The general affection borne the king appeared signally about this time. He fell sick at Windsor; and had two or three fits of a fever, so violent as made his life be thought in danger. A general consternation seized all ranks of men increased by the apprehensions entertained of his successor In the present disposition of men’s minds, the king’s death, to use an expression of Sir William Temple,[****] was regarded as the end of the world. The malecontents, it was feared, would proceed to extremities, and immediately kindle a civil war in the kingdom.
* Temple, vol. i. p. 335.
** Temple, vol. i p. 449.
*** Dissertation on Parties, letter vii.
**** Vol i. p. 342.
Either their entire success, or entire failure, or even the balance and contest of parties, seemed all of them events equally fatal. The king’s chief counsellors, therefore Essex, Halifax, and Sunderland, who stood on bad terms with Shaftesbury and the popular party, advised him to send secretly for the duke, that, in case of any sinister accident, that prince might be ready to assert his right against the opposition which he was likely to meet with. When the duke arrived, he found his brother out of danger; and it was agreed to conceal the invitation which he had received. His journey, however, was attended with important consequences. He prevailed on the king to disgrace Monmouth, whose projects were now known and avowed; to deprive him of his command in the army; and to send him beyond sea. He himself returned to Brussels; but made a short stay in that place. He obtained leave to retire to Scotland, under pretence still of quieting the apprehensions of the English nation; but in reality with a view of securing that kingdom in his interests.
Though Essex and Halifax had concurred in the resolution of inviting over the duke, they soon found that they had not obtained his confidence, and that even the king, while he made use of their service, had no sincere regard for their persons. Essex in disgust resigned the treasury: Halifax retired to his country seat: Temple, despairing of any accommodation among such enraged parties, withdrew almost entirely to his books and his gardens. The king, who changed ministers as well as measures with great indifference, bestowed at this time his chief confidence on Hyde, Sunderland, and Godolphin. Hyde succeeded Essex in the treasury.
All the king’s ministers, as well as himself, were extremely averse to the meeting of the new parliament, which they expected to find as refractory as any of the preceding. The elections had gone mostly in favor of the country party. The terrors of the plot had still a mighty influence over the populace; and the apprehensions of the duke’s bigoted principles and arbitrary character weighed with men of sense and reflection. The king therefore resolved to prorogue the parliament, that he might try whether time would allay those humors, which, by every other, expedient, he had in vain attempted to mollify. In this measure he did not expect the concurrence of his council. He knew that those, popular leaders, whom he had admitted, would zealously oppose a resolution which disconcerted all their schemes; and that the royalists would not dare, by supporting it, to expose themselves to the vengeance of the parliament, when it should be assembled. These reasons obliged him to take this step entirely of himself; and he only declared his resolution in council. It is remarkable that, though the king had made profession never to embrace any measure without the advice of these counsellors, he had often broken that resolution, and had been necessitated, in affairs of the greatest consequence, to control their opinion. Many of them in disgust threw up about this time; particularly Lord Russel, the most popular man in the nation, as well from the mildness and integrity of his character, as from his zealous attachment to the religion and liberties of his country. Though carried into some excesses, his intentions were ever esteemed upright; and being heir to the greatest fortune in the kingdom, as well as void of ambition, men believed that nothing but the last necessity could ever engage him to embrace any desperate measures. Shaftesbury, who was, in most particulars, of an opposite character, was removed by the king from the office of president of the council; and the earl of Radnor, a man who possessed whimsical talents and splenetic virtues, was substituted in his place.
It was the favor and countenance of the parliament which had chiefly encouraged the rumor of plots; but the nation had gotten so much into that vein of credulity, and every necessitous villain was so much incited by the success of Oates and Bedloe, that even during the prorogation the people were not allowed to remain in tranquillity. There was one Dangerfield, a fellow who had been burned in the hand for crimes, transported, whipped, pilloried four times, fined for cheats, outlawed for felony, convicted of coining, and exposed to all the public infamy which the laws could inflict on the basest and most shameful enormities. The credulity of the people, and the humor of the times, enabled even this man to become a person of consequence. He was the author of a new incident called the meal-tub plot, from the place where some papers relating to it were found. The bottom of this affair it is difficult and not very material to discover. It only appears, that Dangerfield, under pretence of betraying the conspiracies of the Presbyterians, had been countenanced by some Catholics of condition, and had even been admitted to the duke’s presence and the king’s; and that under pretence of revealing new Popish plots, he had obtained access to Shaftesbury and some of the popular leaders. Which side he intended to cheat, is uncertain; or whether he did not rather mean to cheat both: but he soon found, that the belief of the nation was more open to a Popish than a Presbyterian plot; and he resolved to strike in with the prevailing humor. Though no weight could be laid on his testimony, great clamor was raised; as if the court, by way of retaliation, had intended to load the Presbyterians with the guilt of a false conspiracy It must be confessed, that the present period, by the prevalence and suspicion of such mean and ignoble arts on all sides, throws a great stain on the British annals.
One of the most innocent artifices practised by party men at this time, was the additional ceremony, pomp, and expense, with which a pope-burning was celebrated in London: the spectacle served to entertain, and amuse, and inflame the populace. The duke of Monmouth likewise came over without leave, and made a triumphant procession through many parts of the kingdom, extremely caressed and admired by the people. All these arts seemed requisite to support the general prejudices during the long interval of parliament. Great endeavors were also used to obtain the king’s consent for the meeting of that assembly.
1680
Seventeen peers presented a petition to this purpose. Many of the corporations imitated the example. Notwithstanding several marks of displeasure, and even a menacing proclamation from the king, petitions came from all parts, earnestly insisting on a session of parliament. The danger of Popery, and the terrors of the plot, were never forgotten in any of these addresses.
Tumultuous petitioning was one of the chief artifices by which the malecontents in the last reign had attacked the own: and though the manner of subscribing and delivering petitions was now somewhat regulated by act of parliament, the thing itself still remained; and was an admirable expedient for infesting the court, for spreading discontent, and for uniting the nation in any popular clamor. As the king found no law by which he could punish those importunate, and, as he deemed them, undutiful solicitations, he was obliged to encounter them by popular applications of a contrary tendency Wherever the church and court party prevailed, addresses were framed, containing expressions of the highest regard to his majesty, the most entire acquiescence in his wisdom, the most dutiful submission to his prerogative, and the deepest abhorrence of those who endeavored to encroach upon it, by prescribing to him any time for assembling the parliament. Thus the nation came to be distinguished into petitioners and abhorrers. Factions indeed were at this time extremely animated against each other. The very names by which each party denominated its antagonist, discover the virulence and rancor which prevailed. For besides petitioner and abhorrer, appellations which were soon forgotten, this year is remarkable for being the epoch of the well-known epithets of “whig” and “tory”, by which, and sometimes without any material difference, this island has been so long divided. The court party reproached their antagonists with their affinity to the fanatical conventiclers in Scotland, who were known by the name of whigs: the country party found a resemblance between the courtiers and the Popish banditti in Ireland, to whom the appellation of tory was affixed. And after this manner these foolish terms of reproach came into public and general use; and even at present seem not nearer their end than when they were first invented.