[619] The Mémoires de Grammont are known to everybody; and are almost unique in their kind, not only for the grace of their style and the vivacity of their pictures, but for the happy ignorance in which the author seems to have lived, that any one of his readers could imagine that there are such things as virtue and principle in the world. In the delirium of thoughtless voluptuousness they resemble some of the memoirs about the end of Louis XV.'s reign, and somewhat later; though I think, even in these, there is generally some effort, here and there, at moral censure, or some affectation of sensibility. They, indeed, have always an awful moral; and in the light portraits of the court of Versailles (such, sometimes, as we might otherwise almost blush to peruse) we have before us the handwriting on the wall, the winter whirlwind hushed in its grim repose, and expecting its prey, the vengeance of an oppressed people and long-forbearing Deity. No such retribution fell on the courtiers of Charles II.; but they earned in their own age, what has descended to posterity, though possibly very indifferent to themselves, the disgust and aversion of all that was respectable among mankind.
[620] This was carried on a division by 172 to 102. Journals, 25 November 1665. It was to be raised "in a regulated subsidiary way, reducing the same to a certainty in all counties, so as no person, for his real or personal estate, be exempted." They seem to have had some difficulty in raising this enormous subsidy. Parliamentary History, 305.
[621] 17 Car. II. c. 1. The same clause is repeated next year, and has become regular.
[622] Life of Clarendon, p. 315; Hatsell's Precedents, iii. 80.
[623] Life of Clarendon, p. 368. Burnet observes it was looked upon at the time as a great innovation. P. 335.
[624] Pepys's Diary has lately furnished some things worthy to be extracted. "Mr. W. and I by water to Whitehall, and there at Sir George Carteret's lodgings Sir William Coventry met; and we did debate the whole business of our accounts to the parliament; where it appears to us that the charge of the war from Sept. 1, 1664, to this Michaelmas will have been but £3,200,000, and we have paid in that time somewhat about £2,200,000, so that we owe about £900,000; but our method of accounting, though it cannot, I believe, be far wide from the mark, yet will not abide a strict examination, if the parliament should be troublesome. Here happened a pretty question of Sir William Coventry, whether this account of ours will not put my lord treasurer to a difficulty to tell what is become of all the money the parliament have given in this time for the war, which hath amounted to about £4,000,000, which nobody there could answer; but I perceive they did doubt what his answer could be." Sept. 23, 1666.—The money granted the king for the war he afterwards (Oct. 10) reckons at £5,590,000, and the debt £900,000. The charge stated only at £3,200,000. "So what is become of all this sum, £2,390,000!" He mentions afterwards (Oct. 8) the proviso in the poll-tax bill, that there shall be a committee of nine persons to have the inspection on oath of all the accounts of the money given and spent for the war, "which makes the king and court mad; the king having given order to my lord chamberlain to send to the play-houses and brothels, to bid all the parliament men that were there to go to the parliament presently; but it was carried against the court by thirty or forty voices." It was thought, he says (Dec. 12) that above £400,000 had gone into the privy purse since the war.
[625] Life of Clarendon, p. 392.
[626] 19 and 20 Car. II. c. 1. Burnet, p. 374. They reported unaccounted balances of £1,509,161, besides much that was questionable in the payments. But, according to Ralph, p. 177, the commissioners had acted with more technical rigour than equity, surcharging the accountants for all sums not expended since the war began, though actually expended for the purposes of preparation.
[627] Burnet, p. 130. Southampton left all the business of the treasury, according to Burnet, p. 131, in the hands of Sir Philip Warwick, "a weak but incorrupt man." The king, he says, chose to put up with his contradiction rather than make him popular by dismissing him. But in fact, as we see by Clarendon's instance, the king retained his ministers long after he was displeased with them. Southampton's remissness and slowness, notwithstanding his integrity, Pepys says, was the cause of undoing the nation as much as anything; "yet, if I knew all the difficulties he has lain under, and his instrument Sir Philip Warwick, I might be of another mind." May 16, 1667.—He was willing to have done something, Clarendon tells us (p. 415) to gratify the presbyterians; on which account, the bishops thought him not enough affected to the church. His friend endeavours to extenuate this heinous sin of tolerant principles.
[628] The behaviour of Lord Clarendon on this occasion was so extraordinary, that no credit could have been given to any other account than his own. The Duke of York, he says, informed the king of the affection and friendship that had long been between him and the young lady; that they had been long contracted, and that she was with child; and therefore requested his majesty's leave that he might publicly marry her. The Marquis of Ormond by the king's order communicated this to the chancellor, who "broke out into an immoderate passion against the wickedness of his daughter; and said, with all imaginable earnestness, that as soon as he came home, he would turn her out of his house as a strumpet to shift for herself, and would never see her again. They told him that his passion was too violent to administer good counsel to him; that they thought that the duke was married to his daughter, and that there were other measures to be taken than those which the disorder he was in had suggested to him. Whereupon he fell into new commotions; and said, If that were true, he was well prepared to advise what was to be done; that he had much rather his daughter should be the duke's whore than his wife: in the former case, nobody could blame him for the resolution he had taken, for he was not obliged to keep a whore for the greatest prince alive; and the indignity to himself he would submit to the good pleasure of God. But, if there were any reason to suspect the other, he was ready to give a positive judgment, in which he hoped their lordships would concur with him, that the king should immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower and cast into a dungeon, under so strict a guard that no person living should be admitted to come to her; and then that an act of parliament should be immediately passed for cutting off her head, to which he would not only give his consent, but would very willingly be the first man that should propose it. And whoever knew the man, will believe that he said all this very heartily." Lord Southampton, he proceeds to inform us, on the king's entering the room at the time, said very naturally, that the chancellor was mad, and had proposed such extravagant things that he was no more to be consulted with. This, however, did not bring him to his senses; for he repeated his strange proposal of "sending her presently to the Tower, and the rest;" imploring the king to take this course, as the only expedient that could free him from the evils that this business would otherwise bring upon him.