A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland

by Mary Platt Parmele

CHAPTER X

Time brings its revenges. The instinct for beauty, and for joy and gladness, had been for twenty-one years repressed by harshly administered Puritanism. There was a thrill of delight in greeting a gracious, smiling king, who would lift the spell of gloom from the nation. Charles did this, more fully than was expected. Never was the law of reaction more fully demonstrated! The Court was profligate, and the age licentious. The reign of Charles was an orgy. When he needed more money for his pleasures, he bargained with Louis XIV. to join that king in a war upon Protestantism in Holland, for the consideration of £200,000!

We wonder how he dared thus to goad and prod the British Lion, which had devoured his Father. But that animal had grown patient since the Protectorate. England treated Charles like a spoiled child whose follies entertained her, and whose misdemeanors she had not the heart to punish.

The "Roundheads," who had trampled upon the "Cavaliers," were now trampled upon in return. But even at such a time as this the liberties of the people were expanding. The Act of "Habeas Corpus" forever prevented imprisonment, without showing in Court just cause for the detention of the prisoner.

The House of Stuart, those children of the Guises, was always Catholic at heart, and Charles was at no pains to conceal his preferences. A wave of Catholicism alarmed the people, who tried to divert the succession from James, the brother of the King, who was extreme and fanatical in his devotion to the Church of Rome. But in 1685, the Masks and routs and revels were interrupted. The pleasure-loving Charles, who "had never said a foolish thing, and never done a wise one," lay dead in his palace at Whitehall, and James II. was King of England.

Three names have illumined this reign, in other respects so inglorious. In 1666 Newton discovered the law of gravitation and created a new theory of the Universe. In 1667 Milton published "Paradise Lost," and in 1672 Bunyan gave to the world his allegory, "Pilgrim's Progress." There was no inspiration to genius in the cause of King and Cavaliers. But the stern problems of Puritanism touched two souls with the divine afflatus. The sacred Epic of Milton, sublime in treatment as in conception, must ever stand unique and solitary in literature; while "Pilgrim's Progress," in plain homely dish served the same heavenly food. The theme of both was the problem of sin and redemption with which the Puritan soul was gloomily struggling.

The reign of James II. was the last effort of royal despotism to recover its own. He tried to recall the right of Habeas Corpus;—to efface Parliament—and to overawe the Clergy, while insidiously striving to establish Papacy as the religion of the Kingdom. Chief Justice Jeffries, that most brutal of men, was his efficient aid, and boasted that he had in the service of James hanged more traitors than all his predecessors since the Conquest!

The names Whig and Tory had come into existence in this struggle. Whig standing for the opponents to Catholic domination, and Tory for the upholders of the King. But so flagrantly was the Catholic policy of James conducted, that his upholders were few. In three years from his accession, Whig and Tory alike were so alarmed, that they secretly sent an invitation to the King's son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, to come and accept the Crown.

William responded at once, and when he landed with 14,000 men, James, paralyzed, powerless, unable to raise a force to meet him, abandoned his throne without a struggle and took refuge in France.

The throne was formally declared vacant and William and Mary his wife were invited to rule jointly the Kingdom of England, Ireland and Scotland (1689).

The House of Stuart, which seems to have brought not one single virtue to the throne, was always secretly conspiring with Catholicism in Europe. Louis XIV., as the head of Catholic Europe at this time, was the natural protector of the dethroned King. His aim had long been, to bring England into the Catholic European alliance, and, of course, if possible, to make it a dependency of France. A conspiracy with Louis to accomplish this end occupied England's exiled King during the rest of his life.

But European Protestantism had for its leader the man who now sat upon the throne of England. In fact he had probably accepted that throne in order to further his larger plans for defeating the expanding power of Louis XIV. in Europe. Broad and comprehensive in his statesmanship, noble and just in character, an able military leader, England was safe in his strong hand. Conspiracies were put down, one French army after another, with the despicable James at its head, was driven back; the purpose at one time being to establish James at the head of an independent Kingdom in Catholic Ireland. But that would-be King of Ireland was humiliated and sent back to France by the battle of Boyne (1690).

As important as was all this, things of even greater moment were going on in the life of England at this time. As a wise householder employs the hours of sunshine to repair the leaks revealed by the storm, just so Parliament now set about strengthening and riveting the weak spots revealed by the storms which had swept over England.

What the "Magna Charta" and "Petition of Right" had asserted in a general way, was now by the "Bill of Rights," established by specific enactments, which one after another declared what the King should and what he should not do. One of these Acts touched the very central nerve of English freedom.

If religion and money are the two important factors in the life of a nation, it is money upon which its life from day to day depends! A Government can exist without money about as long as a man without air! So the act which gave to the House of Commons exclusive power to grant supplies, and also to determine to what use they shall be applied, transferred the real authority to the people, whose will the Commons express.

The struggle between the Crown and Parliament ends with this, and the theory of Pym is vindicated. The Sovereign and the House of Lords from that time could no more take money from the Treasury of England, than from that of France. Henceforth there can be no differences between King and people. They must be friends. A Ministry which forfeits the friendship of the Commons, cannot stand an hour, and supplies will stop until they are again in accord. In other words, the Government of England had become a Government of the people.

William regarded these enactments as evidence of a lack of confidence in him. Conscious of his own magnanimous aims, of his power and his purpose to serve England as she had not been served before, he felt hurt and wounded at fetters which had not been placed upon such Kings as Charles I. and his sons. We wonder that a man so exalted and so superior, did not see that it was for future England that these laws were framed, for a time when perhaps a Prince not generous, and noble, and pure should be upon the throne.

William was silent, grave, cold, reserved almost to sternness. He had none of the qualities which awaken personal enthusiasm. He was one of those great leaders who are worshipped from afar. Besides, it is not an easy task to rule another's household. Benefits however great, reforms however wise, are sure to be considered an impertinence by some. Then—there might be another "Restoration," and wary ambitious nobles were cautiously making a record which would not unfit them for its benefits when it came. He lived in an atmosphere of conspiracy, suspicion, and loyalty grudgingly bestowed. But these were only the surface currents. Anglo-Saxon England recognized in this foreign King, a man with the same race instincts, the same ideals of integrity, honor, justice and personal liberty, as her own; qualities possessed by few of her native sovereigns since the good King Alfred.

The expensive wars carried on against James and his confederate, Louis XIV., compelled loans which were the beginning of the National Debt. That and the establishing of the Bank of England, form part of the history of this reign.

In 1702 William died, and Mary having also died a few years earlier, the succession passed to her sister Anne, who was to be the last Sovereign of the House of Stuart.