Ordinary dress of gentlemen in 1675: from Loggan's Oxonia Illustrata.
3. The Non-Resistance Bill. 1675.—When Parliament met in April 1675, Danby produced a Bill which was intended to secure his hold on the House of Commons, whatever might be the opinion prevailing in the country. No one was to be allowed to hold office or to sit in Parliament unless he would swear that he believed resistance to the Crown to be in all cases illegal, and that he would never endeavour to alter the government in Church or State. If the Bill had passed, the future liberty of Parliament would have been fettered, and few, if any, who did not approve of the existing Church system could have entered Parliament. The Bill passed the Lords, but while it was still under discussion in the Commons Shaftesbury stirred up so bitter a quarrel between the Houses, that Charles prorogued Parliament before the Bill could be converted into law.
4. Charles a Pensionary of France. 1675-1676.—Parliament, in its distrust of the king, refused him supplies, upon which Charles prorogued it for fifteen months. Louis, who feared lest Parliament should drive Charles into joining the alliance against him, was so pleased to see its sittings interrupted for so long a time that he granted to Charles a pension of 100,000l. a year, to make him independent of his subjects. The result was that whilst Charles allowed Danby to have his own way in domestic affairs, he refused to allow him to detach England from the French alliance. It was not, however, merely his personal interests which drew him to Louis, as he took a real interest in the prosperity of English trade, and was unable to get over his jealousy of the Dutch. In November 1676, he obtained from Louis a treaty by which the French renounced a claim made by them to seize Dutch goods conveyed in English ships, hoping by this to gain the goodwill of Parliament at its next meeting. He could not understand how completely the alarm of his subjects lest their national religion and independence should be assailed by the French had made them forgetful of their commercial jealousy of the Dutch.
Cup presented, 1676, by King Charles II. to the Barber Surgeons' Company.
5. Two Foreign Policies. 1677.—On February 15, 1677, Parliament again met. Shaftesbury and his allies attempted to steal a march on Danby by producing two old statutes of Edward III. which directed that Parliaments should be held every year, founding on it an argument that the existing Parliament, not having met for a year, had legally ceased to exist. The House of Lords sent Shaftesbury and three other peers to the Tower for their pains, and the Commons contemptuously rejected a similar argument put forward in their own House. Danby found himself triumphant. The Commons granted 600,000l. for increasing the navy. Danby then carried a Bill through the House of Lords for securing the Protestant religion in the event of a Catholic—James being, of course, intended—coming to the throne, though the Bill did not pass the Commons, apparently from a feeling that its provisions were insufficient. The eyes of Englishmen were, however, principally fixed on the Continent. In the preceding year the French had gained two great naval victories, in one of which De Ruyter had been slain, and in the spring of 1677 Louis carried one place after another in the Spanish Netherlands. Both Houses now asked Charles to join the alliance against France, whereupon Charles indignantly prorogued Parliament. When he was urged by the Dutch ambassador to act upon the wishes of the Houses he threw his handkerchief into the air, with the accompanying words: "I care just that for Parliament."