But in another form Charles and his brutal ministers were preparing deluges of fresh blood in another direction. Middleton assured Charles that the restoration of prelacy was now the earnest desire of the nation, and a proclamation was issued announcing the king's intention. Only one of the bishops of Laud's making was now alive, Sydserfe, a man of no estimation, who was sent to the distant see of Orkney, though he aspired to the archiepiscopal one of St. Andrews. That dignity was reserved for a very different man, Sharp, a pretended zealot for the Kirk, who, at the same time that he urged Middleton to restore episcopacy, persuaded his clerical brethren to send him up to London to defend the independence of the Kirk. He went, and to the astonishment and indignation of the ministers and people, returned Archbishop of St. Andrews. He endeavoured, in a letter to Middleton of May 28th, to prove that he had served the Kirk faithfully till he saw that it was of no avail, and that he took the post to keep out violent and dangerous men. This, after such a change, could be only regarded as the poor excuse of an unprincipled man. His incensed and abandoned friends heaped on him execrations, and accused him of incontinency, infanticide, and other heinous crimes. By this measure, and the co-operation of Middleton and Lauderdale, all the old bitterness was revived, and the horrors of a persecution which has scarcely an example in history, were witnessed. By Sharp's advice three other bishops were appointed, Fairfowl to the see of Glasgow, Hamilton to Galloway, and Dr. Robert Leighton to Dunblane. Leighton was the son of that Dr. Leighton whom Laud had so unmercifully treated and mutilated for his tract against prelacy. And now his son embraced prelacy, but was a very different man to Sharp—pious, liberal, learned, and a real ornament to the Church, though entering it by such a change. The four bishops went up to London to receive ordination, which was administered to them by Sheldon, Bishop of London, at Westminster, with a splendour which greatly offended the Puritan simplicity of Leighton. They were invited to take their seats in the House of Parliament, where Leighton had very soon an opportunity of opposing the introduction of the oath of Allegiance and Supremacy, which, however, all men were required to take. Sharp drove on this and other irritating measures; all meetings of presbyteries and synods were prohibited under penalty of treason, and Sharp soon recommended the enforcement of an oath abjuring the Solemn League and Covenant; and with these terrible weapons in their hands, Middleton, Sharp, and Lauderdale drove the Presbyterians from all offices in the Church, State, or magistracy, and many were compelled to flee from the country. The most astonishing thing was, that the spirit of the people had been so subdued by the arms and supremacy of Cromwell, that, instead of rising as their fathers did, they submitted in passive surprise. It required fresh indignities and atrocities to raise them again to the fighting pitch, and they came. In a short time the number of prelates was augmented to fourteen, and the Kirk appeared to be extinguished in Scotland.
Whilst these things were taking place in Ireland and Scotland, in England the king and his Cavalier courtiers were running a high career, and the new Parliament proved violently Royalist. The old great families, the old gentry, the Cavaliers, and the clergy, were all united to strain every old corrupt practice to pack a Parliament of their own fashion. Royalists, Cavaliers, and the sons of Cavaliers predominated in the new Parliament, which met on the 8th of May, 1661. Not more than fifty or sixty of the Presbyterian party were elected, for the Cavaliers everywhere proclaimed them the enemies of the monarchy, and they were scared into silence. This Parliament acquired the name of the Pension Parliament, and, to the disgrace of the country, continued to sit much longer than the so-called Long Parliament, of which the constitution was so altered as occasion demanded that it could not be properly regarded as one Parliament from 1640 to 1660—it continued eighteen years. The Parliament and the Church far outran the Court in zeal for the destruction of liberty and the restoration of a perfect despotism. The Commons commenced their proceedings by requiring every member, on pain of expulsion, to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. They ordered, in conjunction with the Lords, the Solemn League and Covenant to be burnt by the common hangman; they proposed to annul all the statutes of the Long Parliament, and restore the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission, but in this they failed. They passed a Bill declaring that neither House, nor both Houses together, had any legislative power without the king; that in him resided the sole command of the militia, and all other forces of land and sea; and that an oath should be taken, by all members of corporations, magistrates, and other persons bearing office, to this effect:—"I do declare and believe that it is not lawful upon any pretence whatever to take arms against the king, and that I do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against those commissioned by him." This was called the Corporation Oath. They restored the bishops to their seats in the House of Peers; they made Episcopalian ordination indispensable to Church preferment; they revived the old Liturgy without any concession to the prejudices of the Presbyterians, and thus drove two thousand ministers from the Church in one day; they reminded the sufferers that the Long Parliament had done the same, but they did not imitate that Parliament in allowing the ejected ministers an annuity to prevent them from starving; they declared it a high misdemeanour to call the king a Papist, that is, to speak the truth, for he was notoriously one; increased the rigour of the law of treason, and knocked on the head the last chance of popular liberty by abolishing the right of sending petitions to Parliament with more than twenty names attached, except by permission of three justices of the peace, or the majority of the grand jury. When this Parliament had done these notable feats, and passed a Bill of Supply, Charles prorogued it till the 28th of November.
On assembling at this date Parliament was alarmed by Clarendon with rumours of fresh conspiracies in the country. The object was to obtain the death of more of the Regicides. The Commons fell readily into the snare. To make a spectacle of disaffected men, they ordered three eminent Commonwealth men—Lord Monson, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Sir Robert Wallop, to be drawn with ropes round their necks from the Tower to Tyburn and back again, to remain perpetual prisoners. But this did not satisfy them; they must have more blood, and though Charles had promised their lives to Sir Harry Vane and General Lambert, they demanded their trial and execution; and Charles, who had no more regard for his word than his father, complied. They were to be tried the next session. Parliament then proceeded to draw up a more stringent Conformity Bill, which passed both Houses. This Bill enacted that every clergyman should publicly, before his congregation, declare his assent to everything contained in the Common Prayer Book, and that every preacher who had not received Episcopal ordination must do so before the next feast of St. Bartholomew. They added some new collects, in one of which they styled the lecherous monarch "our most religious king." They made the 30th of January a holiday for ever, in memory of "King Charles the martyr;" and voted the king a subsidy of one million two hundred thousand pounds, and a hearth tax for ever. The king then prorogued them on the 19th of May, 1662, with many professions of economy and reformation of manners, one of which he observed as much as the other.
Of the improvement of his morals he soon gave a striking example. The Duke of York, as has been stated, had married Anne Hyde, though she had been his mistress and was on the point of being delivered of an illegitimate child, which Charles Berkeley publicly claimed as his own, and brought forward the Earls of Arran, Talbot, Jermyn, and others to testify to her loose conduct. Berkeley was afterwards brought to contradict his own statement; but these circumstances, and James's gloomy and bigoted temper, rendered it desirable that Charles should marry. Heirs and heiresses he had in abundance, had they been legitimate. Besides Lucy Walters or Barlow, by whom he had the Duke of Monmouth, though the paternity of the child was generally awarded to the brother of Algernon Sidney—for Mrs. Walters or Barlow was very liberal of her favours—Charles had, on arriving in London, established a connection with the wife of a Mr. Palmer, whose maiden name was Barbara Villiers. The husband's connivance was purchased with the title of Earl of Castlemaine, and the countess was afterwards advanced to the rank of the Duchess of Cleveland.
As it was requisite for Charles, however, to marry, his ministers looked about for a suitable wife. Nothing could reconcile him to the idea of a German bride, and the Catholic princesses of the south were regarded by the nation with suspicion, both from the memory of the last queen, and the suspected tendency of Charles himself to Popery. Whilst Charles was in France, in 1659, he made an offer to the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, which that shrewd politician—who showed himself, however, a bad prophet—politely declined, for Charles was then a mere fugitive, and the cardinal did not foresee so sudden a change.
On the recall of Charles to the throne, both Mazarin and his master, Louis XIV., saw their mistake, for they had not only treated Charles with as much indifference as if it were a moral certainty that he could never again reach the throne of England, but had even sent him out of the country at the demand of Cromwell. Mazarin now offered his niece, but the scene was changed, and Charles no longer stooped to the niece of a cardinal. Louis, who had no suitable princess of France to offer him, and who wanted to prevent Portugal from falling into the power of Spain, recommended to him Donna Catarina of Braganza, the Portuguese monarch's sister. Could he accomplish this match, Louis, who was bound by treaty with Spain to offer no aid to Portugal, might be able to do it under cover of the King of England. The king's ministers, after some apprehension on the score of the lady's religion, were of opinion that the match was desirable, if it were only for the great dowry offered—five hundred thousand pounds, the Settlements of Tangier in Africa, and Bombay in the East Indies, besides a free trade to all the Portuguese colonies. De Mello, the Portuguese ambassador in London, was informed that the proposal met the approbation of the king. To link the interests of France and England closer, the Princess Henrietta, Charles's youngest sister, was married to the Duke of Orleans, the only brother of the French king.
SHILLING OF CHARLES II.
