25. Clarendon and the House of Commons. 1667.—The events of the last months of the war had produced important effects upon the temper of Parliament. Long before the Dutch appeared in the Medway, the House of Commons had demanded an inquiry into the expenditure of the money granted to the Crown, suspecting that much of the supply distinctly intended for purposes of war had been diverted to pay for the amusements of the Court. This demand, which opened a new chapter in the history of the financial struggle between the House of Commons and the Crown, brought the Commons into collision with Clarendon. It had been settled by the Long Parliament that the king was to levy no taxes without a grant from Parliament. The Cavalier Parliament, Royalist as it was, was beginning to ask that the king should not spend the proceeds of taxes without the approbation of Parliament. When once this had been secured, Parliament would indubitably become supreme. Against this attempt to obtain the mastery Clarendon struggled. He was a good lawyer and an excellent man of business, but he was not a statesman of genius. He wanted each part of the government to act in harmony with the others; but he could never understand the meaning of the saying that if two men ride on horseback, one must ride in front. He wanted the king and Parliament both to ride in front, both—that is to say—to have their own way in certain directions. His notion of a king was that of one prudently doing his best for his people, always ruling according to law, and irresponsible in everything, even in the expenditure of money. A wasteful, riotous Charles II. was a phenomenon for the control of which his constitutional formulas were not prepared.

26. The Fall of Clarendon. 1667.—Though Clarendon was unable to concur in any diminution of the power of the Crown, his eyes were widely open to the profligacy of Charles's life. Again and again he had remonstrated with him, and had refused to pass under the great seal grants in favour of Lady Castlemaine, to whom, amongst his many mistresses, Charles was at this time most completely subjugated. As might have been expected, this abandoned woman irritated her paramour against his upright Chancellor, telling him that he was no king as long as he was ruled by Clarendon. As Parliament continued its attacks, Charles, on August 30, dismissed Clarendon from office. On October 10, the fallen minister was impeached by the House of Commons, on charges the greater part of which were ridiculously untrue. He tried to rouse Charles to support him, reminding him that, after Charles I. allowed Strafford to die, the king's own head had fallen on the scaffold. Charles II., an easy-going but clever politician, probably thought that he could always escape his father's fate by refraining from imitating his father's stiffness. He gave Clarendon a strong hint to withdraw, and on November 29 the minister who had done more than any other man to establish the restored monarchy, fled to France, never to return alive.

27. Scotland and Ireland. 1660.—At the Restoration, the close connection established by Cromwell between England and Scotland was necessarily broken up. Scotland hated English control even when it came in the guise of a union of Parliaments, and the old relation of separate states united only by the Crown was at once resumed. Argyle and his principal followers were executed as traitors. The main profit of the restoration in Scotland, however, fell to the nobility. The clergy was discredited by its divisions, and the noblemen, whose fathers had supported Presbyterianism against Charles I., now supported Charles II. against Presbyterianism. Once more, as in the days of James I., the clergy were muzzled by the restoration of episcopacy and the assertion of the authority of the Crown. In Ireland the main question was how to satisfy alike the recent English immigrants who had received lands from Cromwell and the Irish proprietors who had been deprived of their lands in favour of the intruders. In 1661, at the king's desire, an Act of Settlement was passed, making, in elaborate detail, an attempt to satisfy as many as possible of both parties; but as men of English descent and Protestant religion filled the Irish House of Commons, the English settlers contrived to maintain, by constitutional authority, much of what they had taken with the strong hand. According to the best evidence now procurable, whereas before 1641 about two-thirds of Irish lands fit for cultivation had been in the hands of Catholics, before the end of the reign of Charles II. two-thirds were in the hands of Protestants.

CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHARLES II. AND THE CABAL. 1667-1674

LEADING DATES
Reign of Charles II., 1660-1685