The beginning of the parliament was prophetic of what was to come. At the time no cause could seem lower than that of the court. The Whigs had swept the country at the elections. Everything at Whitehall, at the exchequer, in the services, was in disorder and disrepair. The royal household still clamoured for unpaid wages. The whole nation was in a ferment. Men’s minds were painfully divided by the project of exclusion. Innumerable cabals, intriguing one against another, troubled the surface of politics and clouded the depths. No one could tell what designs and what dangers any moment might bring forth. Above all no one could gauge the king’s intentions. Uncertainty reigned everywhere, and it seemed as if the opposing forces had but to make one push and thrust aside the resistance of government, order England as they would, and reign in peace.[336] A somewhat different light is shed by after events on “the very melancholy aspect” which Sir John Reresby noted in the kingdom. In spite of the clamour raised on all sides against feebleness and irresolution, the government had marshalled its strength with some adroitness. Danby was in the Tower. The army was in the act of being disbanded. The treasury was put into commission, and the Earl of Essex, whose austerity and popular sympathies could not but inspire some measure of confidence, named as first commissioner. Before Parliament assembled the Duke of York at his brother’s command had left the kingdom, and was watching events with wrath and foreboding, but with little influence, from across the Channel. Nothing that could betoken a conciliatory spirit in the court had been omitted. There followed a move still more important as a check to the unbridled Commons. The committee of secrecy had just been instructed to consider methods of impeachment of the five Popish lords, when on April 21 the king announced to Parliament that he had chosen a new privy council. The scheme he went on to outline, though attributed at the time to divers other heads, had its origin in the elegant fancy of Sir William Temple.[337] That excellent ambassador and gardener, returning from a mission to the Hague, found the turbulence of the state and the dangers surrounding the king such that he promptly set to considering how he might devise some advantage to his master’s service. Diplomatic experience and a natural bent to theoretical statesmanship were more prominent in his mind than knowledge of the practical expedients which must temper the keenness of political ideas in action. He saw Parliament daily encroaching, as it seemed to him, on the royal prerogative; he saw the king drawing apart from his people; he feared an open rupture which might throw the state into convulsion. On these considerations he evolved the notion of a third authority, which, standing midway between the two, should act at the same time as a cushion and as a link. The instrument he found in the privy council. By reducing the number from fifty to thirty Temple hoped that business would be discussed by the whole board, cabals and secret understandings avoided. Members were no longer to be of one party only, or allied in ambition; on the contrary, fifteen places should go to officers of state, fifteen to popular leaders from both houses of Parliament; and since he observed authority to follow land, Temple arranged that the total income of the several members should amount to £300,000, a sum to be compared not unfavourably with that of the House of Commons, which was estimated at a third as much again. By such a council the king’s policy would be ably regulated. Its composition would give confidence even to the most hostile parliament. Neither by Parliament nor by king could its authority be lightly disregarded. In the event of a breach between the two the council would be rich enough to assist the finances of the state. At the same time the king could be certain, by means of the votes of his fifteen officers, that he would not be forced to act against his own interests. The project won instant approval. Essex considered that it pointed a return to the happy days of the Restoration; Lord Sunderland, now secretary of state in place of Sir Joseph Williamson, was favourably impressed; the Lord Chancellor declared it was as a thing from heaven fallen into his majesty’s breast. The Chancellor’s remark had an unwitting point. Though the scheme was of Temple’s conception, Charles made it his own by a characteristic touch. He consented to the inclusion of Halifax in the new council only after some pressure, for he disliked and perhaps feared the great Trimmer. It was therefore with amazement that his advisers heard the king name Lord Shaftesbury. Still more amazing, Charles positively insisted on the earl’s inclusion as an extraordinary member of the council and its president. Temple was compelled to submit, not without protest. It was an act which should have given pause to optimists. None the less the news of the scheme was hailed with general applause. Bonfires were lighted in the city, the East India Company’s stock rose rapidly, Barillon did not conceal his mortification, and the Dutch republic marked the occasion by the appointment of one of its most able ministers as ambassador to St. James’; only the House of Commons viewed the matter in an unexpected light and with dissatisfaction. While the French feared a bond of union between the hostile parties in England and old Cavaliers that the king had delivered himself into the hands of his enemies, the Whigs held sullenly aloof from rejoicing, or proclaimed that they were being led into a trap. The Earl of Essex had already lost credit with his friends by serving on the commission for the treasury, and those of the party who took places on the council found that glances were cast askance at them as betrayers of their trust.[338]
To most eyes the situation as affected by the change of council was far from clear. The king himself held the key to it. Whether or no Temple’s scheme was really practicable, Charles did not intend to try. He had gained a point by dissolving his old council, which was filled with friends of Danby.[339] Another and a greater advantage was that signified by the choice of Shaftesbury as president of the new. His friends thought the king guilty of a lamentable piece of feebleness. Had the council been meant to consult it would perhaps have been so. But this was far from Charles’ design. “God’s fish!” he said to an intimate, “they have put a set of men about me, but they shall know nothing, and this keep to yourself.” Evidently the diplomatic constitution had no grand future before it. And so it proved. Within a short time the author was actively disregarding his own principle by forming one of a cabinet of four with Sunderland, Essex, and Halifax, to arrange matters before they came before the council and Parliament; while Charles, as good as his word, kept his own counsel and acted without the advice either of them or of the board at large, on one notable occasion against its will and to the great displeasure of the popular members. In Parliament the Whig councillors continued their opposition as fiercely as ever, but at the council board they had little influence. The position rapidly became impossible. It can hardly be doubted that this was Charles’ exact intention. He had achieved a double success. He had seemed to give the Whig leaders a chance of reforming the government, while in fact he had only driven them to greater exasperation. In the eyes of the nation he had offered a compromise, secure in the knowledge that it would not be accepted. The trick which the Commons feared had been played to a nicety. For this their chiefs had only to thank themselves. Had they acted on their suspicion and refused places on the council, their conduct would in this have been faultless. But the bait was too tempting to be rejected. They accepted the offer of office, intending from this new post of vantage to pursue their old plans. Their duplicity gained nothing. The king had provided for the result, and their failure could only seem due to the deceit and intolerance with which they had repulsed his good intentions. On October 15, 1679 Shaftesbury was dismissed from the council in consequence of his agitation against the Duke of York, and three months later Russell, Cavendish, Capel, and Powle, his four most prominent allies on the board, tendered their resignation by his advice. Charles accepted it in the words, “With all my heart.” The famous scheme was thus finally abandoned. Temple withdrew from politics to his garden and his library. Essex quitted the treasury and openly joined the opposition. Only Halifax, after retirement to the country, remained in the king’s service.[340]
Meanwhile the tide in Parliament ran high against the government. The new constitution had hardly begun its career before the Commons on April 27 settled to consider how they might best preserve his Majesty’s person from the attacks of papists. Impotent attempts made by members in the court interest to divert the debate only increased its keenness, and the House passed from stage to stage of fiery enthusiasm until on Mr. Hampden’s motion it was unanimously declared that “the Duke of York being a papist and the hopes of his coming such to the crown have given the greatest countenance and encouragement to the present conspiracies and designs of papists against the king and the Protestant religion.” With the addition that James had been the unwilling cause of the Plot, the House of Lords adopted the motion as it stood. This was the prelude to the piece to come. On Sunday, May 11, when daylight had gone out with talk, a resolution was carried, those against it refusing to have their votes taken, “that a bill be brought in to disable the Duke of York to inherit the Imperial Crown of this realm.” It was followed by the ferocious declaration of the Commons that they would stand by his Majesty with their lives and fortunes and, should he come to any violent death (which God forbid!), revenge it to the utmost upon the Roman Catholics. Four days later the Exclusion bill was introduced and read for the first time. On May 21 it passed the second reading and was committed. The threatening aspect of these events could not be mistaken. The Commons were fierce and pertinacious. Danby’s discomfiture was followed by an attack on Lauderdale and by another, still more violent, on the system of secret service money. “Extraordinary heats” broke out on the question whether bishops had or having should retain their right to sit in judgment upon peers arraigned on a capital charge, for the trial of the five Popish lords was expected, and the strength of the spiritual peers was a matter of grave consideration to those who hoped for an adverse verdict. Many were the indecencies, records Burnet, that arose on this occasion both in town and in country. Shaftesbury was expecting an easy triumph. Suddenly all came to an end. The king had information that the common council of the city was about to offer public assistance to the Commons in their efforts for the preservation of the Protestant faith, and that an inflammatory remonstrance on the subject of the Plot lay ready for presentation in the House. His mind was made up. With the cheerfulness characteristic of him he seemed to be thinking of nothing, when on May 26 he summoned the Commons to his presence and without warning declared a prorogation of three months. Eight weeks later Charles dissolved the Little Parliament of Westminster against the advice of almost the whole of his council. The blow fell with crushing effect upon the Whig party. Shaftesbury swore openly that he would have the heads of those who had counselled it.[341] Yet this uproarious session produced one good thing. Before proroguing Parliament the king gave his assent to the Habeas Corpus Act, its solitary record on the statute book. How near that sheet was to being blank may be told by the fact that this measure, of weighty importance in the history of England, only passed its third reading in the House of Lords because the Whig teller in joke counted one very fat lord as ten.[342]
Neither Parliament nor the privy council as a whole can properly be said at this time to have been the government of the country. Under the old system the council was a large and chiefly honorary body, the business of which was regularly transacted by a few of its members. By Sir William Temple’s construction it became a miniature of the House of Commons as in the days when the government could count upon about half the votes with an occasional majority. Though those who carried on affairs might be privy councillors, there were also many councillors who made it their chief business to prevent them from doing so. The parliament of 1679 was still less to be classed with the government than its predecessor. Here the Commons hardly disguised an overmastering wish to obstruct the administration by others until it fell wholly into their own hands, and to force on the government a policy framed in the country and strongly disapproved at court. The humour of the Commons seemed to infect the Lords also. The alarm and activity of the upper house throughout the panic of the Plot almost equalled those of the Commons; and it was by great exertion alone that the court could carry the day even when the gravest interests were at stake. The English state presented at the moment a striking appearance. Since the beginning of the modern world government in England has been with scant exception by consent, not only in the sense that in every case force is ultimately on the side of the governed, but by virtue of the fact that the English government has had nothing on which to rely but the consent of the nation. Two famous examples had already shown how hard of execution other methods must be. Mutual agreement between parts of the frame was necessary to its usefulness. But now it seemed as if this was no more. Variance had sprung up and silently grown until it became direct opposition. Government and governed were divided by an openly contrary spirit. It was a question how far Charles’ government could allow the division to widen without being engulfed in it. On the one side were ranged the forcible and callous statesmen who had organised the country party in the old Cavalier Parliament and transformed its soul to Whiggism; the country gentlemen, formerly staunchest adherents of the government, the class from whom now its keen opponents were drawn; religious dissenters; high-principled republicans; malcontents of every kind; the squirearchy, the magistracy, the Church of England.[343] On the other there met this formidable array a mere handful of men, dependents of the court or trained officials zealous to perform their duty and to uphold the traditions of English politics. The government was formed of the king and his servants, chief among them the secretaries of state. Apart from these support for the king’s policy was meagre indeed.
The work which fell on the secretaries’ shoulders was immense. Throughout the winter which followed Oates’ revelations a perpetual stream of reports, warnings, informations poured into their offices. From all quarters came disturbing news. Alarms of armed men exercising in bands at night were constant. Spanish forces were said to have landed in Ireland and the French in Scotland. Tynemouth Castle was reported blown up by gunpowder. Five thousand Spaniards were in Wales. A combined French and Spanish fleet was only prevented by a storm from landing at Milford Haven. The king’s ships at Chatham and elsewhere were to be burnt and thus facilitate the passage of troops from Dunkirk, while Hull and other seaports were ready to receive the invaders. Gentlemen rode up from Yorkshire with wild tales of “the crack and noise” in those parts, and in the West Riding the militia was called out against imaginary foes. Vast fears came from Cheshire of strange persons and a private post, denoting no good intentions. An English doctor wrote from Amsterdam telling how he had overheard conspirators planning the king’s destruction for the month of April, and had barely escaped being murdered for his indiscretion.[344] All this and a vast mass of the same description demanded instant attention, decision, and answer. Frivolous accusations against reputed papists and plotters were innumerable. A well-wisher sent from Vienna as a present to the king an antidote of astonishing excellence against possible poisons. A still more ingenious correspondent forwarded a scheme to turn the tables on the pope by “assaulting the city of Rome on that side where the Vatican palace stands and bringing away the library.”[345] In Ireland, where the Duke of Ormonde’s sober government preserved admirable order, long reports were drawn up for the instruction of the secretaries at Whitehall, and these too had to be perused.[346] London alone, apart from the turmoil caused by Godfrey’s death, provided heavy work. Order had to be taken for safeguarding the palace; twenty doors leading into St. James’ Park were blocked and a sewer grated. Protestants and Catholics posted mutual accusations to Whitehall until the secretaries were at their wits’ end how to deal with them. On the prorogation of Parliament in May, bills were distributed urging the prentices to take arms and demand the trial of the lords in the Tower. The guards at the palace were doubled, strong watches posted, and every precaution taken. A few weeks before it had been thought necessary to send two companies of dragoons to Portsmouth,[347] The whole country seemed on the verge of insurrection. In December Charles thought he saw signs of a rebellion brewing. A few months later Danby drew up a memorandum in the Tower which clearly shewed that he was of the same opinion. He suggested that the king should take up his residence out of London and call Parliament to meet him away from the capital, the stronghold of his opponents’ power. Touch should be kept with the troops disbanded. All who had served against the king in the Civil War could be forced to register their names. The navy might be officered by men who would have influence on the sailors. Lastly and most significant, the Tower should be secured.[348]
Such and so multifarious were the doings of members of the government. Yet they were members only. The head was the king’s, the policy his, and to him its ultimate failure or success must be ascribed.
CHAPTER II
THE CATHOLICS
Of the five hundred Cavalier gentlemen who fell in the Civil War more than one-third were Catholics,[349] The remnant of the class that had once been the most dignified and the wealthiest in England was thrown by the Popish Plot into the fiercest persecution known to its history. For the first time a real attempt was made to put the penal laws into full force. All over the country the prisons were filled, houses of Roman Catholics searched for arms, their estates confiscated. Fourteen men were executed for high treason in the Plot, three for Godfrey’s murder. Eight Catholic priests suffered on account of their orders under the statute of Queen Elizabeth which made it treason for a subject to take orders from the Church of Rome and, returning to England, to remain there upwards of forty days. Five died in prison. Thirty more were condemned to death, but were reprieved, and of these sixteen died in confinement.[350] The actual figures are enough, but they do not complete the tale of suffering. Nothing is told by them of the persecution less than to death, the harrying of men and women for conscience’ sake, the cruel blight fallen on the lives of hundreds because of the crimes and follies of intriguers who turned religion to be an affair of politics. The odour of mystery and the fear of foreign assault which Catholic designs had for years aggravated had worked in the minds of Englishmen with so strong a ferment that, were there much or little of truth in the Plot, it needed only an opportunity for hardly concealed terror and hatred finally to burst restraint.[351] On all sides the lot of Catholics was pitiable. Those in London who were not imprisoned were banished from the capital. As many as thirty thousand were said to have fled. In the country fresh persecution awaited them. Justices of the peace had orders to execute strictly the laws against recusants, the Lord Chancellor to weed the commission of those who did not. Popish books and relics were diligently sought out, seized, and burnt. The library, papers, and vestments of Father Harcourt, rector of the Jesuit College in London, went to make a public bonfire. Wild House, the residence of the Weld family near the Strand, and a noted resort of Roman Catholics, was ransacked and twenty-seven chests of goods haled from a grotto in the garden. Houses of eminent Catholics all over the kingdom were searched and searched again, and sometimes almost destroyed by the efforts of officers to find hidden priests. Catholic merchants found themselves bankrupt. Everywhere Catholics were driven from home and livelihood, reduced to beggary. Only the Penderels, Huddlestone the priest, and others who had helped the king in his flight from Worcester escaped the general fate. Charles’ gratitude procured for them exemption from the action of the laws.[352] For the rest only good fortune could mitigate the horrors of that time. Those in prison had nothing on which to subsist but the charity of friends. Seized at inns, in secret retreats, on beds of sickness, they were hurried through rain or snow to dreadful cells without money or a sufficient supply of clothes. The Duke and Duchess of York, Lord Castlemaine, and other noble Catholics made great efforts for their fellows in religion. Yet to relieve the vast mass of suffering no private aid could suffice. Many were reduced to the greatest distress. Some even died of want. Priests, hunted from one to another more painful hiding-place, were put to every shift to evade capture. For days they lay, cramped and hungry, in holes within walls, behind chimneys, even fastened up beneath tables, while their pursuers tore up the floors, broke down the walls, dug up the garden walks within a few yards of them. When they ventured forth to escape, it was in the depth of winter, through ice and mud, and in the teeth of midnight storms. Nor were the pious alone objects of attack. The most irreligious of their religion were not spared. Long-stored enmity and an insatiable desire for novelty caught at victims of whatever character. The Duchesse Mazarin, who lived only for play and her light loves, was accused of being a party to the Plot. Where the end would come no man could say. All the Catholics in the service of the royal family who could took ship for the continent. The Duchess of York wrote to her brother that she could not describe the hundredth part of the trouble into which they were plunged. Many abjured their faith or at least took the condemned oaths of allegiance and supremacy. Pilate and Herod, wrote the Jesuit Warner to his general, were banded with the heretic priests against his society and the Catholics. A few weeks later he added: “Hope itself is scarce left us.”[353]
In no part of the country was persecution more bitter than in Yorkshire. Even before the time of the Popish Plot Catholics in the country had been subjected to considerable annoyance, and when “the great crack and noise” of the event burst on the astonished ears of the world they became at once the object of vehement attack. Inquisition was made in all parts for priests and recusants. The cells of York Castle, of which the condition was notorious in an age of notorious prisons, were filled. To priests and their relatives particular attention was paid. Soon two scoundrels, by name Mowbray and Bolron, came forward to give evidence of the preparations of papists to aid in the grand design discovered by Oates. Bolron had been manager of coal-pits on the estate of Sir Thomas Gascoigne, an aged baronet and representative of the ancient family of Barnbow Hall in the West Riding, and, being suspected of fraud, was threatened with a prosecution for felony by Lady Tempest, the baronet’s daughter. Mowbray was a servant in the same family discharged on suspicion of theft. Thus the two had every reason to plot revenge. Bolron swore that Sir Thomas, together with his daughter, Sir Miles Stapleton, several other gentlemen, and his nephew, a priest named Thwing, had signed a resolution to kill the king and had offered a thousand pounds to whoever should do the deed. Mowbray added that they had intended to burn London and York to the ground. The Yorkshire magistrates refused to act on the information of known criminals, but Bolron went to town and found in Shaftesbury an inquisitor who would not consent to see the matter dropped.[354] Sir Thomas was tried at Westminster, but acquitted by a jury of Yorkshire gentlemen. Sir Miles Stapleton and Lady Tempest stood their trial at York. They also were acquitted, but upon the same discreditable evidence Thwing was convicted and on October 23, 1680 suffered the penalty for high treason. In spite of the fact that three juries had disbelieved his word Bolron was able by permission of the House of Commons to produce an ingenious forgery, entitled “The Papists’ Bloody Oath of Secrecy and Litany of Intercession,” which after repeated exposure and the lapse of more than two centuries is still sometimes taken for true by his more gullible, if less malignant, successors. For the moment the acquittal of Gascoigne and his friends stayed the flow of blood, but the Yorkshire Protestants shewed effectively by their conduct at the Revolution that their feelings remained unchanged.[355]