General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

III. THE RESTORED STUARTS.

1. Reign of Charles the Second (1660-1685).

PUNISHMENT OF THE REGICIDES.—The monarchy having been restored in the person of Charles II, Parliament extended a general pardon to all who had taken part in the late rebellion, save most of the judges who had condemned Charles I. to the block. Thirteen of these were executed with the revolting cruelty with which treason was then punished, their hearts and bowels being cut out of their living bodies. Others of the regicides were condemned to imprisonment for life. Death had already removed the great leaders of the rebellion, Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, beyond the reach of Royalist hate; so vengeance was taken upon their bodies. These were dragged from their tombs in Westminster Abbey, hauled to Tyburn in London, and there, on the anniversary of Charles's execution, were hanged, and afterwards beheaded (1661).

THE "NEW MODEL" IS DISBANDED.—This same Parliament, mindful of how the army had ruled preceding ones, took care to disband, as soon as possible, the "New Model." "With them," in the words of the historian Green, "Puritanism laid down the sword. It ceased from the long attempt to build up a kingdom of God by force and violence, and fell back on its truer work of building up a kingdom of righteousness in the hearts and consciences of men."

On the pretext, however, that the disturbed state of the realm demanded special precautions on the part of the government, Charles retained in his service three carefully chosen regiments, to which he gave the name of Guards. These, very soon augmented in number, formed the nucleus of the present standing army of England.

THE CONVENTICLE AND FIVE-MILE ACTS.—Early in the reign the services of the Anglican Church were restored by Parliament, and harsh laws were enacted against all non-conformists. Thus the Conventicle Act made it a crime punishable by imprisonment or transportation for more than five persons besides the household to gather in any house or in any place for worship, unless the service was conducted according to the forms of the Established Church.

The Five-Mile Act forbade any non-conformist minister who refused to swear that it is unlawful to take arms against the king under any circumstance, and that he never would attempt to make any change in Church or State government, to approach within five miles of any city, corporate town, or borough sending members to Parliament. This harsh act forced hundreds to give up their homes in the towns, and, with great inconvenience and loss, to seek new ones in out-of-the-way country places.

PERSECUTION OF THE COVENANTERS.—In Scotland the attempt to suppress conventicles and introduce Episcopacy was stubbornly resisted by the Covenanters, who insisted on their right to worship God in their own way. They were therefore subjected to most cruel and unrelenting persecution. They were hunted by English troopers over their native moors and among the wild recesses of their mountains, whither they secretly retired for prayer and worship. The tales of the suffering of the Scotch Covenanters at the hands of the English Protestants form a most harrowing chapter of the records of the ages of religious persecution.

THE FIRE, THE PLAGUE, AND THE DUTCH WAR.—The years from 1664 to 1667 were crowded with calamities,—with war, plague, and fire. The poet Dryden not inaptly calls the year 1666, in which the Great Fire at London added its horrors to those of pestilence and war, the Annus Mirabilis, or "Year of Wonders."

The war alluded to was a struggle between the English and the Dutch, which grew out of commercial rivalries (1664-1667). Just before the war began, the English treacherously seized the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam in America, and changed its name to New York in honor of the king's brother, the Duke of York.

Early in the summer of 1665 the city of London was swept by a woeful plague, the most terrible visitation the city had known since the Black Death in the Middle Ages (see p. 485). Within six months 100,000 of the population perished.

The plague was followed, the next year, by the great fire, which destroyed 13,000 houses, and a vast number of churches and public buildings. The fire was afterwards acknowledged to be, like the Great Fire at Rome in Nero's reign, a blessing in disguise. The burnt districts were rebuilt in a more substantial way, with broader streets and more airy residences, so that London became a more beautiful and healthful city than would have been possible without the fire.

CHARLES'S INTRIGUES WITH LOUIS XIV.—Charles inclined to the Catholic worship, and wished to reestablish the Roman Catholic Church, because he thought it more favorable than the Anglican to such a scheme of government as he aimed to set up in England. In the year 1670 he made a secret treaty with the French king, the terms and objects of which were most scandalous. In return for aid which he was to render Louis in an attack upon Holland, he was to receive from him a large sum of money; and in case his proposed declaration in favor of the restoration of the Catholic Church produced any trouble in the island, the aid of French troops. The scheme was never consummated; but these clandestine negotiations, however, becoming an open secret, made the people very uneasy and suspicious. This state of the public mind led to a serious delusion and panic.

THE "POPISH PLOT" (1678).—A rumor was started that the Catholics had planned for England a St. Bartholomew massacre. The king, the members of Parliament, and all Protestants were to be massacred, the Catholic Church was to be reestablished, and the king's brother James, the Duke of York, a zealous Catholic, was to be placed on the throne. Each day the reports of the conspiracy grew more exaggerated and wild. Informers sprang up on every hand, each with a more terrifying story than the preceding. One of these witnesses, Titus Oates by name, a most infamous person, gained an extraordinary notoriety in exposing the imaginary plot. Many Catholics, convicted solely on the testimony of perjured witnesses, became victims of the delusion and fraud.

The excitement produced by the supposed plot led Parliament to pass what was called the Test Act, which excluded Catholics from the House of Lords. (They had already been shut out from the House of Commons by the oath of Supremacy, which was required of commoners, though not of peers.) The disability created by this statute was not removed from them until the present century,—in the reign of George the Fourth.

ORIGIN OF THE WHIG AND TORY PARTIES.—Besides shutting Catholic peers out of Parliament, there were many in both houses who were determined to exclude the Duke of York from the throne. Those in favor of the measure of exclusion were called Whigs, those who opposed it Tories. [Footnote: For the meaning of the names Whig and Tory, see Glossary.] We cannot, perhaps, form a better general idea of the maxims and principles of these two parties than by calling the Whigs the political descendants of the Roundheads, and the Tories of the Cavaliers. Later, they became known respectively as Liberals and Conservatives.

THE KING'S DEATH.—After a reign of just a quarter of a century, Charles died in 1685, and was followed by his brother James, whose rule was destined to be short and troubled.

2. Reign of James the Second (1685-1688).

JAMES'S DESPOTIC COURSE. [Footnote: James was barely seated upon the throne before the Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II., who had been in exile in the Netherlands, asserted his right to the crown, and at the head of a hundred men invaded England. Thousands flocked to his standard, but in the battle of Sedgemoor (1685) he was utterly defeated by the royal troops. Terrible vengeance was wreaked upon all in any way connected with the rebellion. The notorious Chief Justice Jeffries, in what were called the "Bloody Assizes," condemned to death 320 persons, and sentenced 841 to transportation. Jeffries conducted the so-called trials with incredible brutality.]—James, like all the other Stuarts, held exalted notions of the divine right of kings to rule as they please, and at once set about carrying out these ideas in a most imprudent and reckless manner. Notwithstanding he had given most solemn assurances that he would uphold the Anglican Church, he straightway set about the reestablishment of the Roman Catholic worship. He arbitrarily prorogued and dissolved Parliament. The standing army, which Charles had raised to 10,000 men, he increased to 20,000, and placed Catholics in many of its most important offices. He formed a league against his own subjects with Louis XIV. The High Commission Court of Elizabeth, which had been abolished by Parliament, he practically restored in a new ecclesiastical tribunal presided over by the infamous Jeffries (see note, below).

The despotic course of the king raised up enemies on all sides. No party or sect, save the most zealous Catholics, stood by him. The Tory gentry were in favor of royalty, indeed, but not of tyranny. Thinking to make friends of the Protestant dissenters, James issued a decree known as the Declaration of Indulgence, whereby he suspended all the laws against non- conformists. This edict all the clergy were ordered to read from their pulpits. Almost to a man they refused to do so. Seven bishops even dared to send the king a petition and remonstrance against his unconstitutional proceedings.

The petitioners were thrust into the Tower, and soon brought to trial on the charge of "seditious libel." The nation was now thoroughly aroused, and the greatest excitement prevailed while the trial was progressing. Judges and jury were overawed by the popular demonstration, and the bishops were acquitted. The news of the result of the trial was received not only by the people, but by the army as well, with shouts of joy, which did not fail to reach even the dull ears of the king.

THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.—The crisis which it was easy to see was impending was hastened by the birth of a prince, as this cut off the hope of the nation that the crown upon James's death would descend to his daughter Mary, now wife of the Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland. The prospect of the accession in the near future of a Protestant and freedom loving Prince and Princess had reconciled the people to the misgovernment of their present despotic and Catholic sovereign. The appearance upon the stage of an infant prince gave a wholly different look to affairs, and, as we have said, destroyed all hope of matters being righted by the ordinary course of events.

This led the most active of the king's opponents to resolve to bring about at once what they had been inclined to wait to have accomplished by his death. They sent an invitation to the Prince of Orange to come over with such force as he could muster and take possession of the government, pledging him the united and hearty support of the English nation. William accepted the invitation, and straightway began to gather his fleet and army for the enterprise.

Meanwhile King James, in his blind and obstinate way, was rushing on headlong upon his own destruction. He seemed absolutely blind to the steady and rapid drift of the nation towards the point of open resistance and revolution. At last, when the sails of the Dutch fleet were spread for a descent upon the English shores, then the infatuated despot suddenly realized that absolute ruin was impending over his throne. He now adopted every expedient to avert the threatened evil. He restored to cities the charters he had wrongfully taken from them, reinstated magistrates in the positions from which they had been unjustly deposed, attempted to make friends with the bishops, and promised to sustain the Anglican Church and rule in accordance with the constitution of the realm.

All concessions and promises, however, were in vain. They came too late. The king was absolutely deserted; army and people went over in a body to the Prince of Orange, whose fleet had now touched the shores of the island. Flight alone was left him. The queen with her infant child secretly embarked for France, where the king soon after joined her. The last act of the king before leaving England was to disband the army, and fling the Great Seal into the Thames, in order that no parliament might be legally convened.

The first act of the Prince of Orange was to issue a call for a Convention to provide for the permanent settlement of the crown. This body met January 22, 1689, and after a violent debate declared the throne to be vacant through James's misconduct and flight. They then resolved to confer the royal dignity upon William and his wife Mary as joint sovereigns of the realm.

But this Convention did not repeat the error of the Parliament that restored Charles II., and give the crown to the Prince and Princess without proper safeguards and guaranties for the conduct of the government according to the ancient laws of the kingdom. They drew up the celebrated Declaration of Rights, which plainly rehearsed all the old rights and liberties of Englishmen; denied the right of the king to lay taxes or maintain an army without the consent of Parliament; and asserted that freedom of debate was the inviolable privilege of both the Lords and the Commons. William and Mary were required to accept this declaration, and to agree to rule in accordance with its provisions, whereupon they were declared King and Queen of England. In such manner was effected what is known in history as the Revolution of 1688.

3. Literature of the Restoration.

IT REFLECTS THE IMMORALITY OF THE AGE.—The reigns of the restored Stuarts mark the most corrupt period in the history of English society. The low standard of morals, and the general prodigacy in manners, especially among the higher classes, are in part attributable to the demoralizing example of a shockingly licentious and shameless court; but in a larger measure, perhaps, should be viewed as the natural reaction from the over-stern, repellent Puritanism of the preceding period. The Puritans undoubtedly erred in their indiscriminate and wholesale denunciation of all forms of harmless amusement and innocent pleasure. They not only rebuked gaming, drinking, and profanity, and stopped bear-baiting, but they closed all the theatres, forbade the Maypole dances of the people, condemned as paganish the observance of Christmas, frowned upon sculpture as idolatrous and indecent, and considered any bright color in dress as utterly incompatible with a proper sense of the seriousness of life.

Now all this was laying too heavy a burden upon human nature. The revolt and reaction came, as come they must. Upon the Restoration, society swung to the opposite extreme. In place of the solemn-visaged, psalm-singing Roundhead, we have the gay, roistering Cavalier. Faith gives place to infidelity, sobriety to drunkenness, purity to profligacy, economy to extravagance, Bible-study, psalm-singing and exhorting to theatre-going, profanity, and carousing.

The literature of the age is a perfect record of this revolt against the "sour severity" of Puritanism, and a faithful reflection of the unblushing immorality of the times.

The book most read and praised by Charles II, and his court, and the one that best represents the spirit of the victorious party, is the satirical poem of Hudibras by Samuel Butler. The object of the work is to satirize the cant and excesses of Puritanism, just as the Don Quixote of Cervantes burlesques the extravagances and follies of Chivalry.

So immoral and indecent are the works of the writers for the stage of this period that they have acquired the designation of "the corrupt dramatists." Among the authors of this species of literature was the poet Dryden.