lauderdale. Yet, though the counsels of these persons soon became extremely pernicious and dishonourable, it must be admitted that the first measures after the banishment of Clarendon, both in domestic and foreign policy, were highly praiseworthy. Bridgeman, who succeeded the late chancellor in the custody of the great seal, with the assistance of Chief Baron Hale and Bishop Wilkins, and at the instigation of Buckingham, who, careless about every religion, was from humanity or politic motives friendly to the indulgence of all, laid the foundations of a treaty with the nonconformists, on the basis of a comprehension for the presbyterians, and a toleration for the rest.[649] They had nearly come, it is said, to terms of agreement, so that it was thought time to intimate their design in a speech from the throne. But the spirit of 1662 was still too powerful in the Commons; and the friends of Clarendon, whose administration this change of counsels seemed to reproach, taking a warm part against all indulgence, a motion that the king be desired to send for such persons as he should think fit to make proposals to him in order to the uniting of his protestant subjects, was negatived by 176 to 70.[650] They proceeded, by almost an equal majority, to continue the bill of 1664, for suppressing seditious conventicles; which failed however for the present, in consequence of the sudden prorogation.[651]

Triple alliance.—But whatever difference of opinion might at that time prevail with respect to this tolerant disposition of the new government, there was none as to their great measure in external policy, the triple alliance with Holland and Sweden. A considerable and pretty sudden change had taken place in the temper of the English people towards France. Though the discordance of national character, and the dislike that seems natural to neighbours, as well as in some measure the recollections of their ancient hostility, had at all times kept up a certain ill-will between the two, it is manifest that before the reign of Charles II. there was not that antipathy and inveterate enmity towards the French in general, which it has since been deemed an act of patriotism to profess. The national prejudices, from the accession of Elizabeth to the restoration, ran far more against Spain; and it is not surprising that the apprehensions of that ambitious monarchy, which had been very just in the age of Philip II., should have lasted longer than its ability or inclination to molest us. But the rapid declension of Spain, after the peace of the Pyrenees, and the towering ambition of Louis XIV., master of a kingdom intrinsically so much more formidable than its rival, manifested that the balance of power in Europe, and our own immediate security, demanded a steady opposition to the aggrandisement of one monarchy, and a regard to the preservation of the other. These indeed were rather considerations for statesmen than for the people; but Louis was become unpopular both by his acquisition of Dunkirk at the expense, as it was thought, of our honour, and much more deservedly by his shuffling conduct in the Dutch war, and union in it with our adversaries. Nothing therefore gave greater satisfaction in England than the triple alliance, and consequent peace of Aix la Chapelle, which saved the Spanish Netherlands from absolute conquest, though not without important sacrifices.[652]

Intrigue with France.—Charles himself meanwhile by no means partook in this common jealousy of France. He had, from the time of his restoration, entered into close relations with that power, which a short period of hostility had interrupted without leaving any resentment in his mind. It is now known that, while his minister was negotiating at the Hague for the triple alliance, he had made overtures for a clandestine treaty with Louis, through his sister the Duchess of Orleans, the Duke of Buckingham, and the French ambassador Rouvigny.[653] As the King of France was at first backward in meeting these advances, and the letters published in regard to them are very few, we do not find any precise object expressed beyond a close and intimate friendship. But a few words in a memorial of Rouvigny to Louis XIV. seem to let us into the secret of the real purpose. "The Duke of York," he says, "wishes much for this union; the Duke of Buckingham the same: they use no art, but say that nothing else can re-establish the affairs of this court."[654]

King's desire to be absolute.—Charles II. was not of a temperament to desire arbitrary power, either through haughtiness and conceit of his station, which he did not greatly display, or through the love of taking into his own hands the direction of public affairs, about which he was in general pretty indifferent. He did not wish, as he told Lord Essex, to sit like a Turkish sultan, and sentence men to the bowstring, but could not bear that a set of fellows should enquire into his conduct.[655] His aim, in fact, was liberty rather than power; it was that immunity from control and censure, in which men of his character place a great part of their happiness. For some years he had cared probably very little about enhancing his prerogative, content with the loyalty, though not quite with the liberality, of his parliament. And had he not been drawn, against his better judgment, into the war with Holland, this harmony might perhaps have been protracted a good deal longer. But the vast expenditure of that war, producing little or no decisive success, and coming unfortunately at a time when trade was not very thriving, and when rents had considerably fallen, exasperated all men against the prodigality of the court, to which they might justly ascribe part of their burthens, and, with the usual miscalculations, believed that much more of them was due. Hence the bill appointing commissioners of public account, so ungrateful to the king, whose personal reputation it was likely to affect, and whose favourite excesses it might tend to restrain.

He was almost equally provoked by the licence of his people's tongues. A court like that of Charles is the natural topic of the idle, as well as the censorious. An administration so ill-conducted could not escape the remarks of a well-educated and intelligent city. There was one method of putting an end to these impertinent comments, or of rendering them innoxious; but it was the last which he would have adopted. Clarendon informs us that the king one day complaining of the freedom, as to political conversation, taken in coffee-houses, he recommended either that all persons should be forbidden by proclamation to resort to them, or that spies should be placed in them to give information against seditious speakers.[656] The king, he says, liked both expedients; but thought it unfair to have recourse to the latter till the former had given fair warning, and directed him to propose it to the council; but here, Sir William Coventry objecting, the king was induced to abandon the measure, much to Clarendon's disappointment, though it probably saved him an additional article in his impeachment. The unconstitutional and arbitrary tenor of this great minister's notions of government is strongly displayed in this little anecdote. Coventry was an enlightened, and, for that age, an upright man, whose enmity Clarendon brought on himself by a marked jealousy of his abilities in council.

Those who stood nearest to the king were not backward to imitate his discontent at the privileges of his people and their representatives. The language of courtiers and court-ladies is always intolerable to honest men, especially that of such courtiers as surrounded the throne of Charles II. It is worst of all amidst public calamities, such as pressed very closely on one another in a part of his reign; the awful pestilence of 1665, the still more ruinous fire of 1666, the fleet burned by the Dutch in the Medway next summer. No one could reproach the king for outward inactivity or indifference during the great fire. But there were some, as Clarendon tells us, who presumed to assure him, "that this was the greatest blessing that God had ever conferred on him, his restoration only excepted; for the walls and gates being now burned and thrown down of that rebellious city, which was always an enemy to the Crown, his majesty would never suffer them to repair and build them up again, to be a bit in his mouth and a bridle upon his neck; but would keep all open, that his troops might enter upon them whenever he thought it necessary for his service; there being no other way to govern that rude multitude but by force."[657] This kind of discourse, he goes on to say, did not please the king. But here we may venture to doubt his testimony; or, if the natural good temper of Charles prevented him from taking pleasure in such atrocious congratulations, we may be sure that he was not sorry to think the city more in his power.

It seems probable that this loose and profligate way of speaking gave rise, in a great degree, to the suspicion that the city had been purposely burned by those who were more enemies to religion and liberty than to the court. The papists stood ready to bear the infamy of every unproved crime; and a committee of the House of Commons collected evidence enough for those who were already convinced, that London had been burned by that obnoxious sect. Though the house did not proceed farther, there can be no doubt that the enquiry contributed to produce that inveterate distrust of the court, whose connections with the popish faction were half known, half conjectured, which gave from this time an entirely new complexion to the parliament. Prejudiced as the Commons were, they could hardly have imagined the catholics to have burned the city out of mere malevolence; but must have attributed the crime to some far-spreading plan of subverting the established constitution.[658]

The retention of the king's guards had excited some jealousy, though no complaints seem to have been made of it in parliament; but the sudden levy of a considerable force in 1667, however founded upon a very plausible pretext from the circumstances of the war, lending credit to these dark surmises of the court's sinister designs, gave much greater alarm. The Commons, summoned together in July, instantly addressed the king to disband his army as soon as peace should be made. We learn from the Duke of York's private memoirs that some of those who were most respected for their ancient attachment to liberty, deemed it in jeopardy at this crisis. The Earls of Northumberland and Leicester, Lord Hollis, Mr. Pierrepont, and others of the old parliamentary party, met to take measures together. The first of these told the Duke of York that the nation would not be satisfied with the removal of the chancellor, unless the guards were disbanded, and several other grievances redressed. The duke bade him be cautious what he said, lest he should be obliged to inform the king; but Northumberland replied that it was his intention to repeat the same to the king, which he did accordingly the next day.[659]

This change in public sentiment gave warning to Charles that he could not expect to reign with as little trouble as he had hitherto experienced; and doubtless the recollection of his father's history did not contribute to cherish the love he sometimes pretended for parliaments. His brother, more reflecting and more impatient of restraint on royal authority, saw with still greater clearness than the king, that they could only keep the prerogative at its desired height by means of intimidation. A regular army was indispensable; but to keep up an army in spite of parliament, or to raise money for its support without parliament, were very difficult undertakings. It seemed necessary to call in a more powerful arm than their own; and, by establishing the closest union with the King of France, to obtain either military or pecuniary succours from him, as circumstances might demand. But there was another and not less imperious motive for a secret treaty. The king, as has been said, though little likely, from the tenor of his life, to feel very strong and lasting impressions of religion, had at times a desire to testify publicly his adherence to the Romish communion. The Duke of York had come more gradually to change the faith in which he was educated. He describes it as the result of patient and anxious enquiry; nor would it be possible therefore to fix a precise date for his conversion, which seems to have been not fully accomplished till after the Restoration.[660] He however continued in conformity to the church of England; till, on discovering that the catholic religion exacted an outward communion, which he had fancied not indispensable, he became more uneasy at the restraint that policy imposed on him. This led to a conversation with the king, of whose private opinions and disposition to declare them he was probably informed, and to a close union with Clifford and Arlington, from whom he had stood aloof on account of their animosity against Clarendon. The king and duke held a consultation with those two ministers, and with Lord Arundel of Wardour, on the 25th of January 1669, to discuss the ways and methods fit to be taken for the advancement of the catholic religion in these kingdoms. The king spoke earnestly, and with tears in his eyes. After a long deliberation, it was agreed that there was no better way to accomplish this purpose than through France; the house of Austria being in no condition to give any assistance.[661]

Secret treaty of 1670.—The famous secret treaty, which, though believed on pretty good evidence not long after the time, was first actually brought to light by Dalrymple about half a century since, began to be negotiated very soon after this consultation.[662] We find allusions to the king's projects in one of his letters to the Duchess of Orleans, dated 22nd March 1669.[663] In another of June 6, the methods he was adopting to secure himself in this perilous juncture appear. He was to fortify Plymouth, Hull, and Portsmouth, and to place them in trusty hands. The fleet was under the duke, as lord admiral; the guards and their officers were thought in general well affected;[664] but his great reliance was on the most christian king. He stipulated for £200,000 annually, and for the aid of 6000 French troops.[665] In return for such important succour, Charles undertook to serve his ally's ambition and wounded pride against the United Provinces. These, when conquered by the French arms, with the co-operation of an English navy, were already shared by the royal conspirators. A part of Zealand fell to the lot of England, the remainder of the Seven Provinces to France, with an understanding that some compensation should be made to the Prince of Orange. In the event of any new rights to the Spanish monarchy accruing to the most christian king, as it is worded (that is, on the death of the King of Spain, a sickly child), it was agreed that England should assist him with all her force by sea and land, but at his own expense; and should obtain, not only Ostend and Minorca, but, as far as the King of France could contribute to it, such parts of Spanish America as she should choose to conquer.[666] So strange a scheme of partitioning that vast inheritance was never, I believe, suspected till the publication of the treaty; though Bolingbroke had alluded to a previous treaty of partition between Louis and the Emperor Leopold, the complete discovery of which has been but lately made.[667]

Differences between Charles and Louis as to the mode of the execution of the treaty.—Each conspirator, in his coalition against the protestant faith and liberties of Europe, had splendid objects in view; but those of Louis seemed by far the more probable of the two, and less liable to be defeated. The full completion of their scheme would have re-united a great kingdom to the catholic religion, and turned a powerful neighbour into a dependent pensioner. But should this fail (and Louis was too sagacious not to discern the chances of failure), he had pledged to him the assistance of an ally in subjugating the republic of Holland, which, according to all human calculation, could not withstand their united efforts; nay, even in those ulterior projects which his restless and sanguine ambition had ever in view, and the success of which would have realised, not indeed the chimera of an universal monarchy, but a supremacy and dictatorship over Europe. Charles, on the other hand, besides that he had no other return to make for the necessary protection of France, was impelled by a personal hatred of the Dutch, and by the consciousness that their commonwealth was the standing reproach of arbitrary power, to join readily in the plan for its subversion. But, looking first to his own objects, and perhaps a little distrustful of his ally, he pressed that his profession of the Roman catholic religion should be the first measure in prosecution of the treaty; and that he should immediately receive the stipulated £200,000, or at least a part of the money. Louis insisted that the declaration of war against Holland should precede. This difference occasioned a considerable delay; and it was chiefly with a view of bringing round her brother on this point, that the Duchess of Orleans took her famous journey to Dover in the spring of 1670. Yet, notwithstanding her influence, which passed for irresistible, he persisted in adhering to the right reserved to him in the draft of the treaty, of choosing his own time for the declaration of his religion, and it was concluded on this footing at Dover, by Clifford, Arundel, and Arlington, on the 22nd of May 1670, during the visit of the Duchess of Orleans.[668]

A mutual distrust, however, retarded the further progress of this scheme; one party unwilling to commit himself till he should receive money, the other too cautious to run the risk of throwing it away. There can be no question but that the King of France was right in urging the conquest of Holland as a preliminary of the more delicate business they were to manage in England; and, from Charles's subsequent behaviour, as well as his general fickleness and love of ease, there seems reason to believe that he would gladly have receded from an undertaking of which he must every day have more strongly perceived the difficulties. He confessed, in fact, to Louis's ambassador, that he was almost the only man in his kingdom who liked a French alliance.[669] The change of religion, on a nearer view, appeared dangerous for himself, and impracticable as a national measure. He had not dared to intrust any of his protestant ministers, even Buckingham, whose indifference in such points was notorious, with this great secret; and, to keep them the better in the dark, a mock negotiation was set on foot with France, and a pretended treaty actually signed, the exact counterpart of the other, except as to religion. Buckingham, Shaftesbury, and Lauderdale were concerned in this simulated treaty, the negotiation for which did not commence till after the original convention had been signed at Dover.[670]

The court of France having yielded to Charles the point about which he had seemed so anxious, had soon the mortification to discover that he would take no steps to effect it. They now urged that immediate declaration of his religion, which they had for very wise reasons not long before dissuaded. The King of England hung back, and tried so many excuses, that they had reason to suspect his sincerity; not that in fact he had played a feigned part from the beginning, but his zeal for popery having given way to the seductions of a voluptuous and indolent life, he had been led, with the good sense he naturally possessed, to form a better estimate of his resources and of the opposition he must encounter. Meanwhile the eagerness of his ministers had plunged the nation into war with Holland; and Louis, having attained his principal end, ceased to trouble the king on the subject of religion. He received large sums from France during the Dutch war.[671]

This memorable transaction explains and justifies the strenuous opposition made in parliament to the king and Duke of York, and may be reckoned the first act of a drama which ended in the revolution. It is true that the precise terms of this treaty were not authentically known; but there can be no doubt that those who from this time displayed an insuperable jealousy of one brother, and a determined enmity to the other, had proofs, enough for moral conviction, of their deep conspiracy with France against religion and liberty. This suspicion is implied in all the conduct of that parliamentary opposition, and is the apology of much that seems violence and faction, especially in the business of the popish plot and the bill of exclusion. It is of importance also to observe that James II. was not misled and betrayed by false or foolish counsellors, as some would suggest, in his endeavours to subvert the laws, but acted on a plan, long since concerted, and in which he had taken a principal share.

It must be admitted that neither in the treaty itself nor in the few letters which have been published by Dalrymple, do we find any explicit declaration, either that the catholic religion was to be established as the national church, or arbitrary power introduced in England. But there are not wanting strong presumptions of this design. The king speaks, in a letter to his sister, of finding means to put the proprietors of church lands out of apprehension.[672] He uses the expression, "rétablir la religion catholique;" which, though not quite unequivocal, seems to convey more than a bare toleration, or a personal profession by the sovereign.[673] He talks of a negotiation with the court of Rome to obtain the permission of having mass in the vulgar tongue and communion in both kinds, as terms that would render his conversion agreeable to his subjects.[674] He tells the French ambassador, that not only his conscience, but the confusion he saw every day increasing in his kingdom, to the diminution of his authority, impelled him to declare himself a catholic; which, besides the spiritual advantage, he believed to be the only means of restoring the monarchy. These passages, as well as the precautions taken in expectation of a vigorous resistance from a part of the nation, appear to intimate a formal re-establishment of the catholic church; a measure connected, in the king's apprehension, if not strictly with arbitrary power, yet with a very material enhancement of his prerogative. For the profession of an obnoxious faith by the king, as an insulated person, would, instead of strengthening his authority, prove the greatest obstacle to it; as, in the next reign, turned out to be the case. Charles, however, and the Duke of York deceived themselves into a confidence that the transition could be effected with no extraordinary difficulty. The king knew the prevailing laxity of religious principles in many about his court, and thought he had reason to rely on others as secretly catholic. Sunderland is mentioned as a young man of talent, inclined to adopt that religion.[675] Even the Earl of Orrery is spoken of as a catholic in his heart.[676] The duke, who conversed more among divines, was led to hope, from the strange language of the high-church party, that they might readily be persuaded to make what seemed no long step, and come into easy terms of union.[677] It was the constant policy of the Romish priests to extenuate the differences between the two churches, and to throw the main odium of the schism on the Calvinistic sects. And many of the Anglicans, in their abhorrence of protestant nonconformists, played into the hands of the common enemy.

Fresh severities against dissenters.—The court, however, entertained great hopes from the depressed condition of the dissenters, whom it was intended to bribe with that toleration under a catholic regimen, which they could so little expect from the church of England. Hence the Duke of York was always strenuous against schemes of comprehension, which would invigorate the protestant interest and promote conciliation. With the opposite view of rendering a union among protestants impracticable, the rigorous episcopalians were encouraged underhand to prosecute the nonconformists.[678] The Duke of York took pains to assure Owen, an eminent divine of the independent persuasion, that he looked on all persecution as an unchristian thing, and altogether against his conscience.[679] Yet the court promoted a renewal of the temporary act, passed in 1664 against conventicles, which was reinforced by the addition of an extraordinary proviso, That all clauses in the act should be construed most largely and beneficially for suppressing conventicles, and for the justification and encouragement of all persons to be employed in the execution thereof.[680] Wilkins, the most honest of the bishops, opposed this act in the House of Lords, notwithstanding the king's personal request that he would be silent.[681] Sheldon and others, who, like him, disgraced the church of England by their unprincipled policy or their passions, not only gave it their earnest support at the time, but did all in their power to enforce its execution.[682] As the king's temper was naturally tolerant, his co-operation in this severe measure would not easily be understood, without the explanation that a knowledge of his secret policy enables us to give. In no long course of time the persecution was relaxed, the imprisoned ministers set at liberty, some of the leading dissenters received pensions, and the king's declaration of a general indulgence held forth an asylum from the law under the banner of prerogative.[683] Though this is said to have proceeded from the advice of Shaftesbury, who had no concern in the original secret treaty with France, it was completely in the spirit of that compact, and must have been acceptable to the king.

But the factious, fanatical, republican party (such were the usual epithets of the court at the time, such have ever since been applied by the advocates or apologists of the Stuarts), had gradually led away by their delusions that parliament of cavaliers; or, in other words, the glaring vices of the king, and the manifestation of designs against religion and liberty, had dispossessed them of a confiding loyalty, which, though highly dangerous from its excess, had always been rather ardent than servile. The sessions had been short, and the intervals of repeated prorogations much longer than usual; a policy not well calculated for that age, where the growing discontents and suspicions of the people acquired strength by the stoppage of the regular channel of complaint. Yet the House of Commons, during this period, though unmanageable on the one point of toleration, had displayed no want of confidence in the king nor any animosity towards his administration; notwithstanding the flagrant abuses in the expenditure, which the parliamentary commission of public accounts had brought to light, and the outrageous assault on Sir John Coventry; a crime notoriously perpetrated by persons employed by the court, and probably by the king's direct order.[684]

Dutch war.—The war with Holland at the beginning of 1672, so repugnant to English interests, so unwarranted by any provocation, so infamously piratical in its commencement, so ominous of further schemes still more dark and dangerous, finally opened the eyes of all men of integrity. It was accompanied by the shutting up of the exchequer, an avowed bankruptcy at the moment of beginning an expensive war,[685] and by the declaration of indulgence, or suspension of all penal laws in religion; an assertion of prerogative which seemed without limit. These exorbitances were the more scandalous, that they happened during a very long prorogation. Hence the court so lost the confidence of the House of Commons, that, with all the lavish corruption of the following period, it could never regain a secure majority on any important question. The superiority of what was called the country party is referred to the session of February 1673, in which they compelled the king to recall his proclamation suspending the penal laws, and raised a barrier against the encroachments of popery in the test act.

Declaration of indulgence.—The king's declaration of indulgence had been projected by Shaftesbury, in order to conciliate or lull to sleep the protestant dissenters. It redounded, in its immediate effect, chiefly to their benefit; the catholics already enjoying a connivance at the private exercise of their religion, and the declaration expressly refusing them public places of worship. The plan was most laudable in itself, could we separate the motives which prompted it, and the means by which it was pretended to be made effectual. But in the declaration the king says, "We think ourselves obliged to make use of that supreme power in ecclesiastical matters, which is not only inherent in us, but hath been declared and recognised to be so by several statutes and acts of parliament." "We do," he says, not long afterwards, "declare our will and pleasure to be, that the execution of all and all manner of penal laws in matters ecclesiastical, against whatsoever sort of nonconformists or recusants, be immediately suspended, and they are hereby suspended." He mentions also his intention to license a certain number of places for the religious worship of nonconforming protestants.[686]

It was generally understood to be an ancient prerogative of the Crown to dispense with penal statutes in favour of particular persons, and under certain restrictions. It was undeniable, that the king might, by what is called a "noli prosequi," stop any criminal prosecution commenced in his courts, though not an action for the recovery of a pecuniary penalty, which, by many statutes, was given to the common informer. He might of course set at liberty, by means of a pardon, any person imprisoned, whether upon conviction or by a magistrate's warrant. Thus the operation of penal statutes in religion might in a great measure be rendered ineffectual, by an exercise of undisputed prerogatives; and thus, in fact, the catholics had been enabled, since the accession of the house of Stuart, to withstand the crushing severity of the laws. But a pretension, in explicit terms, to suspend a body of statutes, a command to magistrates not to put them in execution, arrogated a sort of absolute power, which no benefits of the indulgence itself (had they even been less insidiously offered) could induce a lover of constitutional privileges to endure.[687] Notwithstanding the affected distinction of temporal and ecclesiastical matters, it was evident that the king's supremacy was as much capable of being bounded by the legislature in one as in the other, and that every law in the statute-book might be repealed by a similar proclamation. The House of Commons voted that the king's prerogative, in matters ecclesiastical, does not extend to repeal acts of parliament; and addressed the king to recall his declaration. Whether from a desire to protect the nonconformists in a toleration even illegally obtained, or from the influence of Buckingham among some of the leaders of opposition, it appears from the debates that many of those, who had been in general most active against the court, resisted this vote, which was carried by 168 to 116. The king, in his answer to this address, lamented that the house should question his ecclesiastical power, which had never been done before. This brought on a fresh rebuke; and, in a second address they positively deny the king's right to suspend any law. "The legislative power," they say, "has always been acknowledged to reside in the king and two houses of parliament." The king, in a speech to the House of Lords, complained much of the opposition made by the Commons; and found a majority of the former disposed to support him, though both houses concurred in an address against the growth of popery. At length, against the advice of the bolder part of his council, but certainly with a just sense of what he most valued, his ease of mind, Charles gave way to the public voice, and withdrew his declaration.[688]

There was indeed a line of policy indicated at this time, which, though intolerable to the bigotry and passion of the house, would best have foiled the schemes of the ministry; a legislative repeal of all the penal statutes both against the catholic and the protestant dissenter, as far as regarded the exercise of their religion. It must be evident to any impartial man that the unrelenting harshness of parliament, from whom no abatement, even in the sanguinary laws against the priests of the Romish church, had been obtained, had naturally, and almost irresistibly, driven the members of that persuasion into the camp of prerogative, and even furnished a pretext for that continual intrigue and conspiracy, which was carried on in the court of Charles II., as it had been in that of his father. A genuine toleration would have put an end to much of this; but, in the circumstances of that age, it could not have been safely granted without an exclusion from those public trusts, which were to be conferred by a sovereign in whom no trust could be reposed.

The act of supremacy, in the first year of Elizabeth, had imposed on all, accepting temporal as well as ecclesiastical offices, an oath denying the spiritual jurisdiction of the pope. But, though the refusal of this oath, when tendered, incurred various penalties, yet it does not appear that any were attached to its neglect, or that the oath was a previous qualification for the enjoyment of office, as it was made by a subsequent act of the same reign for sitting in the House of Commons. It was found also by experience that persons attached to the Roman doctrine sometimes made use of strained constructions to reconcile the oath of supremacy to their faith. Nor could that test be offered to peers, who were accepted by a special provision.

Test act.—For these several reasons a more effectual security against popish counsellors, at least in notorious power, was created by the famous test act of 1673, which renders the reception of the sacrament according to the rites of the church of England, and a declaration renouncing the doctrine of transubstantiation, preliminary conditions without which no temporal office of trust can be enjoyed.[689] In this fundamental article of faith, no compromise or equivocation would be admitted by any member of the church of Rome. And, as the obligation extended to the highest ranks, this reached the end for which it was immediately designed; compelling, not only the lord-treasurer Clifford, the boldest and most dangerous of that party, to retire from public business, but the Duke of York himself, whose desertion of the protestant church was hitherto not absolutely undisguised, to quit the post of lord admiral.[690]

It is evident that a test might have been framed to exclude the Roman catholic as effectually as the present, without bearing like this on the protestant nonconformist. But, though the preamble of the bill, and the whole history of the transaction, show that the main object was a safeguard against popery, it is probable that a majority of both houses liked it the better for this secondary effect of shutting out the presbyterians still more than had been done by previous statutes of this reign. There took place however a remarkable coalition between the two parties; and many who had always acted as high-church men and cavaliers, sensible at last of the policy of their common adversaries, renounced a good deal of the intolerance and bigotry that had characterised the present parliament. The dissenters, with much prudence or laudable disinterestedness, gave their support to the test act. In return, a bill was brought in, and, after some debate, passed to the lords, repealing in a considerable degree the persecuting laws against their worship.[691] The upper house, perhaps insidiously, returned it with amendments more favourable to the dissenters, and insisted upon them, after a conference.[692] A sudden prorogation very soon put an end to this bill, which was as unacceptable to the court as it was to the zealots of the church of England. It had been intended to follow it up by another, excluding all who should not conform to the established church from serving in the House of Commons.[693]

It may appear remarkable that, as if content with these provisions, the victorious country party did not remonstrate against the shutting up of the exchequer, nor even wage any direct war against the king's advisers. They voted, on the contrary, a large supply, which, as they did not choose explicitly to recognise the Dutch war, was expressed to be granted for the king's extraordinary occasions.[694] This moderation, which ought at least to rescue them from the charges of faction and violence, has been censured by some as servile and corrupt; and would really incur censure, if they had not attained the great object of breaking the court measures by other means. But the test act, and their steady protestation against the suspending prerogative, crushed the projects and dispersed the members of the cabal. The king had no longer any minister on whom he could rely, and, with his indolent temper, seems from this time, if not to have abandoned all hope of declaring his change of religion, yet to have seen both that and his other favourite projects postponed without much reluctance. From a real predilection, from the prospect of gain, and partly, no doubt, from some distant views of arbitrary power and a catholic establishment, he persevered a long time in clinging secretly to the interests of France; but his active co-operation in the schemes of 1669 was at an end. In the next session of October 1673, the Commons drove Buckingham from the king's councils; they intimidated Arlington into a change of policy; and, though they did not succeed in removing the Duke of Lauderdale, compelled him to confine himself chiefly to the affairs of Scotland.[695]