Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon — Volume 02

by Sir Henry Craik

To follow their fate, we may anticipate a little the sequence of events. The trial ultimately took place in June, 1662. Vane took what may have been the courageous, but was certainly not the prudent, course of defending his own action, and defying the Court. He was protected, so he argued, by the Statute of Henry VII., which gave exemption from a charge of treason to those who had served a King de facto, even against a King de jure. It was clear that no such plea was valid in the case of one who, by compassing the death of a King, had aided in establishing a Commonwealth. Vane was convicted, and met his fate with marvellous courage on June 14th, 1662.

Vane was a strange compound of incongruous qualities—at once enthusiast and philosopher, statesman and intriguer, a model of chivalrous courage, and a profound dissembler. We cannot compass his character by adopting the wayward estimate given of him by Anthony a Wood, who tells us that his common nickname was Sir Humorous Vanity, and who dismisses him as "a hotchpotch of religion," "an inventor of whimseys in religion, and crotchets in the State." Just as little can we trust to Milton's lavish praise:

"Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old
Than whom a better senator ne'er held
The helm of Rome."

Perhaps the soundest judgment, albeit an unsympathetic one, is that of Hyde: [Footnote: Rebellion, vii. 267.] "He was, indeed, a man of extraordinary parts; a pleasant wit, a great understanding, which pierced into and discerned the purpose of other men with wonderful sagacity, while he had himself vultum clausum…. If he were not superior to Mr. Hampden, he was inferior to no other man in all mysterious artifices."

Lambert showed no such bold front to his judges. In his case imprisonment was substituted for death, and he was kept in honourable and easy confinement in Guernsey. In a subsequent letter, he expressed his gratitude to Clarendon for his good offices in procuring this degree of mercy. [Footnote: Bodleian MSS. Printed by Lister, vol. iii. p. 310.]

But the question of settling the measure of indemnity to be granted was only the first of many difficulties that craved wary walking on the part of Hyde. Other weighty problems faced him. The most urgent of these was the settlement of the Revenue, in regard to which Hyde had again to mediate between two extremes. There were, doubtless, some who wished that the complete supremacy of Parliament should be secured by making the Crown depend entirely upon casual and arbitrary Parliamentary grants. In Hyde's view this was inconsistent with the dignity of the Crown, was certain to lead to friction, and would inevitably make Parliament the sole sovereign power in the State. But just as little did he wish to fix a Revenue which would have made the Crown entirely independent of Parliament, and would have dispelled the scheme of a limited monarchy. However little it might be to the taste of Charles and the crowd of grasping courtiers, Hyde determined that, for all extraordinary expenses, the King should be obliged to have recourse to the generosity of Parliament, and that the ordinary expenditure should be kept within reasonable limits. If we are to believe the account given to Pepys by Sir William Coventry, [Footnote: See Pepys, Diary, March 20, 1669.] the Lord Treasurer, Lord Southampton, would gladly have postponed the Indemnity Bill until an ample revenue had been settled upon the King, so as to secure his independence. According to Burnet, [Footnote: Hist. of His own Time, i. 286.] Hyde could readily have obtained the consent of Parliament to a revenue of £2,000,000, and deliberately refrained from doing so.

A much more moderate, and, as it turned out, an inadequately secured, revenue was fixed. Inquiries were instituted, which showed that the revenue in the years immediately preceding the Civil War had been rather less than £900,000, and that the expenditure had been £1,100,000. The necessary expenses had, since then, materially increased, and could not now be placed at less than £1,200,000. Towards this, the existing sources of revenue, with the deduction of the Feudal dues and wardships, which it was proposed to abolish, would not contribute more than one-half, or £600,000. The remaining half was to be supplied from Excise—a new device, as we have seen, contrived by Parliament during the Civil War, and destined, as Hyde foresaw, to become a permanency. But, as a fact, the assigned resources did not reach this amount of £1,200,000. Further, it had to be taken into account that, when existing debts were added to the necessary cost of disbanding the army, a burden of debt, amounting to about two millions and a half, would have to be met. It must be kept in mind also that there was no clear distinction between the Civil List, or the personal expenses of the King's household, and the General Revenue. All these circumstances, combined with the lavish extravagance of the Court, soon led to financial deficits, and to hopeless confusion of accounts. Such a condition of matters was certain to swell all other causes of discontent. To meet them, an economy of administration, which Hyde vainly hoped for and strove to bring about, was the only possible expedient, assuming that the King were not to be made financially independent. Possibly it would not have been beyond Hyde's power to adopt the latter course; and that he had failed to provide the easy resource of a lavish revenue was one of the causes that contributed to his subsequent unpopularity at Court. He soon found that under such a master, and in such a Court, economy of administration was a hopeless ideal. He irritated the crowd of selfish and grasping sycophants, and yet he failed to lay a secure foundation of sound financial administration. The difficulties of the situation rendered that an impossible task. The financial settlement, such as it was, was not reached till December, after a short adjournment in September and October. Meanwhile, another, and equally threatening, problem had to be faced, and it was faced with promptitude and success. The Restoration found a force of 60,000 trained and seasoned men under arms. Had the Chief Minister of Charles felt it consistent with his duty to conciliate that force and keep it embodied, the hopes of constitutional monarchy would have been vain. The cost would have been heavy, but it would have been itself the best security against resistance. It would, doubtless, have rallied to its paymaster, and would have been an effectual check upon the growing power of Parliament. But such a course would have been absolutely contradictory to Hyde's deepest convictions of constitutional rectitude, and it would have been in deadly opposition to all the traditions of the nation—traditions which were tenaciously held even after the institution of a standing army had become a necessity of the European position of this country, and after the necessary absorption of that army in the stirring tasks imposed upon it abroad had made its use as an instrument of tyrannical power impossible. Hyde saw that his ideal of Government demanded that the army should be disbanded, and that promptly. He did not conceal from himself the danger that the disbanding involved. It was soon apparent that the political leanings which had been submerged in the rest of the nation survived in threatening force amongst the ranks of the army. There were many in the ranks who disliked monarchy in any shape, and Monk, who had been their all-powerful leader so long as his designs were uncertain, was now the object of their sullen hatred, and his life was threatened by designs of assassination cherished amongst his old soldiery. The army, it was evident, must be master of the nation, or it must cease to exist. Hyde dealt skilfully with the problem in his speech to Parliament on the eve of the adjournment on September 13th. The King, he said, did not resent the common belief that he would not disband the army.

"It was a sober and a rational jealousy." "No other prince in Europe would be willing to disband such an army—an army to which victory is entailed, and which, humanly speaking, could hardly fail of victory, wheresoever he should lead it. And if God had not restored his Majesty to that felicity as to be without apprehension of danger at home or from abroad, and without any ambition of taking from his neighbours what they are possessed of, himself would never disband this army—an army whose order and discipline, whose sobriety and manners, whose courage and success, have made it famous and terrible all over the world."

The words were admirably framed to conciliate the army, to indicate the danger, and to show clearly the moderate policy of the Crown. No financial straits were allowed to prevent the prompt disbandment, which was carried out with singular success. Before November more than half of that army was peaceably paid off; and a few months more saw the end of almost the whole force. The disturbances which soon after arose led to the retention of Monk's Coldstream Guards, a regiment of Horse Guards, and another regiment from Dunkirk. These formed the King's guards, deemed essential for the security of the King's person; and they were the nucleus of the future standing army. During Hyde's later administration they never exceeded 5000 men. The magic of discipline and cohesion gone, Cromwell's Ironsides ceased to be an effective instrument of war. But, spread throughout the villages of England, they powerfully leavened the national character, and prevented the effacement of a type which the strain of Civil War and the white-heat of religious enthusiasm had served to create. The threatenings of a sullen temper on the part of the army, who found their occupation gone, were happily averted. But Hyde recognized that a deeper danger lay behind, in the still more sullen and dangerous temper of many amongst the Royalist party. They represented every type. There were the old Cavaliers, who had fought in the earlier years of the war, had seen their dearest and best fall in the King's service, and had permanently crippled, or entirely lost, their estates for the Royalist cause. Twenty years of poverty and hardship, if it had not slackened their loyalty, had taught them caution. They knew by experience the hopelessness of plots, and had recognized that the Royalist cause must look, not to forlorn hopes, but to a slowly ripening change of national feeling. In the dark days they had distrusted the feverish energy of younger men, whose record of loyalty was short, and who had sought to retrieve the lateness of their adherence to the Royalist cause by its restless zeal. Amongst these last, there were, indeed, many whose services could not be disparaged, such as young Lord Mordaunt, who had repeatedly risked his life in passing between England and the quarters of the exiled Court. But it was no selfish motive that prompted caution to men like Ormonde, Hertford, and Southampton. Ormonde himself, as we have seen, had ventured to visit London secretly under Cromwell's rule, in order to keep alive the zeal of the Royalist party. Hertford and Southampton had refused all overtures from the Protector, and their loyalty was beyond cavil. But much as they had suffered and were ready to suffer again, they dreaded, with good reason, the recklessness of the more militant section, and knew the risks that it involved. Repeatedly they had urged the King "to sit still, and expect a reasonable revolution, without making any unadvised attempt;" and their policy had been consistently maintained by Hyde. Hyde's own position and his influence with the King was, as we have seen, suspected by the more daring spirits. The Royalist party, amidst all its depression, had been injured by inherent defects and crippled by its own inappeasable dissensions. Many of the older Royalists were dead, and those who had taken their place had no experience in public affairs, were unknown to one another, and were suspicious of those whose views in any way differed from their own. The most trustworthy were cautious, and, before they declared their adherence to any scheme, had made it a condition that their designs should be imparted only to Ormonde and Hyde. But negotiations could not be confined to them, without discouraging those whose zeal was undoubted. The network of suspicion increased and left permanent marks.

All these various and mutually suspicious groups in the Royalist party had, now that the cause had triumphed, to be satisfied in some way or other, and their deserts had to receive such recognition as would leave only a minimum of rankling discontent. The first question that had to be settled was the restitution of property. How far was it possible, consistently with the claims of justice and the paramount supremacy of law?