It was only after this second letter that the Lord Lieutenant's explanation arrived. The notification had its source, so it appeared, from Lord Orrery himself, who had urged upon Ormonde that a portion of the royal grant should be assigned to Hyde. The suggestion commended itself both to Ormonde and the King, and by the special instruction of the King, who knew Hyde's scruples and was resolved to overcome them, the royal signature was given through Hyde's good friend, Secretary Nicholas, and all knowledge of the matter was carefully kept from the intended recipient. Nicholas had now to account for it to Hyde, and he could only plead the strong injunction of secrecy that had been laid upon him by the King. The plot was an instance, it may be, of mistaken and ill-judged kindness; but not the strictest political purist of the day could have arraigned the grant, and it would have been churlish for an old and impoverished servant to have refused so gracious a favour from the King, few of whose lavish grants had so much justification as this. It was granted with delicacy, and was accepted with gratitude, as cementing that bond of loyal affection which long years of faithful service had created.
At this juncture, as it happened, Bulstrode Whitelocke and Lord Lovelace [Footnote: John, Lord Lovelace (1616-1670) was an ardent Royalist, and one of those Peers who signed the Declaration at Oxford on behalf of the King in 1642. Clarendon (Hist. of Rebellion, vii. 174) speaks of him as one "of whose good affections to his service the King had always assurance.">[ were involved in a dispute about some land in Wiltshire which Whitelocke had bought when his own former party was in the ascendant, and when Lovelace was hard pressed for money. The balance had now shifted, and Lovelace, as the price of giving confirmation to Whitelocke's title, was pressing for a sum more adequate to the value than that paid in Whitelocke's day of triumph, when the dominant purchaser could coerce the unwilling seller. It was expedient to end a dispute between two men who were now both in the interest of the King, and Hyde thought that the most convenient way of doing so was that he should become the purchaser of the land, which adjoined his own property in Wiltshire. Relying on the Irish windfall, he consented to do so, and thus became bound for a sum largely in excess of anything he received. Instead of a double payment of £12,600, he never received more than £6000 of the first instalment. Orrery's promises were more lavish than his performances; and the only result of Charles's kindly thought was to involve Hyde in a heavy debt and to give food for baseless suspicions of his venality. Personally, therefore, he had good ground to fear the gifts that came from Ireland. That country remained an unhappy battle-ground of racial and religious feud; its settlement had galled him by its many features of injustice; he saw its resources crippled by lavish grants to a host of unworthy recipients which he was powerless to prevent, and it had robbed him of that support which he might have had from his most faithful friend, the Duke of Ormonde. It is no wonder that he turns in disgust from the review of Irish affairs which had in it so little that could satisfy his conscience or his sense of political wisdom.
CHAPTER XIX
MARRIAGE TREATY AND RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENT
The two preceding chapters have anticipated the strict order of time in regard to Scotland and Ireland, where Clarendon's action was only incidental to his position as English Minister. We have now to turn back to the months that intervened between December, 1660, when the Convention Parliament was dissolved, and May, 1661, when the more legally constituted Parliament met for the first time. In the interval some events had occurred which stimulated the flow of the Royalist tide in the nation, and helped to imbue the general loyalty with something of arrogant intolerance; but other incidents had weakened the position by giving new stimulus to Court intrigues, and by quickening the animosity of rival factions. Clarendon found the tide occasionally too strong to control, and his difficulties encouraged those who were jealous of his power.
In January, London had been startled by the outbreak of a fanatical insurrection, which gives sufficient proof of the strangely hysterical state into which the nation had been driven by a series of bewilderingly rapid transformations, political and religious. It was the natural result of the sudden suppression of the strange freaks of religious fancy which were symptomatic of the age, and alike in its origin and in its consequences, it showed how prone public opinion was to perturbation. Its leader, one Venner, a vintner of good credit in the City, evidently believed himself inspired by Divine revelation. His motto was "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and he called on all "to take arms to assist the Lord Jesus Christ." The outbreak was nothing but a frenzied burst of religious mania; but its effect showed how dangerous was the state of the nation of which this was a symptom. All London was thrown into wild alarm. Only those of strong nerves could make a stand against what was, with ludicrous exaggeration, represented to be a popular movement on a vast scale. The Lord Mayor won mighty renown for having the courage to summon a great body of adherents, and advance personally against the rioters, who were said to be murdering all whom they met. Wild rumours flew from the City to Whitehall; the guards were called out; Whitehall was put in a state of defence; and poor Pepys, whose combats were generally confined to the chastisement of page-boys and kitchen-wenches, found himself—"with no courage at all, but that I might not seem to be afraid"—obliged to carry with him sword and pistol, and make his way to the Exchange, to learn the extent of the rising, which was scarcely so terrible as had been reported. Pepys returned safely to his home, and that no worse result arose from his unwonted and warlike venturesomeness was no doubt due to the fact that he had been wise enough to put no powder in his pistols.
After all the alarm, the Lord Mayor found only thirty men to oppose the loyal bands whom he had summoned to his aid. But these thirty fought valiantly and desperately enough, and every man of them was either slain, or captured and reserved for speedy punishment. The little knot of fiery zealots did their best to make up in their fanatical enthusiasm what they lacked in numbers, and that the rising shook the confidence of the Government and quickened the pulse of timid loyalty throughout the country, only showed how sensitive were the nerves of the sorely galled nation. None knew better than Hyde that there was much amiss in the temper of the people, and that quiet and settlement were essential to soothe this epidemic hysteria. Meantime—so intense had been the alarm—the disbanding of the King's Guards was countermanded, and Monk's regiment of Coldstreams was retained. It is curious to reflect that the occasion for the formation of the nucleus of the British standing army was the brief outbreak of a handful of frenzied men, stirred to momentary madness by a religious fanatic, and ready to go to death for the avenging of the saints. Already the seeming unanimity of loyalty was gone; those who were Royalists at heart found that they had still enemies to meet; and it was proved that the new Government could in no wise relax the vigilance of their defence of order, or presume upon the support of an undivided nation.
Before the new Parliament met in May, the Coronation of the King took place, on April 23rd, with all the splendour that copious expense could achieve in an age saturated with a love of florid display, and with what was doubtless a careful and politic anxiety to revive in their most authentic form all the ancient observances and ceremonies which had in the past attended the rite. Already the most prominent adherents of the King had been advanced in the peerage, and on the day before the Coronation ceremonies six Earls—amongst whom Clarendon was one—were invested with their new dignity with the ancient and stately ceremonial so long in abeyance. But even amid the rejoicings of the Coronation new seeds of dissension were laid in a soil only too fertile for their propagation. The Duke of York was deemed, by those who held to older fashions, to have assumed too much of that precedence which was accorded to Monsieur the brother of the King in the Court of France, but which had no warrant in the usages of England; and the fact that he was allowed to appropriate a place in the procession for his own "Master of the Horse," and that the holder of the honoured place was a youthful member of the upstart family of the Jermyns, was enough to stir up much heartburning amongst the older Royalist nobility, and to engage the attention and compel the anxiety even of Clarendon himself. The Chancellor had to steer his course amidst a very hotbed of popular excitement, and of Court factions and intrigues, but thinly covered by a veneer of seemingly whole-hearted loyalty.
Before Parliament met, another project had been fully discussed and practically settled. This was the marriage of the King with the Portuguese Princess, Catherine of Braganza. It was an alliance which involved many dangers, and what were, at the best, but doubtful advantages. Clarendon had, at a later date, to bear the blame of an arrangement which brought no satisfaction either to the King or to the nation, and which eventually did much to check the tide of loyalty. But he is careful to tell us that the inception of the scheme did not come from him; that the first suggestion was not even made to him, and that he interfered in it no further than his relations to the King imperatively demanded. But he adds that had it been otherwise, he would have felt no reason to disavow, or be ashamed of, his action in promoting the marriage of the King to any suitable consort.
Such a project had, indeed, much to commend it, had Fate been kinder, and had not the position of European affairs been so tangled. Clarendon had long urged the propriety of the King's marriage. It was all the more his duty to do so now, when any delay in the matter might seem to promise the eventual succession to the Crown of the children of his own daughter, the Duchess of York. Clarendon had no ambition for such elevation, and he knew well how any suspicion of such a scheme would expose him to the accusations of his enemies. He would best have liked that the King should choose a Protestant consort, but the only one who could be suggested was the daughter of the Dowager Princess of Orange, and to that match Charles was invincibly opposed. The Portuguese alliance offered certain advantages. It promised a counterpoise to the power of Spain (and, as such, it would unquestionably secure the friendliness of France), and thus seemed to offer help in maintaining a safe position in foreign relations, and preventing the probability of foreign war. For the stable settlement of affairs at home, no condition was more absolutely essential than the maintenance of peace abroad; and for this, if for no other reason, Clarendon was passionately determined to avoid any foreign complications. If an alliance with a Catholic Princess were necessary, none could apparently involve less danger than one which brought about a Portuguese rather than a Spanish connection.