He married, therefore, a second time, “loving, doubtless, wisely and not too well;” but neither the name, condition, nor fortune of his second wife is mentioned by his biographers.
From this time Edmund Waller’s career was despicable. In his heart a Royalist, he absented himself from the House of Commons whenever there was a chance of his being of service to the King, or of his committing himself. Yet he sent Charles a thousand gold pieces when the Royal standard at Nottingham was set up--and concocted, with a conspirator named Tomkyns, a plot for delivering the City and the Parliament into the hands of the Royalists. Nevertheless, he had been seconding “my Uncle Hampden” in the House, in his censure of Ship-money. When his plot--still called in history Waller’s plot, for he had the chief blame--when this base conspiracy, unworthy of any cause, was discovered, Waller confessed everything, and criminated everybody. Confounded with fear, he had yet the consummate hypocrisy to talk of his “remorse of conscience,” adding one to the long list of crimes which that abused word is called to sanction or excuse. It is a satisfaction to know that he was nearly being hanged--that he was expelled the House--fined ten thousand pounds--and then “contemptuously suffered to go into exile.” Never was that party more fortunate than in getting rid of such a man.
He took refuge at Rouen, and lived there and in Paris until all his wife’s jewels were sold--for on them he lived. He was, however, at last allowed to return home, and again he sullied Beaconsfield with his presence. He hastened to flatter Cromwell, and even to propose, in his smooth and flattering verses, the substitution of a crown of gold for bays:--
“His conquering head has no more room for bays,
Then let it be as the glad nation prays;
Let the rich ore be melted down,
And the State fix’d by making him a crown:
With ermine clad and purple, let him hold
A royal sceptre made of Spanish gold!”
Cromwell, however, was far too wise to take the bait. The sycophant thought it expedient to write an ode on his death--for he was not certain that the great man’s power might not be perpetuated by his son. The instant, however, that the Restoration placed Charles II. on the throne, Waller was ready with his congratulatory ode. He dwelt on the guilt of the Rebellion; and, except that the flavour of spicy flattery was so poor as to provoke a bon mot from Charles II. he might have succeeded. “Poets,” said the witty monarch, “succeed better in fiction than in truth.” But with Waller it was all fiction.