ARRIVAL OF CHARLES AT OXFORD. (See p. [269].)

[[See larger version]]

The Spaniards complained that Louis was violating the Treaty of Nimeguen, and called on Charles to act as their ally and a party to the Treaty. To contend with Louis required money, even if he were so disposed, and money he had none. Instead of answering his demands for it, the Commons expressed their resentment of his resistance to the Exclusion Bill, by attacking all the supporters of the king. They summoned various Tory leaders on one pretence or another to their bar; they demanded the removal of Jeffreys from the office of Recorder of London, and he made haste to submit; they voted impeachments against Scroggs and North, the chief justices, and Lewis Weston and other judges. They sent a message to the king, that unless the Duke of York was excluded, there was no safety to Protestantism. They voted that the Marquis of Worcester, Halifax, Clarendon, and Feversham, were promoters of Popery; that they and Lawrence Hyde, and Seymour, ought to be removed from the king's council, and that till then no money could be voted; and, moreover, that any one lending the king money upon any branch of the revenue, should be adjudged an enemy of the country. As they were going on voting still further resolutions of a like kind, Charles prorogued Parliament, and then by proclamation dissolved it, ordering another to assemble at the end of two months at Oxford.

The very naming of the place of meeting struck the Opposition with alarm. In London they had a great protection in a strongly sympathising population; but Oxford was notorious for its Royalist and Tory feeling; and there Charles, amid a fiery mob of fortune-seeking gownsmen, and a strong body of soldiery, might overawe Parliament, and direct particular attacks against the Opposition leaders. These fears were well founded. But the king had, in the interim, also strengthened himself in another manner. He had first set to work every one of the duke's friends that he possibly could, to induce him at least to appear to conform to the demands of Parliament, but finding this utterly unavailing, he had turned to his old friend Louis. The French monarch, who never liked to leave Charles at the mercy of his Parliament, again gratified his desire, and agreed to pay him two millions of livres this year, and half a million of crowns in each of the two following years, on condition that he should leave the Spaniards to his overbearing encroachments. The many hints thrown out of secret treaties between Charles and Louis had not been lost, and no written contract of this agreement was made, but it was treated as a matter of honour, and only the two monarchs, with Barillon on the one side, and Hyde on the other, were included in the secret.

Being thus made independent of his Parliament, Charles disregarded the strongest remonstrances against holding the Parliament in Oxford, and on the day appointed appeared there, attended by a troop of Horse Guards, besides crowds of armed courtiers, and the Opposition members and their party, likewise armed, and attended by armed followers. It appeared more like a preparation for war than for peaceful debate. Charles addressed the assembled hearers in the tone of a man who had money in his pocket. He spoke strongly of the factious proceedings of the last Parliament, and of his determination neither to exercise arbitrary power himself, nor to suffer it in others; but to show that he had every disposition to consult the wishes of his subjects, he proposed to grant them almost everything they had solicited. He then offered the substance of the Bill of Limitations proposed by Halifax, that James should be banished five hundred miles from the British shores during the king's life; that, on succeeding, though he should have the title of king, the powers of government should be vested in a regent, and this regent, in the first instance, be his daughter, the Princess Mary of Orange, and after her her sister Anne; that if James should have a son educated in the Protestant faith, the regency should continue only till he reached his majority; that, besides this, all Catholics of incomes of more than one hundred pounds per annum should be banished, the fraudulent conveyance of their estates be pronounced void, and their children taken from them, and educated in Protestantism.

This was a sweeping concession; short of expelling James altogether, nothing more could be expected, and it was scarcely to be expected that Charles would concede that. On this one point he had always displayed unusual firmness, and it was a firmness highly honourable to him, for by it he maintained the rights of a brother, at the expense of the aggrandisement of his own son. Nothing would have been easier than to have, by a little finesse, conveyed the crown to Monmouth, the favourite of the Protestant bulk of the nation, and for whom he had a real affection. But the Whigs lost their opportunity; they were blinded to their own interest by the idea of their strength, and thought that, having so much offered, they were about to gain all. This was the culminating point of their success; but they rejected the offer, and from that hour the tide of their power ebbed, and their ruin was determined.

There was another attempt to spur on the country to carry the Exclusion Bill, by making use of a miserable pretence of a plot got up by two low adventurers, Everard and Fitzharris. First these fellows pretended that the king was leagued with the duke to establish Popery; but when Fitzharris was thrown into Newgate, he got up another story, that he had been offered ten thousand pounds by the Duchess of Modena to murder the king, and that a foreign invasion was to assist the Catholic attempt. The Opposition were ready to seize on this man as another Dangerfield, to move the country by the disclosure of these plots. But Charles was beforehand with them, cut off all intercourse with the prisoner, and ordered the Attorney-General to proceed against him. The Commons claimed to deal with him, and sent up an impeachment to the Lords; the Lords refused to entertain it, and voted that he should be tried as the king directed, by common law. The Commons were exasperated, and declared that this was a denial of justice, a violation of the rights of Parliament, and any inferior court interfering would be guilty of a high breach of the privileges of their House. They were going on with the reading of the Exclusion Bill, when suddenly the king summoned them to the House of Lords, and dissolved Parliament. He had, on hearing of their proceedings, privately put the crown and robes of State into a sedan-chair, and hastened to the House. The astonishment and rage of the Opposition were inconceivable. Shaftesbury called on the members not to leave the House, but it was in vain; they gradually withdrew: the king rode off, attended by a detachment of his Guards, to Windsor, and thus, after the session of a week, ended his fifth and last Parliament.

If the Whigs had not been blinded by their passions and their fancied success, they might have seen the reaction that was taking place. The long series of pretended plots had gradually opened the eyes of the people; they began to wonder how they could have believed them, and have consented to the spilling of so much blood on the evidence of such despicable characters. At the execution of Lord Stafford, instead of those yells of rage with which they had received some of the previous victims, they cried that they believed him, and prayed God to bless him. They might have seen this change still more clearly in what now followed. Charles issued a Declaration of his reasons for dissolving this Parliament;—that he had offered them everything that reasonable men could desire, for which he had received only expressions of discontent, and endeavours to usurp his authority; that they had arrested Englishmen for offences with which Parliament had nothing to do; had declared the most distinguished persons enemies to the king on mere suspicion; had forbade any one to lend the king money in anticipation of his revenue; had insisted on excluding the heir apparent from the succession, notwithstanding all possible guarantees; and that they were endeavouring to create a quarrel between the two Houses, because the Lords would not interfere with the king's prerogative. This Declaration, which was read in the churches, produced a strong effect. The king was regarded as unreasonably treated, and addresses of support were sent up from all quarters. The University of Cambridge went the length of saying that "our kings derive not their titles from the people, but from God, and that to Him only they are accountable. They had an hereditary right of succession, which no religion, no law, no fault, no forfeiture can alter or diminish." The Whigs published a counter-address, but, still drawing their arguments from Oates's plot, it failed to tell; this delusion had gone by, and the opposite one of Divine Right was moving now, in consequence, with an exaggerated impetus. The king persisted in bringing Fitzharris to trial; the Whigs endeavoured to defend him by pleading that, being impeached by the Commons, no other court than Parliament could try him; but this was overruled, he was tried, condemned, and hanged.

At the same time suffered the titular Archbishop of Armagh; the last victim of the Popish plot, and perhaps the most hardly and unjustly used. Oliver Plunket, the archbishop, was imprisoned merely for receiving orders in the Catholic Church, contrary to the law; but whilst in prison some of the Irish informers charged him with being concerned in the Popish plot; but instead of trying him in Ireland, where he was well known and could produce his witnesses, he was brought to England, and before his evidence could arrive, was tried and executed (July 1, 1681). A more shameful proceeding has never been recorded. The Earl of Essex, who had been Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, solicited his pardon, saying to Charles, that from his own knowledge, the charge against him was undoubtedly false. "Then," retorted the king, "on your head, my lord, be his blood. You might have saved him if you would. I cannot pardon him, because I dare not." The storm, in fact, was about to burst on the heads of those who had raised it. There was no Parliament to defend them, and the Government now proceeded to retaliate. The miscreants who had served Shaftesbury in running down his victims now perceived the change of public opinion, and either slunk away or offered their services to Government against their former employers.

The first to be arrested were Shaftesbury himself, College, surnamed the "Protestant joiner," and Rouse, the leader of the mob from Wapping. Lord Howard was already in the Tower on the denunciation of Fitzharris. The Grand Jury refused to find the Bill of Indictment against Lord Howard; they did the same in the case of Rouse, but College was tried, and the same witnesses who had been deemed worthy enough to condemn the Catholics were brought against him. But the jury now refused to believe them against a Protestant, and acquitted him. College, however, was not permitted to escape so easily. He was a noisy and determined leader of the people, sang songs and distributed prints, ridiculing the king and Court, and was celebrated as the inventor of the Protestant flail. It was found that some of his misdemeanours had been committed in Oxfordshire, and he was sent down and tried there, where the Tory feeling was not likely to let him off again. There the miserable wretches, whose concocted evidence had doomed to death so many charged by them as participators in the Popish plot, were now arrayed against each other. Dugdale, Tuberville, and Smith swore against College; Oates, Bolron, and others committed the political blunder of contradicting them, and representing them in colours that in truth belonged to the whole crew. For this proceeding Oates was deprived of his pension and turned out of Whitehall; but College was condemned amid roars of applause from the gownsmen. The execution of College was the commencement of a murderous retaliation on the Whigs, as savage as had been theirs on the Catholics. Shaftesbury, through the influence of the sheriffs, and the vehement demonstrations of the City made in his favour, was saved for the present by the jury ignoring the indictment, amid the acclamations of the people, and the event was celebrated by bonfires, ringing of bells, and shouts of "Monmouth!" "Shaftesbury!" and "Buckingham!"