* Life of Clarendon, p. 237.
At the same time that the boroughs of England were deprived of their privileges, a like attempt was made on the colonies. King James recalled the charters, by which their liberties were secured; and he sent over governors invested with absolute power. The arbitrary principles of that monarch appear in every part of his administration.
The people, during these two reigns, were in a great measure cured of that wild fanaticism by which they had formerly been so much agitated. Whatever new vices they might acquire, it may be questioned, whether by this change they were, in the main, much losers in point of morals. By the example of Charles II. and the cavaliers, licentiousness and debauchery became prevalent in the nation. The pleasures of the table were much pursued. Love was treated more as an appetite than a passion. The one sex began to abate of the national character of chastity, without being able to inspire the other with sentiment or delicacy.
The abuses in the former age, arising from overstrained pretensions to piety, had much propagated the spirit of irreligion; and many of the ingenious men of this period lie under the imputation of Deism. Besides wits and scholars by profession, Saftesbury, Halifax, Buckingham, Mulgrave, Sunderland Essex, Rochester, Sidney, Temple, are supposed to have adopted these principles.
The same factions which formerly distracted the nation were revived, and exerted themselves in the most ungenerous and unmanly enterprises against each other. King Charles, being in his whole deportment a model of easy and gentleman-like behavior, improved the politeness of the nation; as much as faction, which of all things is most destructive to that virtue, could possibly permit. His courtiers were long distinguishable in England by their obliging and agreeable manners.
Till the revolution, the liberty of the press was very imperfectly enjoyed in England, and during a very short period. The star chamber, while that court subsisted, put effectual restraints upon printing. On the suppression of that tribunal in 1641, the long parliament, after their rupture with the king, assumed the same power with regard to the licensing of books; and this authority was continued during all the period of the republic and protectorship.[*]
* Scobell i. 44, 134; ii. 88, 230.
Two years after the restoration, an act was passed reviving the republican ordinances. This act expired in 1679; but was revived in the first of King James. The liberty of the press did not even commence with the revolution. It was not till 1694 that the restraints were taken off; to the great displeasure of the king and his ministers, who, seeing nowhere, in any government, during present or past ages, any example of such unlimited freedom, doubted much of its salutary effects; and probably thought, that no books or writings would ever so much improve the general understanding of men, as to render it safe to intrust them with an indulgence so easily abused.
In 1677, the old law for burning heretics was repealed; a prudent measure, while the nation was in continual dread of the return of Papery.
Amidst the thick cloud of bigotry and ignorance which overspread the nation during the commonwealth and protectorship, there were a few sedate philosophers, who, in the retirement of Oxford, cultivated their reason, and established conferences for the mutual communication of their discoveries in physics and geometry. Wilkins, a clergyman, who had married Cromwell’s sister, and was afterwards bishop of Chester, promoted these philosophical conversations. Immediately after the restoration, these men procured a patent, and having enlarged their number, were denominated the Royal Society. But this patent was all they obtained from the king. Though Charles was a lover of the sciences, particularly chemistry and mechanics, he animated them by his example alone not by his bounty. His craving courtiers and mistresses, by whom he was perpetually surrounded, engrossed all his expense, and left him neither money nor attention for literary merit. His contemporary Lewis, who fell short of the king’s genius and knowledge in this particular, much exceeded him in liberality. Besides pensions conferred on learned men throughout all Europe, his academies were directed by rules and supported by salaries; a generosity which does great honor to his memory; and, in the eyes of all the ingenious part of mankind, will be esteemed an atonement for many of the errors of his reign. We may be surprised that this example should not be more followed by princes; since it is certain that that bounty, so extensive, so beneficial, and so much celebrated, cost not this monarch so great a sum as is often conferred on one useless, overgrown favorite or courtier.