[Illustration: SIR EDWARD NICHOLAS. (From the original by Sir Peter
Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery.)]
It was one of the ironies of fate that the baser influences, now gaining new power at Court, created or stimulated discontent, the brunt of which fell on Clarendon, against whose authority these influences were chiefly directed. The moral sense of the nation was being gradually provoked. That sense is regulated by no great judgment, and often moves under violent prejudice; but it slowly yet surely shapes itself on sound foundations. The reaction against Puritanism had carried the nation far in the direction of tolerance even of lax morality; but the scandals of the Court had already begun to outrage the nation's sense of decency; and when outraged decency is combined with increased pressure of taxation and decreasing prosperity, the united force becomes a menacing threat. It was a comparative trifle that the King's alleged bastard [Footnote: He was born in 1646, and the King's age at the time justified doubts, which the lady's lavish favours did not diminish.] by the notorious Lucy Waters, was now formally introduced at Court under the name of Crofts; was married to the heiress of the Earl of Buccleuch, and was speedily created Duke of Monmouth. Such relationships had before been tacitly recognized but not explicitly avowed; now for the first time the patent of nobility declared the youth to be the natural son of the King. Vice laid aside that homage of hypocrisy which it had before paid to virtue. It was an innovation which Clarendon firmly opposed. "It would have," he told the King quite plainly, "an ill sound in England with all his people, who thought that these unlawful acts ought to be concealed, and not published and justified." [Footnote: Life, ii. 255.] Precedents from France and Spain would not pass current in England; and even if these precedents were admitted, they would hardly parallel the ennobling of the bastard of a notorious courtezan, born when the King was scarcely sixteen years of age, and whose parentage was, to say the least, doubtful.
By themselves such domestic scandals may perhaps count for little. But when they are accompanied by growing discontent, resting upon solid grounds, the aggregate of irritation becomes considerable. Our foreign commerce was seriously crippled, and our manufactures found no outlet. The home markets were interfered with by foreign goods imported during the recent years of unsettlement in exaggerated quantities. The large advances made by the bankers to meet taxes heavily in arrear produced a scarcity of money, and this again led to a serious fall in rents. There was hardly a class in the nation which was not suffering by the prevailing insecurity; and these sufferings were aggravated by increasing taxation, by declining national credit, and by the fears of insurrection, and of renewed civil war, caused by the decaying reverence for the Crown. No one recognized more clearly than Clarendon, or detested more cordially, the scandals that tarnished the restored monarchy; to no one did they bring a fuller crop of crushed hopes, and baffled efforts. Fortune's cynical injustice was never more clearly shown.
To some of the clique of Clarendon's enemies it seemed as if the time had come to strike a decisive blow. Stories of his impending fall were rife. Pepys, repeating the gossip of the day, and the tittle-tattle of the back stairs, tells us how "they have cast my Lord Chancellor on his back past ever getting up again." [Footnote: Pepys, May 15th, 1663.] Bristol was the first who determined to take overt action against the Chancellor. His first effort was a singularly inept one, and involved one of the confederates much more than Clarendon. Bristol had hopes, it would appear, of arranging for himself a body of "undertakers" in the House of Commons, who were to take upon themselves the management of measures desired by the Crown. He had offered to Charles the services of Sir Richard Temple, who, he asserted, would, if trusted, undertake that the King's business would be effected, and revenue settled. Coventry, whose special functions were thus threatened, reported the words, as those which had been used to the King "by a person of quality," to the House, which thus saw its independence flagrantly assailed; and on the petition of the House, the King disclosed the name of the Earl of Bristol as his informant. Bristol craved to be heard by the House in his own defence; and addressed them in that tone of theatrical vanity and rhodomontade in which he was apt to indulge. The whole transaction is a little obscure, and its objects seem inconclusive. The world was already accustomed to these outbursts of Bristol's self-advertising folly.
But his next step was more direct and more audacious. It was no less than the impeachment of the Lord Chancellor. He consulted the King, who endeavoured to dissuade him, but to whose dissuasions Bristol's insolent reply was, that if he were not supported, "he would raise such disorders that all England should feel them, and the King himself should not be without a large share in them." [Footnote: Burnet, i. 339.] The interview was evidently a stormy one, and Bristol did not scruple to threaten his King in language for which he had afterwards to offer the most abject apology.
The charges which Bristol, in spite of these warnings, formulated against Clarendon in the House of Lords, were flimsy and fanciful even for his contriving. Clarendon, it was alleged, had arrogated to himself a superior direction in all his Majesty's affairs. He had abused the trust by insinuating that the King was inclined to popery; [Footnote: These charges from one who, on grounds of conscience that were more than suspected, had joined the Roman Catholic Church, are worthy of Bristol's audacious inconsistency.] he had alleged that the King had removed Nicholas, a zealous Protestant, in order to bring in Bennet, a concealed Papist; he had solicited from the Pope a Cardinal's hat for Lord Aubigny as the price of suspension of the Penal Laws against Catholics; he had been responsible for irregularities in the King's marriage; he had uttered scandals against the King's course of life; he had given out that the King intended to legitimize the Duke of Monmouth; had persuaded the King to withdraw the garrisons from Scotland; had advised the sale of Dunkirk; had told the King that the House of Lords was "weak and inconsiderable," and the House of Commons "weak and heady;" and he had enriched himself and his followers by illegitimate means.
It is difficult to understand how even the blind vanity and over-weening self-importance of Bristol could have persuaded him that this string of absurdities could injure the Chancellor, or obtain credence even from his most prejudiced foes. There was not a single item that could involve a charge of treason even if true, and some of the allegations imputed to Clarendon opinions and aims to which he was notoriously opposed. It was evident that Bristol had been inspired only by an insane desire to charge against Clarendon anything which seemed likely to attach some unpopularity to his name.
At Clarendon's desire the charges laid against him were referred to the judges, who unanimously reported that the accusations had been irregularly made, and that, even if they were admitted to be true, they involved no treason. The King sent a message to the Lords, to inform them that some of the facts alleged were, to his own certain knowledge, untrue. Never were charges more recklessly brought, and never did a weapon, forged against an enemy, towards whom Bristol nursed an almost insane jealousy, turn with more deadly effect upon its contriver. A warrant was issued for Bristol's arrest, and he escaped any more drastic punishment only by absconding. But the episode closed for the time Bristol's career; and for a season it seemed to confirm and re-establish the supremacy of Clarendon. One of his foes at least had been worsted in the attempt to cast him on his back. But harder troubles than those raised by Bristol's ill-aimed attack still awaited him.