“HIS MAJESTY’S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH TO BOTH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.
”My Lords and Gentlemen,
“I told you at our last meeting the Winter was the fittest time for business; and truly I thought so, till my Lord Treasurer assured me the Spring was the best season for salads and subsidies: I hope, therefore, that April will not prove so unnatural a month as not to afford some kind showers on my parched Exchequer, which gapes for want of them. Some of you perhaps will think it dangerous to make me too rich; but I do not fear it, for I promise you faithfully whatever you give me I will always want; and altho’ in other things my word may be thought a slender authority, yet in that you may rely upon me, I will never break it.
“My Lords and Gentlemen, I can bear my straits with patience; but my Lord Treasurer does protest to me, that the Revenue, as it now stands, will not serve him and me too; one of us must pinch for it if you do not help me. I must speak freely to you, I am under circumstances, for, besides my Harlots on service, my reformado Concubines lie heavy upon me. I have a passable good estate, I confess; but, Gads-fish, I have a great charge upon’t. Here’s my Lord Treasurer can tell, that all the money design’d for the next summer’s guards must of necessity be apply’d to the next year’s cradles and swaddling clothes. What shall we do for ships then? I hint this only to you, it being your business, not mine. I know by experience I can live without ships; I liv’d ten years abroad without, and never had my health better in my life; but how you will be without I leave to yourselves to judge, and therefore hint this only by the by; I don’t insist upon it. There’s another thing I must press more earnestly, and that is this. It seems a good part of my revenue will expire in two or three years, except you will be pleased to continue it. I have to say for’t, Pray why did you give me so much as you have done, unless you resolve to give on as fast as I call for it? The nation hates you already for giving so much, and I will hate you too if you do not give me more; so that if you stick not to me, you must not have a friend in England. On the other hand, if you will give me the revenue I desire, I shall be able to do those things for your Religion and Liberty that I have had long in my thoughts, but cannot effect them without a little more money to carry me through. Therefore look to’t, and take Notice that if you do not make me rich enough to undo you, it shall lie at your doors, for my part I wash my hands on’t. But that I may gain your good opinion the best way is to acquaint you what I have done to deserve it out of my royal care for your religion and your property. For the first, my proclamation is a true picture of my mind: he that cannot, as in a glass, see my zeal for the Church of England, does not deserve any farther satisfaction, for I declare him wilful, abominable, and not good. Some may perhaps be startled, and cry—how comes this sudden change? To which I answer I am a changeling, and that’s sufficient, I think. But to convince men farther that I mean what I say, there are these arguments. First, I tell you so, and you know I never break my word. Secondly, my Lord Treasurer says so, and he never told a lie in his life. Thirdly, my Lord Lauderdale will undertake it for me, and I should be loth by any act of mine he should forfeit the credit he has with you.
“I must now acquaint you, that by my Lord Treasurer’s Advice, I have made a considerable retrenchment upon my expenses in Candles and Charcoal, and do not intend to stop there, but will, with your help, look into the late embezzlements of my dripping-pans and kitchen stuff; of which, by the way, upon my conscience, neither my Lord Treasurer nor my Lord Lauderdale are guilty. I tell you my opinion, but if you should find them dabbling in that business, I tell you plainly I leave ’em to you; for I would have the world know I am not a man to be cheated.
“My Lords and Gentlemen, I desire you to believe me as you have found me; and I do solemnly promise you, that whatsoever you give me shall be specially manag’d with the same conduct, trust, sincerity, and prudence, that I have ever practised since my happy Restoration.”
The commencement of party warfare as now recognized in parliamentary life may be dated from the Stuarts, and to account for the designations of Whig and Tory it is necessary to glance back at the parliamentary troubles of Charles II., 1679-1680, when that monarch, acting under the encouragement of Louis XIV., was inclined to make a misguided attempt to govern without a legislative chamber. In 1679 the monarch refused a Speaker to his Commons, finding that functionary obnoxious; and between this date and 1681 parliament was prorogued seven times: in fact—as a summary of Charles II.’s parliaments discloses—the discords of the previous reign were revived; the “town and country party” petitioned zealously for the reassembling of parliament, while the Court party counter-petitioned “to declare their abhorrence of the late tumultuary petitioning.” Those who were urging on the struggle for popular representation and freedom were designated Petitioners, the king’s “friends” were voted “betrayers of the liberties of the people, and abettors of arbitrary power,” and expressively stigmatized as Abhorrers;[9] from these two parties, which were ready to exterminate one another, arose the nicknames of Whigs and Tories, as is explained in Tindal’s “Rapin.”[10]
The “Abhorrers,” who were the mainstay of Charles’s utterly unconstitutional procedure, although as courtiers they hoped for their reward from the king, did not get much tolerance from the Commons: when the parliament at last reassembled, several members were expelled from the House on this pretence alone, and they consigned to the Tower that Sir Francis Withers who had been knighted for procuring and presenting the loyal address from the city of Westminster; the majority at the same time recording, as a gage of battle to their opponents, the resolution (October, 1680), “That it is the undoubted right of the subject to petition for the calling of a parliament, and that to traduce such petitions as tumultuous and seditious is to contribute to the design of altering the constitution.” The Tories at that time and long after maintained the doctrines of “divine hereditary indefeasible right, lineal succession, passive obedience, prerogative, etc.”
That a determined attitude was felt to be fitting is exhibited in the protests of the House, printed for circulation, like the following:—
“Wednesday, October 27, 1680.
“Two Unanimous votes of this present Honourable and Worthy Parliament concerning the subjects’ rights in Petitioning.
”Resolved, Nemine Contradicente,—
That it is and ever hath been the undoubted Right of the subjects of England to petition the King for calling and sitting of parliaments, and redressing of Grievances.
“Resolved, Nemine Contradicente,—
That to traduce such Petitioning is a violation of duty, and to represent it to his Majesty as Traitorous and seditious, is to betray the Liberty of the Subjects, and contributes to the design of subverting the ancient, legal Constitution of this Kingdom, and the Introducing Arbitrary Power.
”Ordered—That a Committee be appointed to enquire of all those Persons as have offended against these Rights of the subject.
“London: Printed for Francis Smith, Bookseller, at the Elephant and Castle, near the Royal Exchange in Cornhill.”
Francis Smith was the publisher—
“who suffered a Chargeable Imprisonment in the Gaol of Newgate, in December last, for printing and promoting Petitions for the Sitting of this present Parliament.”
He is referred to with acrimony in the ballads by Tantivy and courtier bards, among the “pestiferous crew of republican scribes.”
Charles’s first parliament was, amid the confusion of the time (the revolution subverted and royalty restored), barely constituted; it lasted from April 25, 1660, to December 29th, and, being assembled without the king’s writ, was, with customary royal ingratitude for “past favours,” considered by Charles as the Convention Parliament.[11] The long Cavalier Parliament, some portion of which, like the king, was in the pay of Louis XIV., is stigmatized to posterity as the “Pensionary” Parliament; it met May 8, 1661, and lasted until January 24, 1679; the members were doubly corrupt, accepting money-bribes or lucrative offices from the Court, or being, according to Barillon’s clear declarations, in the pay of France and Holland, as regarded the patriotic members, who fiercely denounced the venality of the Court. In 1675 the oath against bribery was opportunely inaugurated, providing against corruption either from the Crown or from any ambassador or foreign minister. The Pensionary Parliament, which began its career by servile loyalty, and was merciless against Republicans, towards its close opposing the unreasonable extension of prerogative became factious and insubordinate, arrogating to itself the control of legal procedure, and, according to the opinions of extreme Royalists, generally proving itself a “scourge.”
The popular view of this venal legislature is given in the following version:—
“A PENSIONER PARLIAMENT:
ANSWER TO THE BALLAD CALLED ‘THE CHEQUER INN.’
“I.
“Curse on such representatives!
They sell us all, our bairns and wives,
(Quoth Dick with indignation);
They are but engines to raise tax,
And the whole business of their acts
Is to undo the nation.
“II.
“Just like our rotten pump at home,
We pour in water when ’twon’t come,
And that way get more out,
So when mine host does money lack,
He money gives among the pack,
And then it runs full spout.
“III.
“By wise Volk, I have oft been told,
Parliaments grow nought as they grow old,
We groan’d under the Rump,
But sure this is a heavier curse,
That sucks and drains thus ev’ry purse,
By this old Whitehall pump.”
Another warning note is struck in the following ballad, aimed at the reprobated Pensionary Parliament:—