General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

PERSECUTION OF THE COVENANTERS.—In Scotland the attempt to suppress conventicles and introduce Episcopacy was stubbornly resisted by the Covenanters, who insisted on their right to worship God in their own way. They were therefore subjected to most cruel and unrelenting persecution. They were hunted by English troopers over their native moors and among the wild recesses of their mountains, whither they secretly retired for prayer and worship. The tales of the suffering of the Scotch Covenanters at the hands of the English Protestants form a most harrowing chapter of the records of the ages of religious persecution.

THE FIRE, THE PLAGUE, AND THE DUTCH WAR.—The years from 1664 to 1667 were crowded with calamities,—with war, plague, and fire. The poet Dryden not inaptly calls the year 1666, in which the Great Fire at London added its horrors to those of pestilence and war, the Annus Mirabilis, or "Year of Wonders."

The war alluded to was a struggle between the English and the Dutch, which grew out of commercial rivalries (1664-1667). Just before the war began, the English treacherously seized the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam in America, and changed its name to New York in honor of the king's brother, the Duke of York.

Early in the summer of 1665 the city of London was swept by a woeful plague, the most terrible visitation the city had known since the Black Death in the Middle Ages (see p. 485). Within six months 100,000 of the population perished.

The plague was followed, the next year, by the great fire, which destroyed 13,000 houses, and a vast number of churches and public buildings. The fire was afterwards acknowledged to be, like the Great Fire at Rome in Nero's reign, a blessing in disguise. The burnt districts were rebuilt in a more substantial way, with broader streets and more airy residences, so that London became a more beautiful and healthful city than would have been possible without the fire.

CHARLES'S INTRIGUES WITH LOUIS XIV.—Charles inclined to the Catholic worship, and wished to reestablish the Roman Catholic Church, because he thought it more favorable than the Anglican to such a scheme of government as he aimed to set up in England. In the year 1670 he made a secret treaty with the French king, the terms and objects of which were most scandalous. In return for aid which he was to render Louis in an attack upon Holland, he was to receive from him a large sum of money; and in case his proposed declaration in favor of the restoration of the Catholic Church produced any trouble in the island, the aid of French troops. The scheme was never consummated; but these clandestine negotiations, however, becoming an open secret, made the people very uneasy and suspicious. This state of the public mind led to a serious delusion and panic.

THE "POPISH PLOT" (1678).—A rumor was started that the Catholics had planned for England a St. Bartholomew massacre. The king, the members of Parliament, and all Protestants were to be massacred, the Catholic Church was to be reestablished, and the king's brother James, the Duke of York, a zealous Catholic, was to be placed on the throne. Each day the reports of the conspiracy grew more exaggerated and wild. Informers sprang up on every hand, each with a more terrifying story than the preceding. One of these witnesses, Titus Oates by name, a most infamous person, gained an extraordinary notoriety in exposing the imaginary plot. Many Catholics, convicted solely on the testimony of perjured witnesses, became victims of the delusion and fraud.

The excitement produced by the supposed plot led Parliament to pass what was called the Test Act, which excluded Catholics from the House of Lords. (They had already been shut out from the House of Commons by the oath of Supremacy, which was required of commoners, though not of peers.) The disability created by this statute was not removed from them until the present century,—in the reign of George the Fourth.

ORIGIN OF THE WHIG AND TORY PARTIES.—Besides shutting Catholic peers out of Parliament, there were many in both houses who were determined to exclude the Duke of York from the throne. Those in favor of the measure of exclusion were called Whigs, those who opposed it Tories. [Footnote: For the meaning of the names Whig and Tory, see Glossary.] We cannot, perhaps, form a better general idea of the maxims and principles of these two parties than by calling the Whigs the political descendants of the Roundheads, and the Tories of the Cavaliers. Later, they became known respectively as Liberals and Conservatives.

THE KING'S DEATH.—After a reign of just a quarter of a century, Charles died in 1685, and was followed by his brother James, whose rule was destined to be short and troubled.