His Majesties Declaration Defended

by John Dryden

INTRODUCTION

Wherever English literature is studied, John Dryden is recognized as the author of some of the greatest political satires in the language. Until recently the fact has been overlooked that before he wrote the first of these satires, Absalom and Achitophel, he had entered the political arena with the prose tract here reproduced. The proof that the Historiographer Royal contributed to the anti-Whig propaganda of the spring of 1681 depends partly on contemporary or near-contemporary statements but principally on internal evidence. An article by Professor Roswell G. Ham (The Review of English Studies, XI (1935), 284-98; Hugh Macdonald, John Dryden, A Bibliography, p. 167) demonstrated Dryden's authorship so satisfactorily that it is unnecessary to set forth here the arguments that established this thesis. The time when Dryden was composing his defence of the royal Declaration is approximately fixed from the reference to it on June 22, 1681, in The Observator, which had noted the Whig pamphlet Dryden was answering under the date of May 26.

The bitter controversy into which Dryden thrust himself was the culmination of eleven years' political strife. In 1670, by the secret Treaty of Dover, Charles II and Louis XIV agreed that the English king should declare himself a Roman Catholic, and receive from his brother of France the equivalent of 80,000 pounds sterling and, in case of a Protestant rebellion, 6000 French soldiers. In addition, the two kings were pledged to undertake a war for the partition of the United Provinces. In the words of the late Lord Acton this treaty is "the solid substance of the phantom which is called the Popish Plot." (Lectures on Modern History (1930), p. 211) The attempt to carry out the second part of the treaty was made in 1672, when England and France attacked the United Provinces which made a successful defence, aided by a coalition including the Emperor, Elector of Brandenburg, and King of Spain. The unpopularity of the war compelled Charles II to make peace in 1674. Meanwhile the King had taken a step to put into operation the first part of the Treaty of Dover by issuing a Declaration of Indulgence relieving Catholics and Dissenters alike from the penal laws. He was forced, however, to withdraw it and to give his assent to the Test Act which excluded from all public offices those unwilling to take the sacraments according to the rites of the Church of England. Henceforth Charles II abandoned all hope of restoring Catholicism, though his brother and heir, James, Duke of York, already a convert, remained resolute to secure at least toleration for his co-religionists. But many Englishmen continued to suspect the royal policy.

Roman Catholicism was feared and hated by many Englishmen for two distinct reasons. The first was based on bigotry, nourished by memories of the Marian persecution, the papal bull dethroning Elizabeth, Guy Fawkes' Plot, and by apprehensions that a Catholic could not be a loyal subject so long as he recognized the temporal power of the Pope. The second was political and assumed that Catholicism was the natural support of absolutism. As Shaftesbury, the leader of the opposition, stated, popery and slavery went hand in hand. Such fears were deepened as the general purport of the Treaty of Dover became known.

Into this atmosphere charged with suspicion was interjected the Popish Plot, said by Titus Oates and his fellow perjurers to be designed to murder Charles II and place James on the throne. From September 1678, when Oates began his series of revelations until the end of March 1681, when the King dissolved at Oxford the third Parliament elected under the Protestant furore excited by the Plot, Shaftesbury and his followers had the upper hand. The King was obliged to propose concessions to the popular will and to offer to agree to limitations on the authority of a popish successor. But Shaftesbury was bent on passing the Exclusion Bill, which excluded James from the throne and substituted the King's illegitimate son, Monmouth. Here he made a fatal blunder because he alienated churchmen who believed in the divine right of kings, all whose sense of decency was outraged by the prospect of a bastard's elevation to the throne, and the supporters of William of Orange, husband of Mary, the elder daughter of James, and the great opponent of Louis XIV. Also, when it became obvious that the King would not agree to a change in the succession, many feared another civil war with all its attendant dangers of a second military domination. Moreover, the lies of Oates and his imitators were becoming discredited.

Though a reaction against the Whigs was beginning, propaganda was needed to disabuse the public of two anxieties—that there was still a danger that Roman Catholicism might be restored and that the three dissolutions might foreshadow a return to unparliamentary government such as Charles I had established from 1629 to 1640, also after three dissolutions. The royal party was at first on the defensive. Their propaganda began with a proclamation issued on April 8 and ordered to be read in all churches. In the proclamation the King posed as the champion of law and order against a disloyal faction trying to overthrow the constitution. It was read in churches on April 17 and, according to Luttrell's Brief Historical Relation (I, 77), "in many places was not very pleasing, but afforded matter of sport to some persons." Among several replies was one entitled A Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend. Clearly there was need to answer this pamphlet and to state more fully the case against the Whigs. This task was undertaken by two of the greatest writers of English prose—George Savile, then Earl, later Marquis of Halifax, and John Dryden. Halifax, in the tract lately identified as his by Hugh Macdonald (Cambridge, 1940), Observations upon a late Libel—though he might scarify an individual opponent like Shaftesbury or pour ridicule upon a sentence from A Letter, set himself the task of answering the Whig case as a whole. The text he dilated upon was: "there seemeth to be no other Rule allowed by one sort of Men, than that they cannot Err, and the King cannot be in the Right." With superb irony and wit he demonstrated how inconsistent such an attitude was with the constitution of that day.

Dryden's tract, His Majesties Declaration Defended is, like the one he is answering, in the form of a letter to a friend who has asked the writer's opinion of the Declaration and the answer to it. "I shall obey you the more willingly," Dryden responds, "because I know you are a lover of the Peace and Quietness of your Country; which the Author of this seditious Pamphlet, is endeavouring to disturb." He writes to show the "goodness and equity" of the Prince, because once they are understood, the faction will lose its power and the well-meaning but misled crowd will be no longer deceived by "the specious names of Religion and Liberty." After these introductory paragraphs Dryden began to reply to the pamphlet point by point. His method is to quote or, more strictly, partly to quote and partly to paraphrase, a sentence and then refute its argument. In so doing he is following the method of the author of A Letter. Accordingly, to understand and judge the fairness of Dryden's refutation, it is well first to read His Majesties Declaration, then A Letter, and finally Dryden. The first has not been reprinted in full but a substantial extract may be found in Echard's History of England (III, 624-6) and in Arthur Bryant's The Letters of Charles II (pp. 319-22), the second is available in a not uncommon folio, State Tracts: being a Collection of several Treatises … privately printed in the Reign of K. Charles II (1689), and the third is here reproduced for the first time. After the perusal of these three tracts, the student may well turn to Absalom and Achitophel, and find instruction in comparing the prose and the verse. He may reach the conclusion that while both were written to win converts to the royal cause, the first was designed to weaken the Whig party and the second to take advantage of a tide that had turned to ruin the Whig leaders. (For a fuller discussion of the relationship of Dryden's tract and his poem see the writer's article, "The Conclusion of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel" in the Huntington Library Quarterly, X (1946-7), 69-82.) In addition to its historical interest Dryden's tract is a fine specimen of his masculine, vigorous style so well suited to controversial writing.

I desire to thank Mr. James M. Osborn, Yale University, for helpful suggestions in the preparation of this introduction.

This facsimile has been made from the copy in the William Andrews Clark
Memorial Library.

Godfrey Davies The Huntington Library