In replying to the message of the Commons, Charles declared himself deeply concerned that they should question the ecclesiastical authority of the crown, which had never been contested during the reigns of his ancestors. He certainly pretended to no authority to suspend any law touching the property, rights, and liberties of his subjects. His only object in the exercise of his ecclesiastical power was the relief of the dissenters. He was not disposed to reject the advice of parliament, and would always be found ready to agree to any bill which might seem better adapted than his declaration to accomplish the chief object which he had in view—the welfare of all his subjects, and the tranquillity and stability of England. This moderate language did not satisfy the house. A second address admonished the sovereign that his counsellors had deceived him, and that none of his ancestors had ever claimed or exercised the power of suspending statutes touching ecclesiastical matters; and his faithful Commons implored his majesty to give them a more satisfactory and complete answer. The king felt the insult, and did not conceal his resentment. His course was chosen. He would dissolve parliament, rather than submit to the dictation of his enemies. But he hoped to subdue the opposition by exciting a conflict of opinion between the two houses. He went to the House of Lords, and in a short and spirited address complained that the Commons usurped the royal authority, laid before their lordships the two addresses from the lower house, with his replies, and concluded by asking the advice of the hereditary counsellors of the throne. Clifford followed, and pleaded with his accustomed fire and energy the cause of offended majesty. But the spirit of defection had spread even among the chiefs of the government. The chancellor went over to the enemy. "Shaftesbury," says Macaulay, "with his proverbial sagacity, saw that a violent reaction was at hand, and that all things were tending toward a crisis resembling that of 1640. He was determined that such a crisis should not find him in the situation of Strafford. He therefore turned suddenly round, and acknowledged in the House of Lords that the declaration was illegal." A month had not passed since, in another place, Ashley had appealed to the justice of his fellow-subjects against the adversaries of the edict of toleration. The lords made haste to follow the example of the prudent chancellor. Ten years before they had solemnly declared their opinion that Charles II. had received from the English people a legitimate mission to establish liberty of conscience; to-day, after maturely considering the royal motion, they resolved "that the proposal of his majesty to settle the dispute by parliamentary ways was a good and gracious answer."
The disapprobation of the Upper House filled the timid monarch with consternation. Three days afterward Colbert presented himself* as the bearer of officious advice from Louis XIV. The King of France felt but little regret at the turn affairs were taking with his new allies; for the Commons, who, in order to overthrow more surely the royal plan, proposed to demolish it slowly, piece by piece, had not uttered a single murmur against the French alliance or the war. Not only that, but with a calculating shrewdness they had offered the king a compensation for the sacrifices which they demanded of him, and granted a subsidy of £1,260,000 sterling, destined to be expended in more vigorously pushing forward hostile operations on land and sea. Pleased with these favorable [{834}] dispositions, Louis XIV. represented to his brother of England the sad consequences of a rupture with parliament. The wisest course was to submit to necessity. At the return of peace, when Louis would have troops and money to spare, he would place both at the service of the Stuarts, and it would then be easy to repair these temporary misfortunes. Charles listened willingly to the ambassador. The offers of money he did not refuse; but as for the assistance of French troops, he declared that he would never use them against his subjects, unless a Second civil war should reduce him to the very last extremity, as it had reduced his father. The same day, in council with his ministers, he withdrew his edict of toleration; and the next morning, the 8th of March, he annulled it again, in presence of the Lords and Commons, promising that it should never serve as a precedent. The royal communication was received with acclamations of joy, and at night innumerable bonfires illuminated the streets and squares of the capital.
The opposition party had received an impetus in its course, and it needed a stronger arm than that of a Stuart to check it. The House of Commons was already discussing its famous test bill, by the provisions of which every Englishman holding any civil or military office was required to take an oath of allegiance and subscribe to the royal supremacy; he was to receive the sacrament according to the rites of the Established Church, and to sign a declaration against transubstantiation; and the penalty for violation of this law was a fine of £500 sterling, and disqualification from filling any public function or dignity whatsoever, from prosecuting any cause before the courts, from acting as guardian or testamentary executor, or receiving any legacy or deed of gift. Together with the test bill another was introduced for the relief of the Protestant nonconformists. The former passed quickly through both houses, and became that odious law which England kept upon her statute-books until far into the present century. As for the other bill, all the well-known arts of parliamentary tricksters were brought to bear upon it. It was postponed; it was amended again and again; it was thrown out; it was brought in again. At last the end of the session found it effectually killed; and, despite the insidious promises which had effected a division among the several victims of the Anglican episcopacy, no new act was passed with regard to the dissenters.
In a single day the test act deprived the Catholic cause of all its defenders. The Duke of York, who, as lord high admiral, directed the operations of the combined fleets of England and France, resigned his command and his commission. Clifford, though a new convert, laid down the white rod. All the Catholic officials, governors, magistrates, naval and military officers, retired at once. One only—who had been bold enough to praise the bill in the House of Lords as a wise and opportune measure—was exempted from taking the test oath and branded with the disgrace of a national recompense. This was the same Earl of Bristol whom the Bishop of Salisbury had regarded as the inspirer of those popish tendencies which he boasted of having detected under Charles's dissimulation.
There was none of the cabinet whose fidelity Charles could now trust. Shaftesbury had betrayed him; and it seemed certain that Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale were secretly in league with the chief agitators. In return for their services parliament granted them complete impunity for the past by freely condoning all the offences committed previous to the 25th of March.
Thus the isolation of the king at home was complete. Louis XIV. was still left him, but he was soon to lose even this last support. At the beginning of 1674 the French alliance offered only very doubtful advantages. On the continent the war had assumed the proportions of a conflict of all Europe, and Montecuculli, seconded by [{835}] the Prince of Orange, what successfully against the genius of Turenne. On the sea, Prince Rupert, the successor of the Duke of York, with ninety-ships of the line, had gained not a single notable advantage, though he ought to have swept all the Dutch fleets before him. As Lingard says, he was too intimately allied with the opposition party to be very eager for a victory which would have given the ascendency to their adversaries. Finally, the Commons manifested, from the opening of the new session, a decided unwillingness to vote a subsidy. Charles listened, therefore, to the proposals of the allied powers, and, of his own accord, without asking the consent of "his suzerain" (as Macaulay charges), concluded a special peace on the most honorable conditions. "Necessity forbade him any longer to assist France as an ally," he said to Louis' ambassador; "but he hoped to be able to serve his good brother as a mediator between him and his enemies."
Thus all Charles's plans were overthrown, and England was delivered for two centuries from the twin misfortunes against which she struggled with equal energy—a French alliance and the inroads of Popery.
Under the enormous pressure brought to bear upon him the unhappy king, deserted by all his auxiliaries and all his friends, gave way, and tried to stifle the voice of conscience. No doubt he is gravely to blame when he receives the sacrament in the Protestant chapels of his palace, and urges the Duke of York to imitate his unworthy weakness, when he renews the protestations—which nobody believes—of his firm adhesion to Anglicanism. He is inexcusable for his apostacy. But that these criminal actions were not incompatible with a sincere resolve to return to the Roman Catholic Church, and that one can trace in Charles's conduct a plan seriously conceived and for three years perseveringly followed, to establish freedom of Catholic worship throughout the United Kingdom—these are the points which we have endeavored to prove. We are not without hope that we have shed some light upon an important series of events, which for two centuries have been enveloped, through the bad faith of historians, in an obscurity that until now the keenest glance has failed to pierce.