B4 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF H^fitQ W. Sage 1891 5901 '%V^ i 19*2 ^^U 4 I960 % MAY 13 1948 J f MAY u^ JUN 2 s u AP Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027987167 CHARLES II. OLIVER CROMWELL. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. With Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, 5J-. net. PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART. THE YOUNG CHEVALIER. By Andrew Lang. With Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, js. 6d. n?t. QUEEN ELIZABETH. By Mandell Creighton. With Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, 5^. net. CHARLES 11. By Osmund Airy, LL.D., M.A. With Frontispiece. Crown Bvo, 6s. 6d. net. ^'^j^ These Volumes are reprinted from the Editions appear- ing in Messrs. Goupil & Co.'s Illustrated Historical Series. LONGMANS, GREEN, AND C0..« LONDON, NEW YORK AND BOMBAY. Cornell University Library DA 445.A29 Char es II., 3 1924 027 987 167 olin Prinled by '"I'Upil Charles II ' f/ /// f/ f / / f'f//f r /// ///r r. > o ^f/////f//r/fr/ f/yas 8 * ii6 CHARLES II. scandalising Europe with her excesses. On another occasion he visited the Count-Palatine of Neuburg at Diisseldorf, and probably then acquired the distaste for German women which he afterwards crystallised into the verdict, " Odd's fish, they are all foggy ! " The absence of sympathy between him and his mother has already been dwelt upon ; but an open and long-abiding breach was now caused by her sustained attempt, in violation of many pledges, to secure the conversion of her youngest son, Henry of Gloucester, a conversion upon which the Catholics built great hopes. '' Henry the 9th," they said, '' was to repair what Henry the 8th had ruined." Charles, when appealed to by Hatton and other Royalists in Paris, resolved to frustrate the scheme. The struggle was conducted by Henrietta with cajolery, deceit, and extraordinary harshness, and continued from the moment that Charles left Paris until the following November, when he wrote letters to his mother, and to James, Lord Jermyn, and Henry himself, which ad- mitted of no dispute, and sent Ormond with instructions to bring the boy away from Paris without delay. Henry left France in December, and in February, 1655, was in his sister's safe custody at the Hague ; but he was driven thence in virtue of the treaty with Cromwell, and joined the Court at Cologne in May. Hyde de- clares that he had " never seen the King so awakened " as in this affair. The motives for this energy need SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 117 not be exalted to the plane of conscience. They probably resided solely in the need of impressing a certainty of his steadfastness to the Faith upon the Cavaliers in England, whom he would have lost had he been believed to be a consenting party to his brother's conversion. When, however, Henry was once out of France, and he could point to this victory, Charles lost no time in endeavouring to satisfy his Catholic friends, by sending Lord Taafife to the Nuncio to explain and lament the necessity under which he had found himself; and to express his complete readi- ness to change his own religion if he could thereby secure advantages sufficient to make the step worth his while. All this followed on a letter written to the ministers of the Scotch Kirk some weeks previously, in which he appealed to their memory of his life with them, and bade them to rest assured of his resolve to walk as in the sight of the Most High ; though they would recognise that he was compelled to make friends of all sorts of men. Even graver matters called for decision. Ever since the autumn of 1649, ^ Royalist committee had been in existence in England to prepare for a revolt. Towards the beginning of 1654 it was dissolved and succeeded by a more energetic body, called the ' Sealed Knot/ which at once grew busy. Encouraged by Hyde and Ormond, the ' Knot ' began to organise a widespread insurrection during the spring of 1654 ; ii« CHARLES 11. and this, conjointly with the movements of Middleton and Glencairn in the Highlands, would, it was hoped, shake Cromwell's power to its base. At the same time the Royalist Henshaw came to Paris with a scheme for the assassination of Cromwell. Charles refused to see him, and, by the advice of Hyde and Ormond, discouraged any attempt until the ' Sealed Knot ' were prepared to follow it up at once by open insurrection. On the other hand. Lord Gerard, Rupert — who had quarrelled with both Charles and Hyde — and Sir Edward Herbert, the Keeper of the Seals, who was sore at the failure of the attack upon Hyde in 1653, in which he had been prominent, urged the pursuance of the scheme, and did not hesitate to express their opinion of the superiority of James over his brother as a man of action and judgment. This brought matters to a crisis. Charles steadfastly sup- ported Hyde and Ormond, with the result that Rupert was compelled to leave the Court, and Herbert to give up the Great Seal. On May 3 there was published the famous proclamation in which Charles was made to offer a full pardon, ;^SOO a year, and a colonelcy to any one who would kill Cromwell. The absurdity of ascribing it to the King has been fully shown, and internal evidence has fixed it upon Herbert. That Hyde and Charles, with Ormond and Nicholas, were perfectly cognisant of later plots, especially that of Sexby in 1655 and 1656, and that the celebrated SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 119 pamphlet Killing no Murder — *' which is only to show the lawfulness and conveniency that he be presently killed " — had their entire approval : these things do not admit of question. On the limits of the moral reprobation to be attached to such complicity we have already expressed our view ; and that view is strength- ened when we remember that a price had been put upon the capture of Charles himself as a "traitor/' that Cromwell had sanctioned atrocious cruelty in Ireland, and that, at this very time, Monk was offering rewards in Scotland for the capture or death of the leaders of the royal forces in the Highlands. More- over, if accounts of the most circumstantial nature which reached Charles had any foundation, assassina- tion plots were not all on one side ; for in May, 1657, news was sent from England of his intended murder, with names and details of the conspirators. The impatience of the English loyalists now brought disaster upon the cause. In February, 1655, they were resolved to rise in many parts of the country ; although " the Sealed Knot, in whom alone there is any authority from the King, declared absolutely and sharply against the madness of those people that are resolved to begin ", Urgent warnings from Charles and Hyde led to nothing but invectives against the Knot, and against the King himself for his apathy. At length he was forced by the remonstrances of the over-eager men to despatch Rochester to command in lao CHARLES II. the north and Wagstaff in the west ; while he himself went to Middleburg, to be ready for an immediate voyage. But there was no call upon Charles's presence in England. In March a premature revolt at Salisbury was easily suppressed ; other isolated risings in west and north burned out for want of support and co- herence ; and the result was to settle more firmly "the damned Oliver, the Beast in the Revelations, whom all the Kings of the earth do worship ". Cromwell's French alliance, and his attack upon Spain, naturally opened up a new prospect for Charles. The delays for which Spanish diplomacy was famous — the ^ Spanish Method ' — prevented anything definite until the spring of 1656, when he went incognito to Brussels to confer with the ministers Fuensaldagna and Alonzo de Cardenas. A draft treaty was then drawn up, and ratified in the summer, by which Charles agreed to suspend and, if possible, secure the parliamentary revocation of all penal laws, and to maintain the treaty with the Irish Catholics, in return for a monthly allowance of 3,000 crowns to himself, and 1,500 to James, the opening of the Spanish ports for Royalist privateers, and the promise of armed help to recover his kingdom. But there was an immediate condition of far greater import. He was to call out all the English and Irish soldiers in the French army, to be formed into regiments in the service of Spain. SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 121 This condition led to a serious family quarrel. The Duke of York had served with much credit under Turenne, to whom he was deeply attached. By an arrangement with Cromwell, who wished to keep the brothers in opposition, Mazarin had offered him the command of the forces in Italy ; and James was bitterly disappointed when he received instructions from the King to resign his commission, to join him at once at Bruges, where he had now taken up his residence, and to take the oath to Spain. Through a skilful intrigue of Mazarin, James failed to secure even the command of the new regiments ; and his ill-humour was com- pleted by a further order to dismiss his confidant. Sir John Berkeley, who, under Cromwell's instructions, was inciting him to resistance. In a fit of sullen resent- ment James left Flanders to follow his friend to Holland. Charles was deeply incensed at this '* unimaginable sally"; while Cromwell noted with satisfaction that " that fire kindled between them will not ask bellows to blow it to keep it burning". Hyde's sagacity saved the situation. He urged that the very excess of James's action made his reduction to his duty sure, and that ^'no compliance with the Duke's weakness should be omitted, so that by it he may be got again to Bruges ". Ormond was sent after the runaway, for he was the invariable messenger in family matters re- quiring firm and tactful handling. On condition that 122 CHARLES 11. the past should be forgotten, that his household should not be interfered with, and that Berkeley should be made a peer, James returned somewhat sulkily to his duty. In May he was in command of the regiments — " brave, and as little troublesome as any Prince can be'' — while Gloucester served as a volunteer with Cara- cena ; and in June a final reconciliation took place between the brothers, in which Charles was relieved of serious embarrassment by James's promise to hold no farther communication with the Queen or Lord Jermyn upon public affairs. Other causes of friction arose in the matter of the regiments. What the incident was which drew the following letter, on December 28, from Charles to Don Alonzo is not known ; but it is worthy of transcrip- tion as evidence of one of the four or five known occa- sions upon which he allowed anger to disturb his usual easy temper. " I have seen your letter to the Chan- cellor, and am so full of indignation at the affront that is put upon me that I have scarce patience to write this letter. I send this bearer expressly to let you know that before I suffer this affront to be upon my regiment, which was never yet offered to any private colonel whatsoever, I will break the regiment a thousand times over. I command you to tell Don Juan this from me. . . . Let me have without delay a positive answer of what I may trust to ; for I cannot, nor will not, any longer be at the charges and trouble I am at." SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION, 123 During the negotiations with Spain curious pieces of byplay had gone on, in which, but for Hyde's controlling hand, a fatal mistake might easily have been made. In June the Levellers and other extreme Republicans in England, who were Cromwell's most formidable enemies, made proposals to Charles through Sexby ; to which, however, he was advised by Lang- dale not to listen, since they were incapable of carrying them out, and since the King ought not "to build the foundations of your counsels upon any that have been in blood against your Majesty or your royal Father". Sexby moreover worked hard to induce the Spanish Court to give its active assistance to the Levellers in the projected insurrection, on the promise of the sur- render of Dunkirk ; and to Spanish help Langdale had no objection. " Strangers," he said, " are the most fit instruments for your Majesty to act in England withal ; and these are not your friends, or do not understand England, that will persuade your Majesty that strangers will not be welcome to your friends in England." To such a suggestion Hyde would not of course listen for a moment, although he was as anxious as Langdale to come to some agree- ment with Spain, and although he at once took the steps which resulted in the treaty of 1656. Meanwhile a busy Irish priest of indifferent character, Peter Talbot, who had acted as the inter- mediary between Sexby and the Spanish ministers, 124 CHARLES IL had been using the occasion to urge Charles to enter the Catholic Church. If Spain were to help, ''the King should renounce the French faction and become a Roman Catholic, yet so secretly that no living creature should know of it, but Fuensaldagna, Don Alonzo, the Archduke, and Father Talbot''; the secret should be kept, if he wished, all his life ; if he would promise this — but not otherwise — Fuensal- dagna would have him come to Brussels at once, and, in that case, the Pope and the King of Spain would see that (by God's assistance) he was restored in six months. Talbot added in another letter, '* only want of information can alienate a person of your Majesty's great wit and judgment from our communion ". The indignation with which Hyde received this letter, and which burns in every word of his measured reply, is easily explained. If Charles were, under any temptation, to lapse from Protestantism, he could never return to England. Thurloe had roundly asserted, and it had been printed in Holland, that he had privately become a Catholic. The mystery of the King's religion is so insoluble that it is impossible to affirm or deny with certainty ; the undoubted fact that he attended Mass is no evidence one way or the other. But with Hyde the mere fact that suspicion was openly expressed was enough to call forth the most vehement protest. Hyde's incessant care that his master should make no false step is admirably illustrated by his letter to SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION, 125 Ormond, who had undertaken a mission to England in order to ascertain how matters really stood with the King's friends. He insisted that a conjunction between the Levellers and the Cavaliers must be a first condi- tion of any agreement with the former ; that particular promises might be made to particular men, but no general concessions ; that Ormond could not extol too highly the privileges of Magna Carta or the power of free Parliaments. '* When they are obstinate to insist on any unreasonable propositions ... let your con- sent be with this clause — ^ If a free Parliament shall think fit to ask the same of his Majesty ' ; and let that clause with an If be rather inserted to several un- reasonable propositions than one general clause con- sented to.*' Through all the dreary days that were to follow, Hyde was immovable from this position. To the Levellers Charles had already written at his sug- gestion promising pardon to all but those who sat and voted for his father's murder, and binding himself to govern by the known laws of the land and by suc- cessive parliaments. The cloud of poverty which had been somewhat raised by the treaty with Spain soon settled down more hopelessly than ever, as the inability or unwillingness of Spain to keep her bargain increased. "God send us health and some money," wrote Hyde, who was suffering from ' poor man's gout ' ; while Ormond answered Hyde's complaint of not receiving letters 126 CHARLES II, with the question what in the world he thought there was to write about, except '' the want of money, that makes us mad ". Of Charles's own straits Hyde said, " If he has not a very speedy supply, he must take horse and tell Don Juan he is plainly rua away from starving, and from seeing his servants beg in the streets or be hauled to prison ". That this was no exaggeration is shown by two other entries : '' If M. Ogniate do not this day prevent it, poor Barton will be cast into prison for what he owes his landlord " ; while *' Poor Dick Harding hath pawned every little thing he hath — the cup which the Prince gave him, and every spoon, and hath not a shirt to his back, and yet will not importune his master". Hyde and Charles were themselves no better off than Dick Harding. On September 5, 1657, after referring to his " great necessities, which you know I never call so till there be nothing left to pawn for bread," Hyde described how, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he had looked over the state of the debts, and found that " every bit of meat, every drop of drink, all the fire and all the candles that hath been spent since the King's coming hither is entirely owed for, and how to get credit for a week more is no easy matter ". There was no money with which to pay the men of the newly-formed regiments, and every day Hyde had before his eyes " the sad spectacle of naked soldiers ". " The Court," wrote one of Thurloe's corres- pondents with malicious pleasure, ^' is sca^ttered, and so SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 127 retired that they are scarce visible " ; and Dorothy Chiffinch could not get four livres a day to pay for the whole washing of the King's household. As late as the end of 1659 Hyde was complaining that "we every day omit the doing of somewhat, for want of ;^20 or £^0, that is of extraordinary moment". How Charles was able to pay for his ' blacks/ when he went into mourning for Ferdinand III., was a puzzle to Thurloe's correspondent. We feel that we are in the regions of bathos when we read that, compelled by dire necessity, '' The King hath been long without a chaplain ". Youth, high spirits, and a splendid constitution, reinforced by a happy facility for ignoring other people's privations, carried Charles gaily through it all. The insouciance which developed later into a fixed cynicism never failed him ; while the mixture of familiarity and affectionate banter with which he wrote to Hyde and Ormond reminds us of the child's letter to Newcastle, and shows that he felt absolutely safe in their patient loyalty. The gravity with which he trusted that Hyde — who had piteously described how shrunken he had become — will recover his "ac- customed greatness " ; the hurried note which bade him — at a time when the 'poor man's gout' was particularly aggressive — " make as much haste as \ your gouty feet will give you leave " ; the summons to Ormond, the grand seigneur, " Put your lazy bones to it, for we know not what to say till you come " ; 128 CHARLES IL the petulant *' I would you were — (the royal tongue has a touch of coarseness here) — for not letting me have a copy of your book of inscriptions, subscriptions, and superscriptions " — such utterances as these are sufficient to show the relations ; and we can easily imagine the magisterial gravity of Hyde when he wrote — in answer to Charles's letter telling how he had lost his keys while watching the procession on Good Friday — " You do very well in letting what you intend to lose be always by itself, and unentangled with what you desire to keep ". This is the more interesting because neither Hyde nor Ormond were persons with whom liberties could safely be taken, and this Charles sometimes discovered for himself There is a letter extant which shows that Ormond preserved the spirit which he showed as a mere boy, when he caused Strafford, then in the pride of his power, to be told that, if he called upon him to give up his sword, he should have it — through his body. He now had reason to feel aggrieved at some slight passed upon him, apparently by James, and he wrote forthwith to Charles himself — " All this not being to be suffered with dissimulation but with great meanness, the most moderate resentment I can have of it is to demand full satisfaction from your Majesty, most humbly beseeching you to believe that no greater misfortune can befall me than that of being reduced to take this means . . . hoping that in this occasion SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION, 129 your majesty will oblige me never to depart from that true and sincere passion I have always had to manifest myself," etc. Idle poverty and recklessness are sure companions. To the infinite regret of his wise and loyal advisers, Charles permitted himself and his followers even more license in Flanders than in Cologne. From one of his spies at Bruges, Thurloe received the following : "There is now a company of French comedians at Bruges who are very punctually attended by Charles Stuart and his Court, and all the ladies there ; their most solemn day of acting it is the Lord's day. I think I may truly say that greater abominations were never practised among people than at this day in Charles Stuart's court. Fornication, drunkenness, and adultery are esteemed no sins among them." Accounts such as this must, it is true, be read with discrimina- tion. We do not expect austere morality from a tramp ; but neither is it probable that the Spanish Government would have allowed any very open scandal without protest ; and it must be borne in mind that, the more lurid the reports, the better would Cromwell and Thurloe be pleased. They were carefully published in England, and undoubtedly injured the prospects of Charles, by preventing sober men, especially Presby- terians, from expressing sympathy with him. Indeed they were largely responsible for the carrying of the Act of November, 1656, by which all title of either of 9 I30 CHARLES II. the three brothers, or their descendants, was absolutely extinguished. Pleasure and debauchery did indeed promise to be the " leaden clogs which will in the end make them stick ". Charles had arrived at Bruges on April 22, 1656, and for a few weeks lodged at the house of the Irish Viscount Taragh, in the street of the old Burgh. On June 3 he occupied permanent quarters in the first house on the right-hand side of the High Street, as one walks from the Burgh. Here he remained until February 7, 1658, when he went to Brussels. One or two interesting notices of his stay are to be found in the records of the two societies of St. George and St. Sebastian, composed of cross-bowmen and archers respectively. On June 11, 1656, he was present with his brother Henry at the festival of the former ; he aimed first at the * bird of honour,' suspended from a mast, and struck it ; it was finally brought down by a wine merchant, around whose neck Charles hung the prize — a golden bird. On June 25 he did a like honour to the rival society. Under the dates of August 3 and 6 there are records in its registers of promises from Charles of 1,000 crowns of gold after his death, and from Henry of 300 crowns due from his heirs. Strange to say, Charles was better than his word. In 1662 he paid to the Society of St. George 650 livres de gros, Flemish silver, and to that of St. Sebastian 3,600 florins. To the end of his reign he SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 131 retained a grateful memory of the Flemings, whom he described as " the most honest and true-hearted race of people that he had met with ". The outlook of the exiles had been brightened by the treaty with Spain. But, having secured four good regiments from Charles's English and Irish followers to fight her battles, Spain had no intention of wasting them upon his. The reiterated demands of the King as to the causes of delay — the '' King of I don't know what," as the Marquis de Leda called him — brought little satisfaction, and he was driven to put off his projected descent upon England until the winter of 1657. He was deeply hurt at this ''scurvy usage '\ " If I were with Don Juan " — he wrote to Hyde — '* I should follow your counsel, and swear two or three round oaths ; but though I am in ill humour, methinks you are in worse." Hyde was, he admits, weary of his life. " God give you a better temper," exclaimed Lord Bristol. The relations were still more strained when Don Juan — " Don Devil " he had become now — refused to allow Charles to join his brothers at the front The difficulty was at length smoothed over ; and very shortly Hyde was lecturing him on his want of con- sideration for his subjects in recklessly and uselessly exposing his person, though " none of those who think that you are like to recover your three Kingdoms with- out being in danger of your life ". It is evident that 9 * 132 CHARLES II. the service was of real danger, and that there was no shirking on the part of the brothers, for at this very time Charles was requested by Bristol to remonstrate with James on the same score ; while, in an attempt to recover Mardyke, Ormond had his horse shot under him when riding at the King's side. Once more the King claimed the fulfilment of the Spanish promises ; his friends in England were at length ready to move, and arms and provisions were stored at Nieuport and Ostend. But Don John replied that he would risk no troops until some trustworthy informant could satisfy him of the actual facts. The extraordinary confidence in which Ormond was held is shown by the acceptance of his offer, already mentioned, to go to England and ascertain the state of parties. Charles pawned his * George ' to pay the expenses of the journey. Cromwell's spies were successfully deceived by the report that he was leav- ing on a mission to the Diet, and he landed in Essex in the beginning of January, 1658. He remained a month in disguise in England ; consulted the Sealed Knot and other leading Royalists ; and returned with a report so hopeless that all designs had to be post- poned. His presence in England was duly notified to Cromwell by Sir Richard Willis, the traitor of the Knot, who, however, playing the double game, gave warning to Ormond himself at the same time, so that he was able to leave the country unscathed. While SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 133 still in England, in hourly danger of liberty and life, he managed to send a notable and beautiful letter to Hyde, which shows with what discriminating loyalty these two dealt with their master. " I must now freely confess to you that what you have written of the King's unseasonable impatience at his stay at Bruges is a greater damp to my hopes of his recovery than the strength of his enemies, or the weakness and backward- ness of those that profess him friendship : modesty, courage, and many accidents may overcome those enemies and unite and fix those friends : but I fear his immoderate delight in empty, effeminate, and vulgar conversations is become an irresistible part of his nature, and will never suffer him to animate his own designs and others' actions with that spirit which is requisite for his quality and much more to his fortune. This to any but to you or him, from any (unless a very few) but from me, or from me at any other time, were too bold a lamentation, for so God knows it is. May God bless him and fit him for his work." It is letters such as these that show that Charles was restored in spite of himself While Ormond was thus risking his life in Eng- land, Charles was at Antwerp with his sister Mary. His first governor, the magnificent Newcastle, was there also, and for many days all troubles were for- gotten in the entertainments which he provided. But the prospects grew darker month by month throughout 134 CHARLES II. that year. The Spanish pensions were not paid ; com- plaints of robbery and outrage by the starving men of the regiments were frequent ; the broken officers thronged the Court with importunate clamour. On March i English frigates destroyed the ships at Ostend in which Charles hoped to make his voyage ; and ' next winter' was once more the earliest moment for the enterprise. On June 8 the prospects of Spain, and with them his own, vanished at the battle of the Dunes, when the four English and Irish regiments under James gave way before the charge of the Ironsides. Once more conversion was put before Charles as his best chance of help ; but he himself reported on June 28, " I find Don Alonzo reasonable enough in the point of my conversion, and does think the best way to that is, to do all that is possible to set me in England again and leave the rest to God ". The last five words form the diplomatic phrase for indefinite postponement. Spain no more cared about Charles's conversion than did Louis XIV. in later years at the Treaty^of Dover. At length, for a brief interval, hope flared high. Charles was playing tennis when Sir Stephen Fox called him from his game with great news. " It had pleased God out of His infinite goodness to do that which He would not allow any man the honour of \ doing." The ' powerful devil ' was dead. For a moment all was exultation — delirious, inarticulate. Jermyn wrote from France the assurance that the " en- SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 135 gagements with the dead monster expire suddenly " : Colepeper reported that Amsterdam was mad with joy, '' no man is at leisure to buy or sell ; the young fry dance in the streets at noon day ; * The Devil is dead,' is the language at every turn". But Jermyn was not in the councils of Mazarin, nor the ' young fry ' in those of John de Witt. Lockhart kept the Cardinal firm, although " Dick Cromwell sate like an / ape on horseback " ; while in a few days Colepeper wrote again that the States now bent all their thoughts on renewing the treaty with the new Protector, " hoping to edge in that which they could never obtain from the crafty fox his father, the Maritime Treaty ". Charles's wiser friends kept their heads. Hyde's voice was heard at once : '' I hope the King will not be pre- vailed upon to do any sudden thing ; we shall have advantages offered if we do not hurt ourselves with projects". Meanwhile all friends should get into Parliament as soon as possible. Wait till they quarrel, added Colepeper, and then the weaker part will be glad of our help. Colepeper's very able letter contained one fruitful piece of advice, which could not however be fully acted upon for nearly another year. The key of the situa- tion was held by George Monk, who had the army of occupation in Scotland at his disposal. The aim should therefore be to satisfy him that his personal interests would be best secured by a restoration ; and 136 CHARLES II. his own way of declaring himself should be accepted without demur, "The way to deal with him is by some fit person ... to show him plainly, and to give him all imaginable security for it, that he shall better find all his ends (those of honour, power, profit, safety) with the King than in any other way he can take. Neither are we to boggle at any way he shall propose in declaring himself, let it at the first be Presbytery, be King and Parliament, be a Third Party, or what he will ; so it oppose the present power it will at last do the King's business, and after a little time he will and must alone fall into the track we would have him to go in ; when he is engaged past a retreat he will want you as much as you will want him, and you may mould him into what form you please." To prepare the ground, to be ready to take ad- vantage of the recriminations and quarrels already breaking out between Presbyterians and Republicans in England, to prevent all divisions among themselves, to frustrate especially the intrigues of Father Talbot and his like, who were endeavouring to set up the interest of James against that of the King, and to con- ciliate every possible source of support ; this was the course laid down by Hyde, who now, as Lord Chan- cellor, had more authority than ever. An obvious, and a necessary step, was to reassure all good Pro- testants, especially Presbyterians, of the King^s firmness to the Faith. If his Scottish experience had sickened SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 137 him of all religion, it had at least taught him the value of asseveration ; and, on November 7, letters were de- spatched to the ministers of the English Presbyterian Churches in Holland expressing his undying zeal for the Protestant religion, " the propagation whereof we shall endeavour with our utmost power ". In the beginning of March, 1659, ^^^ Levellers renewed their offer to help Charles to regain his crown, upon conditions which meant nothing less than pure republicanism, veiled under monarchical phrases. But Hyde kept steadily before him the idea of a restoration subject to such conditions only as did not imply a nerveless monarchy or a new church. For this he trusted to time. Meanwhile he pleaded incessantly with Mordaunt, Broderick, and other eager friends in England, for the avoidance of hasty action. They were pressing for a restoration on any terms, confident that the restrictions imposed " will be suddenly taken off by your Majesty's sweetness of disposition and temper". But "three Kingdoms," Hyde felt, "are too considerable to venture upon a slight account". Against all proposals to rise in arms he protested most earnestly, and especially warned his friends against Buckingham, then in England, "who will be glad to merit by setting any ridiculous plot on foot". He would not, if he could help it, allow Charles to send a line to his friends without his endorsement. It was he who held the pen when the King authorised his 138 CHARLES 11. agents in England to make what promises they thought fitting, and engaged to make them good — but "not to such as were possessed of Church or Crown lands, or the lands taken from our faithful subjects"; or when Charles wrote directly, saying, " I do avoid making large promises to you, because I am told it would not be acceptable, and that you are swayed by other thoughts, yet cannot but tell you, you shall never repent any offices you shall do me". Of all promises actually made Hyde kept a careful register, and they were scrupulously re- deemed. By May, 1659, the outlook had again altered. On the 4th, Charles heard that his adherents were ready to rise in the Midlands and in the north ; and on the same day the army restored the Long Parliament and dismissed Richard Cromwell. " Chaos " — he was told — '* is a perfection in comparison with our order and government ; the parties are like floating islands, sometimes joining and appearing like a continent, when the next flood or ebb separates them, that it can hardly be known where they are next" In the be- ginning of June all was in good posture, and Hyde was urging rather than restraining ; while Charles, adjured from England that he must hazard his own person if success were to be hoped for, promised that in case of a rising he would come with 2,000 men at least ; France and Spain, he added, would doubtless SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 139 help him, since a temporary cessation of arms had been arranged. Charles might promise 2,000 men, but he could not possibly move while Ostend was closely watched, for it was the only port where he had ships. But the man who, next to Monk, held the issues in his hands was Admiral Montague ; " a perfect hater of the men who now rule," though "devoted to old Noll his countryman". Montague was in command of the fleet at the Sound ; and it was intimated to him that if he would bring his vessels to embark Charles's regi- ments, there would be practically no limit to what he might ask and receive. Without waiting for the result of these advances, Charles wrote to England that he and James would set out on July 21, in the hope that his friends would be ready for him. He expressed his anxiety — or Hyde's — that " the English nation may be the means of removing the misery — without owning those great obligations to foreign princes which they seldom yield without some advantage to their own interest and impairing their neighbour's". In a few days, how- ever, he received a letter from Mordaunt and Titus warning him that arrangements were still unmatured, and imploring him not to expose his person to danger. At the beginning of August it was understood that all was at length in train. The proposals were that Massey should seize Gloucester, Lord Willoughby I40 CHARLES II. Lynn, and Sir G. Booth Chester: while Plymouth, Bristol, Shrewsbury and Exeter were to be attacked. Montague was to bring the fleet from the Sound. Gloucester was then to sail from Ostend for the east coast with the Irish regiments. Turenne had promised to convey James with his troops and artillery from Boulogne. On the iSth, Charles had started for Calais ; thence he went in disguise to St. Malo in Britanny, and was about to sail on September 8, when Ormond overtook him with news of disaster. The whole scheme of the insurrection had been betrayed to the government by Willis ; and when Booth rose in Cheshire, he was easily crushed. Montague, who had come to the mouth of the Thames, had fortunately not yet declared himself, and by desperate lying managed to escape death or imprisonment. On the 26th Charles was told that he must look for no more risings of his friends, and the bitter truth was pressed upon him that "the Spaniard uses you, the French betray you, the Dutch are already declared against you ". One chance remained. Mazarin and Don Luis de Haro had met at Fonterabia, in Spain, after the cessa- tion of arms, to discuss the future settlement ; and thither Charles went in the hope that he might induce the two Crowns to help him ; and, in particular, that the army of Cond6, which with his own would make 16,000 men, would be put at his disposal. He met SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 141 with nothing but disappointment. Mazarin was re- solved not to break with the existing government in England so long as there was a possibility of renewed war with Spain. Spain was still less in a condition to entangle herself, and her interest in Charles was limited to the desire for the restoration of Jamaica, which had been captured by the English, and of Dunkirk, which had fallen to them after the battle of the Dunes. In his suggestions to Mazarin, Charles in- cluded a proposal of marriage with his niece Hortense ; but the Cardinal gracefully declined the honour by insisting that " as long as a cousin of his own remained unmarried he must not stoop to think of a simple demoiselle ". The hope of securing Conde's forces vanished through the vigilance of Lockhart, who ob- tained a clause in the treaty for their immediate dis- bandment. Nothing was left for Charles but to return as cheerily as he could to Brussels, with * next winter ' once more upon his tongue. On the journey he went out of his way to Colombe to visit the Queen, and mother and son were re- conciled. At this visit also was formed that romantic attachment to his youngest sister, which will deserve much notice later ; no sooner had he left than there began the series of letters for " deare deare sister," which, with her proudly affectionate answers, can scarcely now be read without emotion. It was the one untainted spot in Charles's life. 142 CHARLES IL At Fonterabia Charles acquired distinct reputation. *' He has behaved himself here as if he had been bred more years in Spain than in France," wrote O'Neal ; the French were equally impressed ; and " all his Council could not deliver his business better, nor add a syllable to what he says". Even from Hyde fell unaccustomed words of praise. " His dexterity and composedness hath removed the fatal misfortune of not being believed, for till the King be thought to understand his own business and to be able to conduct it, all our striving is against the stream ; and towards that good reputation an opinion of his industry is as necessary as of his conception." The usual "hot report" that he had turned Papist was of course spread, with circumstantial evidence, after his Spanish visit ; and " Your Master is utterly ruined if this be true," wrote Mordaunt. There were doubtless sus- picious circumstances — he had gone to Mass, and Bristol had been converted ; the fact that Charles had at once dismissed Bristol from his Council did not affect the conclusions which were drawn. It is worth while to turn aside from the narrative for a few moments to notice one delightful passage from Hyde which puts in the strongest light Charles's appreciation of his own limitations and his dislike of clumsy flattery. A certain Dr. Creighton had sent to Hyde, for criticism, the proof-sheets of a book upon the Council of Florence, with an epistle dedicatory to SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 143 Charles, couched in the high-flown language of a courtly divine. Hyde thus replied : — In the next place you must remember that though our Master hath taken great pains, and with excellent success, in the modern languages, yet in the Latin he is too unskilful, by the inexcusable negligence of those who should have laid that foundation ; so that when this book shall be presented to him, there is no question but that he will command that the Epistle dedicatory be translated for him into English ; and I must tell you that as there is no Prince this day in Europe who deserves greater commendation, so his modesty is so predominant over all his virtues, that no gentleman is sooner out of countenance with being over-commended. I have not in my lifetime seen him more displeased, and more angry, than in some few encounters of that kind, and I dare swear he will be put to many blushes upon the reading of your Epistle, and wish some expressions were away. You have not, nor you cannot say too much of the candour of his mind; of the justice and gentleness of his nature; of his affection and zeal to the Protestant Religion . . . ; but I beseech you allay those other expressions which he will believe belong not to him, which relate to his conduct and perfection in war, and to such extraordinary ability as can be got only by experience. . . . Above all I beseech you review and allay those two hyperbolical expressions of the modesty and severity of our Court, where, God knows, the Fabricii nor the Camilli can be found ; and these encomiums may possibly call on some reproaches upon us which we do as little deserve. It is easy to imagine the contemptuous " Odd's fish, he is a fool," with which Charles would have read the praise of his Latin, his military skill, and the chastity of his Court. Nothing remained for the exiles but to fall back upon their accustomed diet of patience. They were now in worse plight than ever ; the King's clothes were threadbare, and he was obliged to dismiss his 144 CHARLES II. servants and to pawn his remaining plate. Monk's brother, who had been sent on the mission to that impenetrable man, had returned with no word, com- fortable or adverse. We know now that he had heard Charles's communication read to him, although he would not take it into his hands ; that a letter from him to the Speaker had been drafted in which he demanded a free Parliament ; that on receipt of the news of Booth's defeat this letter had been torn up, and that all who knew of it had been sworn to secrecy. It was not until October that Monk showed his hand. Hearing of the expulsion of the Rump by Lambert, and grasping the fact that the traditional feeling of the average Englishman was the exact opposite of the army doctrine, he made Scotland secure, and, having received from the former Committee of Safety a com- mission to command all the forces in England and Scotland, prepared to march against Lambert. At Brussels it was felt that the confusions of England tended but one way. " A sensibility of miseries, and a thought of no way to have them re- dressed but by monarchy, and that in the right line, begins to creep into most men's thoughts." The shifting scene of parties in England in December is admirably described by Broderick, who pertinently asks, *' Will a bone often dislocated thereby acquire firmness in the socket?" And ever, as the prospect of a conflict between Monk and Lambert became SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 145 clearer, was heard Hyde's reiterated advice, " to have a little patience to sit still till they are in blood ". The restoration of the Rump Parliament on December 26 gave small hope, since one of its first acts was to vote a new and most comprehensive abjuration of Kingship and of the family of Stuart. But Charles had taken a fruitful step when, by Hyde's advice, he had declared that he would confirm all the privileges of the City, and give still farther concessions, since he wished to owe his restoration to the courage and devotion of the citizens only. The most powerful organisation in the country was thus secured ; while at the same time he gained the willing concurrence of Manchester, Northumberland, Annesley, Prynne, and many other leading Presbyterians. As Presby- terians, they regarded Hyde as their salvation, since he was "the only man that hath and will keep out Popery" ; and, as men of substance, they saw in him " one who understood the law and would preserve Property". Hope in the possible virtues of Charles had also much to do with the Presbyterian favour ; and his friends were not left without ample assurance of these virtues. " He hates not the vicious, but abominates their vices " — " he hates not the drunkard, but his drunkenness" — "he is the perfect pattern of piety, but more of patience " — " a perfect enemy to all debauchedness ". So wrote the author of Tkree Royal Cedars, And the need which was felt to keep 10 146 CHARLES II. up the farce is shown in the grumble of one impatient Royalist, " We are all commanded to be plaguy godly ". On January i, 1660, Monk crossed the Tweed, and, unopposed by Lambert, whose forces melted away as he marched, entered London on February 3. What would he do? Once more, said Hyde, "we can but wait God Almighty's time ". The various episodes of that interval of hope and anxiety do not need repeti- tion ; and we may pass to the middle of March, when " The controversy begins now to be rather upon what terms, than whether, the King shall be restored ". The Presbyterian nobles demanded the Isle of Wight con- ditions, which would have established a dominant aris- tocracy rather than a monarchy. The City demanded the immediate recall of the King, with an amnesty, satisfaction to the army, and settlement of religion by a Council of Divines. And, underlying all politics, careless of terms or no terms, was the longing of men, and still more of women, for peace, for social peace. " I pray God," wrote Penelope Denton to Sir Ralph Verney on March 8, " send mee my life to see peace in our dayes, and that friends may live to rejoice each other." On April 15, when the Exchange was crowded, *' there came a fellow with a ladder upon his shoulders, and a pot of paint in his hand, and set the ladder in the place where the last King's statue had stood, and then went up and wiped out that inscription. Exit Tyrannus, and as soon as he had done it threw SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 147 up his cap and cried, * God bless King Charles the Second' — in which the whole Exchange joined with the greatest shout you can imagine, and immediately- caused a huge bonfire to be made, which the neighbours of Cornhill and Cheapside imitated with three or four more, and so that action passed." This melodramatic prophecy was followed hard by its fulfilment. Monk had at last made up his mind. He put nothing on paper, but Bernard Grenville committed the conditions to memory and carried them to the King. They were less onerous than those of the Presbyterians or the City, but they especially urged the departure of Charles from Flanders into Dutch territory, that all fear of Spanish interference might be avoided. At the same time a paper of advice reached Charles from Lenthall the Speaker. He must be wary of the Army, and of the Presbyterians — he must yield to nothing prejudicial to his rights — must temporise regarding the power of the sword — tolerate Catholics and all other religious parties — keep his friends from boasting — bind himself to nothing, lest he be a mere Doge of Venice. Morley, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, had been employed to hoodwink the Presbyterians. The most unreserved testimonials to Charles's orthodoxy had been secured from the Protestant congregations in Holland, France, and elsewhere on the continent ; while James Sharp, who came from the moderate Scotch Presbyterians, clearly saw his account in assuring himself that Presby- 10 * 148 CHARLES IL tery would be safe. But probably the most convincing evidence was afforded by the deputation of London niinisters, headed by Mr. Case ; the story is indeed derived from a source so scurrilous that, were it not entirely consistent with Charles's humour, we should hesitate to accept it. Mr. Case, "coming where the King lay, . . . was carried up into the chamber next, or very near the King's closet ; but told withal that the King was busy at his devotions ; and that till he had done they must be contented to stay. Being thus left alone, and hearing a sound of groaning piety, such was the curiosity of Mr. Case, that he would needs go and lay his ear to the closet door. But, Heavens ! how was the good old man ravished to hear the pious ejaculations that fell from the King's lips ! ' Lord, since thou art pleased to restore me to the throne of my ancestors, grant me a heart constant in the exercise and protection of thy true Protestant religion. Never may I seek the oppression of those, who, out of tender- ness of their consciences, are not free to conform to outward and indifferent ceremonies.* With a great deal more of the same cant." All this, in face of the reports which were spread by the King's enemies of his devotion to prelacy, and even to Catholicism, was, it was felt, but a pardonable ruse de guerre. Another subject had now to be evaded as well as might be — *' The longing impatience to know whether his Majesty will condemn or save his blessed Father s SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 149 murderers. I answer all parties that his grand- father . . . never questioned the executioners of his Mother. . . . But, descending to particulars, some members of the Rump are content their fellows should be hanged ; they reciprocally of the same mind." To every attempt to bind Charles to definite engagements came Hyde's steady and invariable reply : " No man is so tender of the Nation as the King is, and will do all he can to preserve it, except it be to offer violence to his conscience or honour : and they who believe he will buy his crown upon such conditions as would make him ashamed of wearing it, will be deceived ". Hyde's reward was now very near. On April 25 the free Parliament met, with a Royalist majority : on May i letters were read from the King to both Houses, to the Army, the City, and Monk. They were dated from Breda, whither he had made a hurried flitting from Flanders, according to Monk's wish ; barely in time indeed, for the Spaniards would have kept him until they had extorted promises regarding Jamaica and Dunkirk. On May 9, Charles was pro- claimed King, unfettered by any written condition ; three weeks later he entered his kingdom without the help of a single foreign soldier, and, except for the promise to Spain to endeavour to repeal the penal laws against Catholics, without a pledge to a single foreign prince. Hyde's triumph was complete. None ISO CHARLES II. the less both he and Charles knew that conditions did exist, the failure to fulfil which would probably have relegated him once more to a wandering life among the Courts of Europe. That this was so arose from the all-important fact that, speaking roughly, he was restored by those who had overthrown his father and who were responsible for his own exile. The fleet, the army, the fortresses, were in Presbyterian hands. England had, it is true, shaken off at length the military despotism by which Cromwell had cut right athwart the most cherished traditions of English life. Like an unstrung bow, she had fallen back upon her old ways of life. She had restored her Parlia- ment, and then. Parliament and monarchy being co- ordinated in the English mind, she had restored her King. " This government was as natural to them as their food or raiment, and naked Indians dressing themselves in French fashion were no more absurd than Englishmen without a Parliament and a King." But, having thrown off, first the despotism of Charles I., and then the despotism of military force, the country had no thought of bending to another. The new reign must take account of the feelings which had grown up during the overthrow and abeyance of monarchy. That Charles fully recognised the posi- tion was seen in his own words some months later to the House of Lords, when he spoke of "those who brought or permitted us to come here ". The people SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION, 151 might, it was hoped, be deceived by the professions made ; but made they must be. The Declaration of Breda, a monument to Hyde's legal subtlety and clear perception of the whole field of strategy, was admirably suited to the object in view. By the most careful expression of deference to the authority of the Parliament, he trusted to lull suspicion until the King should be steady enough upon the throne to use his constitutional power of dissolution at a favourable moment, when he would be able to secure a Parliament more to his wishes. The foremost question in men's minds was how far retaliation would be allowed free play. Had the Restoration been the work of a victorious Royalist movement, the passions aroused would have been quenched, the accumulated injuries of years avenged, in torrents of blood. But it was primarily the re- establishment of parliamentary government ; and thus it was that the Declaration granted a general pardon to all who, by any open act, returned to loyalty and obedience within forty days, excepting only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by Parliament. It contained no demand even for vengeance upon the murderers of Charles I. A significant hint, however, was given in the letter to the Speaker which ac- companied the Declaration. " If there be a crying sin for which the Nation may be involved in the infamy which attends it, we cannot doubt that you will be as 152 CHARLES II. solicitous to redeem and vindicate the nation from that guilt and infamy as we can be/' The question of the Church was treated under the same conditions. The Presbyterian was looking for- ward with eager anxiety, the Anglican Churchman with exultant hope. To quiet the one, but in terms which might afterwards leave the field clear to the other, Charles proclaimed on his own account a com- plete " liberty to tender consciences," declaring himself ready '' to consent to such an Act of Parliament as, upon mature deliberation, shall be offered to Us for the full granting that indulgence ". The re-settlement of the land was next dealt with. During the wars many estates had changed hands. The Crown lands and those of Church dignitaries had been confiscated by the Commonwealth, and sold. About them nothing was said in the Declaration. As to private estates, either granted away by the Common- wealth, or sold by distressed Royalists, the decision was left absolutely in the hands of Parliament. In another matter the Declaration expressed how com- pletely the Restoration was one of sufferance. It concluded with a promise to consent to any Act of Parliament '' for the full satisfaction of all arrears due to the officers and soldiers of the army under the command of General Monk/' and to receive them into the royal service, " upon as good pay and conditions as they now enjoy ". SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION, 153 The recognition of the absolute authority of Padia- ment in questions regarding the Church and the land, the complete waiving of a desire for personal vengeance, the satisfaction of Monk's army, these were the condi- tions under which Charles was allowed to return to England. At the Hague, whither he had gone on the invita- tion of the States, Charles tasted the first intoxicating delights of the astounding change which had in a moment translated him from the penniless vagrancy of a princely outcast to the glories of a throne. They came to him first in the altered attitude of the powers which had alternately fed or starved him, exalted or humiliated. Mazarin was foremost with his con- } gratulations, and the offer of either of his well-dowered ' nieces ; but the position of Fonterabia was now re- versed. Unstinted hospitality and a purse of ;^6,ooo marked the change in the States who, in fear of Cromwell, had dismissed him from their territory. " Whoever is King of England," they said, " were it the Devil himself, we must be friends with him." Money flowed in from all sides. ;^50,ooo came from the Parliament, with large presents for James and Gloucester ; and Pepys describes the naive delight with which, on May 16, Charles called his sister Mary to come and gaze upon the money while it lay in the . portmanteau. It was as if a starving tramp had picked | up a half-crown. 154 CHARLES II. Foreign ambassadors, English Royalists who had done much for him, and many who were hoping to reap from soil where they had not sown, those who had everything to hope, and those who had much to fear ; Parliamentary deputations. Church Divines and Presbyterian ministers, crowded the Hague. Schooled by Hyde, and aided by his own natural and acquired powers, the King performed his part with all due observance. From occasional outbreaks of his peculiar humour, however, he could not be stopped. When a body of persons who had done nothing but shout with the crowd claimed audience, he called for wine to be brought ; drank their healths with all imaginable courtesy, and dismissed them with the remark that " he was now even with them, having as he thought done as , much for them as they had done for him ". And in the midst of it all he found time and heart to send a letter to " deare deare sister,*' the sweet young girl to whom he had given all the love of which he was capable. No absence, he said, nor any other cause could alter that love ; and none who were with him could ever share it. He thanked her for the song she had sent him, though he did not know whether it was pretty, as Jeanneton had not yet learnt it ; and commissioned her to choose the trimming and feathers for his summer clothes. On May 23, surrounded by his relatives, with every SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION, 155 circumstance of florid pomp, and with " infinite shoot- ing off of guns/' Charles went on board the Naseby — - rechristened after dinner by him with his own name. The mere fact of being afloat, as " the anchor was weighed and with a fresh gale and most happy weather we set sail for England," was enough to exhilarate the lover of the sea, who had not been on salt water since he had landed at Fecamp, a worn, haggard, and hunted man, nine years before. All that evening he walked the deck incessantly, and told his eager listeners the story of the wonderful escape ; and it was long after Pepys's usual bedtime before he released his audience. At daybreak on the next day but one the Royal Charles was close in shore at* Dover. Charles behaved like the philosopher he was. He knew he had a hard day be- fore him ; he sent for his brothers from their ships, and the three sat down to peas and pork, and boiled beef, with the robust appetite which had shocked the Grande Mademoiselle when, years before, he had thrown him- self upon the shoulder of mutton instead of trifling with the unsatisfying ortolans. It was not until past noon that, attended by his brothers and Montague, he rowed ashore in the ship's barge, while Pepys, with a dog which the King loved, was able to land at the same moment, and see all that went on. He saw the greet- ing with Monk, which showed that the successful soldier of fortune had placed his sheathed sword in Charles's hand. He saw the Mayor give up and 156 CHARLES II. receive back again the sign of his office — token that the civil power knew its lawful King. He saw the solemn presentation of *' a very rich Bible," which, with the ease born of his Scotch experiences, the King declared to be the thing he loved above all things in the world. " And so into a stately coach there set for him, and so away through the town towards Canter- bury," and for the present Pepys saw him no more. Through shouting multitudes, through " divers gallant troops of horse," in which the meanest rider was some gentleman of note, through the foot regiments of Kentish men, he passed over Barham Down to Can- terbury. Slowly he rode along streets loud with music, amid civic ceremonies and gifts, to Lord Camden's house. And there he sat down and wrote to his child- sister thus : '' I was so tormented with business at the Hague, that I could not write to you before my depar- ture" — he had forgotten the letter we have quoted — '* but I left orders with my sister to send you a small present from me which I hope you will soon receave. . . . My head is so dreadfully stunned with the accla- mations of the people and the vast amount of businesse, that I know not whether I am writing sense or non- sense. Therefore pardon me if I say no more than that I am entirely yours — For my deare sister." And the next day, and the next, from Canterbury to Rochester, from Rochester to London, through garlanded streets, through the sombre regiments, SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION. 157 through bands of *' proper maids, clad all alike in white garments, with scarfs about them," who strewed his path with flowers ; past conduits running wine, amid all the civic glories of the ancient city, amid the i blare of trumpets, and the blaze of colour, and the ' thundering of guns, the wanderer of a month back rode to Whitehall at seven on the evening of the 29th, ., and received, through the Houses of Parliament, the , allegiance of the kingdom to which Hyde's prudence, ! and Cromwell's Major-Generals, and the force of old \ associations, had, after more than fourteen years of i exile, at length brought him. When Manchester in the name of the Peers of England gave welcome to " the desire of three Kingdoms," the King excused himself for making an inadequate reply, "so disordered by my journey, and with the noise still sounding in my ears " ; but bade all to be confident that " next to the honour of God ... I shall study the welfare of my people ; and shall not only be a true defender of the faith, but a just asserter of the laws and liberties of - my subjects ". England had become England again. "A thing had happened, never read of in history, that, when Monarchy was laid aside at the expense of so much blood, it should return again without the shedding of one drop." And Evelyn was but one of thousands who " stood in the Strand, and beheld it, and blessed \ \ God. ... It was the Lord's doing, for such a restora- 158 CHARLES IT. tion was never mentioned in any history, ancient or modern, since the return of the Jews from the Baby- lonish captivity." Another besides Charles entered upon a kingdom that night. There were those about him who studied his well-known tastes. After the receptions were over, and the feasting done, the restored Monarch, to whom the honour of God stood first, retired to rest — whether in the bedchamber at Whitehall, or whether in the house of Samuel Morland across the water — in the exultant arms of Barbara Palmer. This abandoned woman came of good stock. She was the only child of William Villiers, second Vis- count Grandison, who gave his life for the Stuart cause. Her mother was daughter of Lord Bayning. Barbara Villiers was one of those happily rare women for whom unchastity has invincible attractions. Be- fore she was sixteen years of age she had given her- self, with zest and without the slightest reserve, to Philip Stanhope, the second Earl of Chesterfield ; and apparently not to him alone. In April, 1659, she married Roger Palmer, a student at the Temple, who carried messages from England to Charles in February, 1660. A little later we shall find him ac- cepting an empty title as the price of his wife's public dishonour. But, poor creature as he was, and sus- picious as are many of the circumstances, there is no evidence that he was in the first instance privy to this SCOTLAND, EXILE, AND RESTORATION, 159 preferment. It is noticeable that Chesterfield, who was still Barbara s lover, came with the King in the Royal Charles; it was probably through his good offices that she secured the dominion which she kept almost unimpaired for ten years. " The finest woman of her age," as she is described by one who did not love her, with the form and carriage of a goddess, an exquisite and petulant beauty which carried conquest in every mood, and the triumphant freshness of youth and of buoyant physical health, she established from that moment an unquestioned despotism over the de- bauchee of southern blood for whom she was indeed a fitting mate ; a despotism which suffered no weakening as every day she increasingly betrayed a coarseness of tongue, a vulgarity of hate, an insatiable rapacity, and a promiscuity of vice, which might have revolted the most fallen of her sex ; a despotism which was certain to fail when the attractiveness of her person began to wane, but which failed only then. CHAPTER III. CHARLES AND CLARENDON. Since the grandfather of Charles received the crown from Elizabeth a change had come over the meaning of the word ' Monarchy,' which was amply illustrated by the Declaration from Breda. The old phrases might be used in Parliamentary addresses ; the absence of all conditions imposed by the Houses might be dwelt upon by exulting Royalists ; but every one knew that there were conditions, and that the phrases merely veiled a profoundly altered set of relations. Nominally the prerogative remained what it was before thirty years of strife had taught their lessons ; but none the less it was clear that * Prerogative ' and ' Parliament,' ' executive ' and ' legislative,' were terms which had received new interpretations in men^s minds, and must now undergo, in practical application, a serious and frank revision, if the English Monarchy, the English Parliament, and the English people were to live in harmony during the reign which opened in such a delirium of satisfaction. Even more pressing was the question. What was the new Church to be ? How were i6o CHARLES AND CLARENDON. t6i the lessons of the last generation to be applied to her ? There was no place in England for another Strafford ; was there a place for another Laud ? Was the Church to return to her old powers, her old possessions ? Was she to be the Erastian Church of Elizabeth, the Anglican Church of Charles I. ? Was Presbyterianism to be bowed to, or comprehended, or tolerated, or hounded out of her borders ? What was to become of * tender consciences,' of Independents, of Anabaptists, of the thousand sects which had sprung up? How were the promises made by Charles to the Catholics to be redeemed, when it was remembered that the mere re- port of his conversion had been enough to imperil his return ? What, in fact, was to become of the first part of the great inheritance left by Cromwell — toleration ? But it was not these comprehensive issues which for the moment pressed most heavily. The problems which called for solution without a day's unnecessary delay were those of life and property, and of freedom from the rule of the sword. That the regicides should suffer was understood by all ; but how much farther was vengeance to be carried ? It was not disputed that the Church and Crown lands which had been confiscated and sold by the Commonwealth should revert to the Church and Crown ; but were men who had paid hard cash in fair bargain for the lands of necessitous Royal- ists to be robbed because they had been on the wrong side ? And lastly, what was to be done with the Army, II i62 CHARLES II. that army which had destroyed in turn the Monarchy and the Parh'ament, and which even now might in a moment throw all into confusion ? Neither Monarchy nor Parliament could breathe freely until it was gone. And, when it was gone, who would occupy the vacant field of force ? Who was to enter into the second part of Cromwell's legacy — the power of the sword ? Such were some of the questions which, at this particular phase of the great controversy that had opened out when James I. came to the throne, and, in its essentials, closed when James II. left it, de- manded skilful, and in some cases immediate, reply. And of what sort was the King upon whom that reply rested ? The preceding pages will indeed have been written in vain if this is doubtful ; for they are a record, however slight, of his life, and he was what his life had made him. Before he was thirteen years old he had learned that there was no divinity that hedged a king ; and after four years of confusion and defeat, of the " noise of the captains and the shouting," he had begun his long exile. Once indeed, with a foreign army, he had again entered the land he hoped to rule, and had been chased out of it with a price upon his head. In France he had been taught the same lesson as in England, the lesson of war between king and subjects. During nine years he had remained almost ignorant of the opinions of English people upon the matters that were of chief importance to them ; and, CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 163 while thoroughly English in his physical vigour, his love of the sea and of all forms of active sport, he was politically a foreigner to his country. He knew more of France and Spain, of the Flemings and the Dutch, far more of Scotland, than he did of England. No less was he the slave of circumstance in his personal habits. Separated from the father whose private life was beyond reproach, fretting under the control of a mother with whom there was no sympathy, he had learned under the tuition of Buckingham every evil lesson that that most despicable man could teach. From the age of sixteen he had given the rein to his animal passions. He was without love, save for his child-sister ; without friendships. Too healthy and too indolent to be ill-humoured, he concealed under the easy good-temper which so fascinated little minds an inveterate selfishness and an oriental ingratitude. He had acquired patience, but it was that ignoble form of patience which consists in waiting for difficulties to conquer themselves. He had grown accustomed to beg with effrontery, and to betray without shame. In France and in Flanders he had learned that religion was a matter of gorgeous ceremonies and easy morals ; in Scotland he had learned that it was an austere and hateful tyranny. For the rest, he had a cool head, much astuteness, considerable insight into character, adaptability and imagination, a certain curious indi- viduality of view and of action, and a sense of humour. II * i64 CHARLES II. It was not a king of this temper — a king who, though not wicked on the grand scale, had no worthier standard of right and wrong than his own way and his own ease — -who could understand the proud boast of Elizabeth — words which, after more than three centuries, make every string of patriotism vibrate — " Nothing, no worldly thing under the sun, is so dear to me as the love and goodwill of my subjects ". His father's last utterance from the Isle of Wight, the adjuration of Newcastle that he should strive to be a '* brave, just and noble King," were to him decent but unpractical verbiage. He did not come to conduct a mighty people. Nor did he mean to risk reviving that people's enmity to the point of danger. He had reached the haven of long-deferred hope ; to maintain himself there — to go no more on his travels — he was prepared to palter with truth, and soon to lie down- right, to make base subservience to opposition or unworthy inducement, to trick and to cajole. A hostage in France, a puppet in Scotland, a mendicant and a dupe in Flanders, he had conceived no ambition to lead, no will to oppose greatly, no grace to yield to a people's desires in such a way as to command en- during respect. It was indeed fortunate that, being such as he was, Charles had Hyde with him. If the Restoration was a personal triumph for the Chancellor, no less its safe passage through its early difficulties was due more to CHARLES AND CLARENDON, 165 him than to any other man or men. His industry, honesty, firmness, and knowledge of men and parties, and his familiarity with constitutional law, eminently fitted him to deal first with the pressing difficulties of the moment, and then with the restoration of the old parliamentary monarchy in conjunction with the Anglican Church, under such modifications as the last twenty years had rendered necessary ; to bring back the country to the broad lines of a constitution which he loved. The immediate objects before him were to limit the demand for vengeance, to uphold the sanctity of private contracts, to get rid of the menace of the army — already muttering discontent at having been jockeyed into the King's service — and to keep in play a House of Commons largely composed of Presby- terians until Presbyterianism could be safely attacked. The nature of his restoration had been pressed upon Charles before he reached Whitehall. Within three hours of his landing he was besieged almost beyond his good temper by the importunities of those who had suffered in the service of his father or him- self At Canterbury he realised that it was still Monk, and not he, who was master, so long as the army existed, and that it was still the Presbyterians, and not the old Royalists, who held the Parliament, when the General presented him with a list of some seventy recommendations for the Privy Council, in which there were 'those of only two of his zealous adherents. i66 CHARLES II. Hyde, however, undertook explanations which resulted in an acceptable modification ; for the astute soldier of fortune had no idea of risking the stake for which he had so skilfully played the game. And so, with a dukedom, the Garter, the command of all the forces, the Mastership of the Horse, a place in the bed- chamber, and vast rewards in money and estates. Monk entered the Council, bringing with him his friend Morrice, and the " slippery humour " of Ashley Cooper, but consenting to the omission of a large number of those whose names he had perforce officially suggested. Out of this Privy Council a small Com- mittee was formed, nominally for foreign affairs, in which was vested the whole executive power. Hyde — now Earl of Clarendon — Lord Chancellor ; Ormond, Lord Steward ; Nicholas, Secretary ; Southampton, Lord Treasurer ; these projected into the reign of Charles H. the high-toned virtues of the old Cavalier stock, and represented legitimacy in its purest form ; while Monk, Morrice— who became the second Secre- tary — and Manchester, Lord Chamberlain, stood for the other elements of the compromise. For practical purposes the whole internal policy in England rested upon Clarendon. Middleton, the Scotch Cavalier, in full possession of Clarendon's favour, was sent as High Commissioner to inaugurate the ' Drunken Adminis- tration ' in Scotland ; while Robartes, a Presbyterian who had fought for the Parliament, was placed as CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 167 Monk's deputy in the command of Ireland, until Ormond, shortly afterwards, re-assumed the Lord Lieutenancy. One most interesting source of counsel must not be unnoticed. Twenty-two years ago Charles had re- ceived from Newcastle the scheme for his education which was freely quoted in its place. And now his old governor put into his hands another lengthy letter of advice, as to how he should bear himself as king. It is Polonius advising Laertes. " King James and King Charles always about Michaelmas went to Roy- ston, in stable time, both for hunting and hawking, both at the field and at the river — this would not only refresh your M.tie with the sweet ayre and wholesome exercise, but unbende your more serious thoughts from the wayght of businesse that you would have in London. . . . This, Sir, will mentayne healthy and long life better than physicke." But the King must think of other people besides himself: on his return to Whitehall he must prepare Masks for Twelfth Tide, at which " Etalianes make the sceanes best '\ He should " invite every one by tickets from the Lord Chamberlayne . . . and the Lord Ch. to be very care- full that none else enter but those who are invited ", The second time the play is given, the Inns of Court alone should be asked ; the third time *' the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Aldermen, with the principal mer- chants and no others — a handsome banquet every i68 CHARLES II. time, and your Ma.tie to drink their welcome, which would infinitely please them '\ At other times he must give balls, and ''invite the young ladies, give them a banquet and drink their welcome with thanks ". Charles is to ride his " horses of manege " twice a week, ''which will encourage noblemen to do the like, to wayte of you and to make matches with your noble- men, so many aside, to run at the ringe, for a supper or a play, or some little jewell ; besides this, to be in the Tilt yard publicly. Upon Coronation Day there should be tilting and other horse feats, to make your Lords good horsemen and to keepe good horses. Your Ma.tie's Father of blessed memory was the best man at arms I vowe to God that I ever saw, both for grace and surenesse." If objection is raised on the score of expense, " copper-lace is very cheap, and will make as good a show for one day as the beste ; all Q. Elizabeth's days she had itt, and King James ". " For gameing serten times your M.tie will sett down, as also for Tennis and pall malle. Goffe and other recreations will do for winter." At Lent the King is to go to Newmarket — " the sweetest place in the world and the best ayre — no place like it for hunting, hawking and coursing, and Horse Races " ; he is to invite " the northern lords and gentry that hath the best horses and hounds," and to hold hound races '' with coloured ribbons ". Newmarket, it is added parenthetically with delicious, if unconscious, humour, CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 169 is especially suitable, because "while there, the Uni- versity will entertain you and send most excellent preachers every Sunday". At Easter he must be careful to send venison to the Lords and powerful men — or, better, to the ladies, "for, as Sir E. Coke sayd, the night crowe was powerful, and the gray mare is the better horse ". Whatever else he attends to, the King should amuse the people. Panern et Cir censes, Newcastle then passes to the less important phases of kingship. He trusts that his pupil will govern by love, but love mingled with fear. He must remember, as in former days, that " the great study and learning for Kings is not to reade bookes, but men ". He advises no change in Scotland — the Scots will soon petition for a change themselves. On Irish matters Newcastle is a little vague, but would have Charles bear in mind Chichester's words to James I. : '' They are a very scurvy people, your Majesty, and have been as scurvily used''. He should keep clear of Rome, for, ** though they say the Pope is chosen by the Holly Goste, if it were so I daresay the French King or the King of Spayne would offer him a bribe on either side ". As regards foreign politics, Newcastle's advice is very clean cut. "' I should humbly advise your Ma.tie to have a warre with one of these greate Kinges, and I think it would be best to begin with France. When I70 CHARLES IL that is over, have one with Spayne, and by sea too ; the French will give you money for this." At home, Charles should bear in mind that London is the great Leviathan, that England has a head too big for its body. '' Master that and you master the whole Kingdom ; disarm it totally, and arm yourself. But hide your forces, for the people loves not the cudgell." As to the Church, Newcastle expresses the old Tudor view, " Remember you are both King and Pope". The Universities need purging, and contain too many scholars; but *'that which hath done most hurte is the abundance of Grammar Schools and Inns of Court ". Newcastle urges that the Grammar Schools should be cut down to one-half, since — it might be a School Board election in the twentieth century — "they only teach boys to become clerks instead of farm-labourers and mechanics ". Charles is to give few titles of honour, to hinder Parliament from attacking his ministers, to entrust the government to none but well-trained statesmen ; to keep a bounteous table, " say ;^8o,ooo a year ". Finally, and most impressively, " Your Royal Father always wanted money. . . . Putt money in your purse and keep it, and avoid Parliaments. When you are rich, and call a Parliament, your Majesty is then master of the fields." We have often wondered whether the royal Laertes ever read the words of Polonius. It is certain that CHARLES AND CLARENDON, 171 in almost every detail Charles acted very closely in accordance with them. One marked exception there was. He tried indeed very hard to " putt money in his purse*'. But Newcastle had forgotten one adjunct of royalty, as Charles understood it. He had forgotten the expenses of a harem. In one part at least of the partial fulfilment of the Declaration from Breda Charles took an important and creditable share. There was great danger — growing greater as the days passed — that, in spite of the composite character of the House of Commons, the spirit of retaliation might even there secure a bloody satisfaction. But a far more savage temper reigned in the Lords. The bill sent up from the Commons, in consequence of an urgent message from the King, " excepted '* only eight of the King's judges " for life and estate," and some twenty more " for pains and penalties not extending to life ". The Lords re- solved that all who had signed the warrant should die ; then " all who were concerned in the murder '\ Again Charles intervened. He insisted upon drawing a broad line between the regicides and all others. But for his promise, he told the Lords plainly, neither he nor they would have been there ; his own honour and the public security alike demanded an indemnity for all except those immediately guilty of the "crying sin". In the conferences between the Houses the Lords \ lyi CHARLES 11. actually demanded the death of four members of Crom well's High Court of Justice in revenge for the death of four of their own number condemned by that court, the victims to be chosen by the relatives of the slain men ; they even proposed to bring to the scaffold all who had sat upon any court of justice by which Royalists had been tried. But Charles and Clarendon supported the Commons' resistance with their whole influence, " hoping that their Lordships would not have the sacrifice of the King's blood to be mingled with any other blood ". And so, at the price of some twenty lives, the universal fear was removed. It should not be forgotten that it was principally owing to Charles and Clarendon, that, after a civil war which had its roots in the deepest feelings which can stir men's minds, after a despotism which had been estab- lished in blood and held in its place, amid the ruins of the constitution, by the sword, and only by the sword, the restoration of the old order was accomplished with slaughter which, when compared with the wrongs which seemed to call for vengeance, was well-nigh insignificant. And when, a few months later, a new House met, the composition of which showed that a parliamen- tary movement had become a Royalist revel, and that there was a serious prospect of some tampering with the primary condition of the restoration settlement, Charles's earliest message was a distinct refusal to pass CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 173 any bill whatsoever until this Act was placed beyond dispute. It was not only in his public utterances that the King showed his distaste for severity. One day in July, 1661, when he was in Council, a question arose I as to whether another batch of prisoners should be I brought to trial. On a scrap of paper which he I passed to Clarendon, Charles wrote : " I must confess i that I am weary of hanging, except on new offences ; let it sleep. You know that I cannot pardon them." The prisoners little guessed that to these careless words they owed their lives ; as little as Vane knew, two years later, that, in spite of the King's promise, he stood upon the scaffold because, with equal flippancy, Charles had written to Clarendon that it would be well to put him away '' if it can be honestly done ". Nevertheless there was hanging and quartering enough to satisfy the man in the street. On October 13, 1660, Pepys, who had seen Charles I. killed, had a great treat — he saw the first blood shed in revenge. " I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered, which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could look in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy." Evelyn, a few days later, was unfortunate enough to miss the actual doing 174 CHARLES II. to death of four others in the presence of Charles ; he had to content himself with meeting " their quarters mangled and cut and reeking as they were brought from the gallows in baskets on the hurdle". And when we remember that the only exclamation which this sight drew from one so gentle, so refined, was " Oh, the miraculous providence of God ! " it is not easy to overestimate the value of the firmness with which Charles and Clarendon stood in the path of those who sought for blood. It was only when the religious question was seriously taken up that the difference between the views of Charles and those of his old adviser began to make itself felt. Clarendon held that the restora- tion of monarchy meant the restoration of the Church for which the monarchy had fallen. He detested the Presbyterians now, as he had always detested them, with a whole heart ; and he was resolved that they should lie under the heel of the victorious Church. But Charles had a very different object. He could not 'be expected, since he was a boy when he left England, to realise at first the strength of Anglican feeling. He, too, hated Presbyterianism, with the hatred born of his Scotch experiences ; at any rate it was not the religion for a gentleman. But on the other hand he wanted, in all earnest, to redeem his pledges to the Catholics, who had been among his father's most faithful adherents, had helped him to CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 175 escape after Worcester, had found him funds during his exile, and had been, more than others, the mark for fine, imprisonment, and confiscation. " Rebel for rebel " — he scribbled to Clarendon — " I had rather trust a Papist rebel than a Presbyterian." If Clar- endon and the Bishops were to have their way, and the Church were to be restored to her full supremacy, all hope of toleration would be gone. For the moment the most obvious plan was the emas- culation of the Church by forcing upon her a com- promise with Presbyterianism. That Clarendon ever meant this to take place, if he could prevent it, we do not for a moment believe. How far Charles him- self was sincere, it would be hard to say. But in the present state of the House of Commons all pointed to the feasibility of the plan. Charles took his part in what turned out to be an elaborate farce by making ten of the leading Presbyterian ministers royal chap- lains. He even attended their sermons. He was then desired by the Commons to select a number of divines of both persuasions, to debate the conditions of compromise. To this meeting, on October 23, he submitted the draft of a Declaration which he wished to issue. Repudiating the many oaths he had taken in Scotland to the Covenants, on the ground of con- straint, and declaring his preference for the Anglican Church as " the best fence God hath yet raised against Popery in the world," he nevertheless upheld the claims 176 CHARLES 11. of the Presbyterians to favourable treatment. The Declaration went on to create an episcopal system so modified as, with the promise of a revision of the Prayer Book, to secure an acceptance from many of the leading Presbyterians, one of whom accepted a bishopric on the faith of it. So far all had gone smoothly. And then suddenly, before he had been six months on the throne, came the cleavage, on the one side of which stood Charles alone, on the other the two great religious parties which possessed political power. A petition having been read from the Inde- pendents and Anabaptists praying for freedom of religious worship, Charles thought his opportunity was come. He proposed toleration for a//, so long as the public peace were not disturbed ; a toleration even greater than Cromwell would have allowed, whose inheritance he was claiming. A cold silence fell upon the conference, broken at length, not by the Episcopalians, but by Baxter. Without reserve he said that there could be toleration neither for such as denied the Trinity nor for Papists. Not a voice was heard in support of the King's view, and the Declara- tion was published without this clause. The King was thanked for it by Parliament, and a bill was brought in by Sir Matthew Hale to turn it into a law. But now Clarendon took part in the drama. He had no intention of baulking the Church of her rights, of seeing even a partial triumph of Presbyterianism. He CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 177 had been busy in securing a majority against any compromise. The Declaration had done its work in gaining time, and Hale's bill was rejected by 183 to 157. Parliament was at once dissolved. Even before the new House met, the mask had been thrown off by the issue of an order to the justices to see that the full liturgy of the Church was restored. In April, 1661, another conference was held in the Savoy Palace, which failed because Clarendon and the Episcopalian members, at any rate, intended it to fail. The field was again free for the full play of the vengeful passions of the Church ; and Charles, at the very threshold, had received his first lesson on the limits of his power. The extent of the reaction which followed the Restoration was disclosed when the new Parliament met in May, 1661. In a House of more than five hundred members, scarcely one in ten was of the old majority. It was " a parliament full of lewd young men, chosen by a furious people in spite to the puritans, whose severity had distasted them ". They were " of loyal families, but young men for the most I part, which being told the King, he replied that was no great fault, for he could keep them till they got beards". The great majority were prepared to go any lengths in favour of the Church. The Sacrament was imposed upon all members according to the pre- ' scribed liturgy ; the bishops were restored to their seats in the Lords, in spite of Charles's personal opposition ; 12 178 CHARLES IL I the Corporation Act — demanding an oath which Pres- i byterians would not take, as a condition of member- I ship of a municipal body — swept away at a blow their whole political influence in the corporations, where they were strongest, and thus destroyed Presby- terianism in the State. The Act of Uniformity de- stroyed it in the Church. No one might hold a living unless he had, before St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1662, publicly read the service from the new Prayer Book, which had been revised by Convocation in the sense most objectionable to the Presbyterians, and had declared his " unfeigned assent and consent " to everything therein. Finally, all incumbents, holders of university offices, schoolmasters, and private tutors, were to take the oath of the Corporation Act, renounce the Covenant, and promise to conform to the Liturgy, and "endeavour no change or alteration of govern- ment either in Church or State". The Presbyterians, for the most part, refused the terms of uniformity. On Sunday, August 17, farewell sermons were preached to crowded and sympathetic congregations ; and two thousand clergymen retired into voluntary poverty and professional exile. Hence- forward Presbyterianism was the mode of thought, not of a large part of the English Church, but of a dissenting sect ; the Church of England had taken the shape which it holds to this day. The King was soon to learn how completely he was CHARLES AND CLARENDON, 179 in the grasp of the Church ; he had already become conscious of very galling constraint. The resolve of the Commons to bring in the Uniformity Bill had been the firmer because it was known that he was opposed to stringency. In the midst of the Royalist riot they had been careful to give him such a revenue only as should keep him poor — because, in Marvel's gravely ironical words, *' 'tis good to leave something to give hereafter" — and his financial difficulties gave them the complete control of the situation. They used their power to wring from him a personal de- claration of allegiance to the Church. On March i, 1662, he complained to the House of the unworthy suspicions against himself, declared that he was zealous for the Church and " in love with the book of Common Prayer," and expressed his desire for the Act of Uniformity. He was supplied with money, and was then called upon to fulfil his part of the bargain. But the Act having been passed, and Parliament prorogued, Charles began his running fight for the prerogative by announcing his intention of sus- pending execution ; and when Clarendon opposed so unconstitutional an assumption of power, he induced him to give way on the grounds that his honour was pledged to this cause. At the back of Clarendon however, stood the bishops ; and their resistance, led by Sheldon, " a mighty stout man, a man of a brave high spirit," who represented with great ability the 12 * i8o CHARLES II. irreconcilable section of the Church, speedily con- vinced Charles of the imprudence of the step. Foiled in this first attempt to snatch the suspensory power, he was now to have still more emphatic evidence of the limits to his independent action. The Commons had separated in May, 1662, gratified by their triumph over the Presbyterians in the Corporation and Uniformity Acts. They met again in February, 1663, to find themselves confronted by an enemy whom they feared and detested with a still keener hate and terror. The dominant factor in the feverish politics of this reign is to be found in the feeling of the ordinary English mind regarding Popery. Churchmen might despise and persecute the Presby- terians ; the Presbyterians, as in Scotland, might regard the independent sects as the advocates of the Devil ; but in all of them hatred of Popery was the master impulse. Foxe's Book of Martyrs was favourite reading, and the fires of Smithfield were in the English imagination ready to burst into flame. Another Armada seemed to hang like a dark cloud upon our shores, and a fresh Gunpowd^. Plot might at any moment come to light. There was no atrocity which was not held to be natural to the Papists ; the very debauchery of the Court was laid to their charge ; and the cry which greeted the early Christians in Rome — " Christianos ad leones ! " — never rang more pitilessly than the execrations which, when the panic CHARLES AND CLARENDON. i8i rose to its height, were hurled at the " Bloody Papists ". To the Englishman, then, it was the first duty of his king to hate and combat ''this last and insolentest attempt on the credulity of mankind '* ! But, first to his astonishment, and then to his indignant fury, he found, or thought he found, that Charles was of alto- gether another mind. For, during the recess, the King had again de- liberately challenged this ingrained feeling of the nation. On December 26, 1662, he had issued a declaration expressing his intention of doing his best to induce Parliament to mitigate the rigour of the Act of Uniformity, and " to concur with him in making :some Act for that purpose, as may enable him to exercise, with a more universal satisfaction, ^/ta^ power of dispensing which he conceived to be inherent in him " ; the very claim which, under the pressure of the bishops, he had for the moment relinquished. This declaration drew from Sheldon a letter in which the iniquity of the proposal, ''as tending to set up that most damnable and heretical doctrine of the Church of Rome, whore of Babylon," was set before him in the plainest language. Undeterred by this fulmination, the King met Parliament on February 18 with a speech in which he declared himself " in nature an enemy to all severity for religion and conscience " ; and while disclaiming any intention of favouring the i82 CHARLES II. Papists, and desiring that laws might be made to hinder the spread of their doctrines, he asked for such a power of indulgence, ''to use upon occasions," as might not needlessly force the Dissenters out of the kingdom, or give them cause to conspire against its peace. So astute was the evasion that no one could have guessed that Charles was at this very time in secret communication with the Pope Alexander VII, for a reconstitution of the English Church, whereby, while retaining her national and independent character, she should nominally acknowledge the Holy See as her head. Nevertheless, before the words were well out of the King's mouth, all men saw before them in tangible shape the enemy they dreaded most. They had kept out the fox, said William Coventry ; were they now to let the wolf into the fold ? They did not know whether Charles was himself a Catholic. But there was much going on to cause suspicion, and, in every place where he wrote ' Dissent,' the English mind read ' Pope of Rome '. He did not remain long in ignorance of the feelings he had aroused. Within a week the Commons answered his appeal by a remon- strance of the boldest character, wherein they put be- fore him clearly the conditions on which he might expect to enjoy his throne. At all hazards Popery was to be kept out of the kingdom, by the maintenance of a State Church. Charles was given to understand that CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 183 supply would depend upon the immediate issue of a proclamation banishing all Catholic priests, and he yielded at once. But he was anxious to keep the future treatment of the whole question as far as possible in his own hands, and he evaded farther pressure by a pro- rogation. By the time the Houses reassembled Protestant rather than Catholic Dissent again claimed their attention. The Act of Uniformity had led to unauthorised religious meetings, or ^ conventicles,' against which the Anglican clergy and the Commons inveighed as hot-beds of schism and sedition. Charles had already learned to abandon resistance where attack was persistent, and he was anxious for a farther supply ; he therefore gave his assent to the First Con- venticle Act. This iniquitous measure absolutely for- bade, under crushing penalties, all meetings of more than four persons besides the household for religious services other than those allowed by the Church. Upon the Quakers the blow fell with special weight, for the novelty of their doctrines caused them to be more suspected than any others. Pepys relates how he saw several being dragged through the streets, and his only comment is : " They go like lambs, without any resistance. I would to God they would conform, or be more wise and not be catched." The appetite for persecution grew ; and before long an Act still more cruel and drastic was carried i84 CHARLES IT. in the Commons without a division. During the desolation of the Plague, many of the clergy had fled from London. The deposed Presbyterian ministers stepped into their pulpits without authorisation, and once more gathered eager congregations. But the vigilance of the Anglican Church was not relaxed. The old cry was raised of " schism and rebellion ". At the October session at Oxford, in 1665, it was determined to prepare " a shibboleth, a test to dis- tinguish amongst those who will be peaceable and give hopes of future conformity and who of malice and evil disposition remain obdurate " ; and once more the pressing need of supplies compelled Charles to give way. The Five Mile Act laid down that no Non- conformist minister was henceforth to teach in schools or to come within five miles of any city, corporate town, or Parliamentary borough, unless he had previ- ously subscribed an oath denying the lawfulness of taking arms under any circumstances against the King or those commissioned by him, and, as in the Act of Uniformity, had declared that he would not "at any time endeavour any alteration of government in Church or State". The machinery of persecution was now complete. The Corporation and Uniformity Acts had eliminated Presbyterianism from State and Church. By the Conventicle and Five Mile Acts Parliament answered the claim of Dissent to tolerable existence. CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 185 These concessions to the blind rancour of Anglican- ism, which put Charles's hope of favouring the Catholics every day farther out of sight, formed, then, the price which he paid for Parliamentary grants. He would fain have carried out Newcastle's advice, to put money in his purse. But the revenue settled upon him by Parliament was quite inadequate to the various calls of government, the payment of debts incurred abroad, the satisfaction of Royalist demands, and the expenses of his more disreputable pleasures. Still less was it sufficient to enable him to gratify the desire, fitfully entertained for many years, of ruling as Louis XIV. ruled, of establishing an intelligent despotism, founded upon armed force and the sympathy of Dissent, and independent of Parliament. He resolved therefore to secure his freedom from control by other means ; and this resolve is the explanation of his foreign policy throughout the reign. His first application had been to the Dutch ; and from them, as the price of an alliance, he had demanded two millions. The renewal, however, of the Navigation Act of 165 1, by which their carrying trade had in a great measure been destroyed, formed an insuperable obstacle to union. Charles had plenty of alternatives, for Spain, France, and Portugal were approaching him with rival offers. In September, 1660, he let the Spaniards understand that his active friendship was merely a question of price. They offered him what- i86 CHARLES II. ever money he might want, but they coupled with this offer the inadmissible demand that Jamaica and Dun- kirk should be restored to them. France stepped into the vacant place. A close understanding between the two Crowns was a natural one from the dynastic and personal points of view ; for Charles was more than half French by blood, and had received much kindness from his cousin. French statecraft pointed the same way. Louis and Mazarin had indeed ample reasons for desiring not merely to form an immediate compact, but to secure a permanent influence at Charles's Court. They hoped to do this by finding him a rich, beautiful, and clever wife. They had her, they thought, to their hand. Hortense Mancini, then in the full pride of her rich southern beauty, was still unmarried, and she was now offered to Charles with a dowry of 4,000,000 francs. But Charles had not yet forgotten the refusal at Fonterabia, and he curtly remarked that when he married it would be to please himself His choice, however, was limited. The available Protestant princesses were Germans, and they were all " foggy ". And so it came to pass that after all he married, not to please himself, but to please Louis XIV. At the Peace of the Pyrenees Louis had bound himself to give no aid to Portugal, then engaged in her war of independence with Spain ; and he now saw the means of evading this engagement. The marriage CHARLES AND CLARENDON. (1S7} of Charles with the Infanta Catherine was a signal victory for French influence. Portugal gave a mag- nificent dowry — Tangier and Bombay, freedom of commerce in Brazil and the East Indies, religious liberty for English subjects in all Portuguese territories, and half a million sterling. Charles in return bound himself — while avoiding any declaration of war upon Spain — to assist Portugal with a force of 3,000 men and 1,000 horses, and to put eight frigates at her disposal. To enable him to carry out these terms, Louis made him a present of ;^8o,ooo. A little later, against the earnest opposition of Clarendon, Dunkirk was sold to the French for ;^200,ooo. The marriage was entirely consonant with the Cromwellian policy of making us, in Dryden's magnificent phrase, " freemen of the continent " ; for it secured vast commercial advantages, and implied an active interest in con- tinental politics. The sale of Dunkirk, on the other hand, however advisable as an economic measure, was as absolute a negation of that policy, and spread dismay among the Protestant powers. For this Charles cared little. He looked to the money to provide himself with the army which should some day make him in- dependent of Parliament. In one respect Louis had missed his aim. It soon became evident that he could not obtain, through the Queen, that personal control which he had hoped to secure over Charles. Not even the cleverest of women i88 CHARLES 11. could have guided the descendant of Henry IV., if she were not possessed of physical charm. Catherine was neither well favoured nor clever. Even the portraits of the Court painters can go no farther than to bear out Pepys' indulgent verdict : "nothing charming, yet she hath a good, modest, innocent look ". Probably not even Henry VHI., when he first saw Anne of Cleves, was more chagrined than Charles when he met his wife. The ungraceful dress, and the gro- tesquely unbecoming method of wearing the hair which prevailed in Portugal, added to her unattractive- ness. He " thought they had brought him a bat instead of a woman ; but it was too late to find fault and he must make the best he could of a bad matter '\ Writing privately to Clarendon of his first interview — the letter is a trifle too frank for complete insertion — -he declared generously that '* there was nothing in her face that can in the least shame one ". " Brought up in a monastery" — says Reresby — "her education was so different from his that she had nothing visible about her capable to make the King forget his inclina- tion to the Countess of Castlemaine ". Here was the rub. On the one side the wife, ignorant and bigoted as only women of her country and training could be, awkward in manner, unversed in female arts or graces, of short, broad figure, '* her teeth wronging her mouth by sticking a little too far out," with "nauseous dis- tempers," and, at the best, with nothing absolutely CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 189 displeasing in her face ; on the other side the mistress, " the finest woman of her age," radiant in health and beauty, with everything in face and form, in self- abandonment and effrontery, that could make her attractive to such as Charles ; the lust of the eye incarnate. Two other marriages had already taken place in the King's family. In 1655, at Aix-la-Chapelle, Claren- don's daughter Anne Hyde had been placed in the service of Mary of Orange as maid-of-honour, and had remained with her to the Restoration. James fell in love with her when on a visit to his sister, promised her marriage, and seduced her. At the Restoration she returned to her father ; and, finding herself with child, appealed to James, who married her at Clarendon's residence on September 3, 1660, in time to legitimate the boy who was born in October. Hitherto the story is sufficiently commonplace. But then James appears to have behaved like a cur. Clarendon's statement that he denied the marriage, in spite of the injured woman's asseverations in her pangs, is indeed incredible ; for there were witnesses to the ceremony, and one of them was Ossory, Or- mond's gallant son, who was no more likely to give his name to a lie than was his father. But that James listened to the groundless assertion of his blackguard friend, Charles Berkeley, that his wife had had criminal relations with other men — with Berkeley himself igo CHARLES IT. indeed — is certain ; and it is equally certain that he sought on the strength of this to have the marriage declared invalid. Charles, to his credit, refused to countenance the fraud, and was justified when Berkeley confessed his own infamy. In spite of the passionate opposition of the Queen Mother, who came over with her daughters to stop the union of her son with one of such modest birth, the marriage, which gave two queens to England, was publicly owned before the end of the year. Another alliance for which the Queen Mother came to ask, not Charles's refusal, but his sanction as head of his family, was that of his sister Henrietta with Philip of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV. Born amid the din and the turmoil of a beleaguered city ; carried as a peasant's infant through hostile armies by her intrepid governess, Lady Dalkeith ; a sweet and courteous child — Reresby gives us a delightful picture of her — beautiful among the fairest of the French Court, and clever as she was beautiful ; ad- mired by poets, dramatists, soldiers, and divines, by her cousin Louis most of all ; deeply wronged by a worthless husband ; sometimes indiscreet, yet always pure ; it is not all this which gives to Henrietta a special interest. Nor is it that she became the political confidant of Louis and Charles ; nor is it the pitiful tragedy of her death. It is, as has been said before, that she was the only woman whom Charles ever loved. CHARLES AND CLARENDON, igi A single relic of her visit remains upon one of the hasty notes which passed across the Council table. " I would willingly," writes Charles, " make a visit to my sister (at Tunbridge) . . . when can I best spare the tyme?" ''I suppose," rejoins Clarendon, "you will go with a light trayne ? " "I intend to take nothing but my night bag." " You will not go with- out 40 or 50 horse ! " ''I count that parte of my night bag." We must now deal somewhat more closely with Charles himself and the Court for which he was re- sponsible ; and indeed it was a sorry sight, although its colour and glitter of movement have attracted and will for ever attract the indulgent interest of those who do not know, or do not care to realise, the truth. The keynote of the King s way of looking at life and kingship was struck on the day after his entry into London, To the great edification of the righteous — of Pepys and the Fleet especially — he issued a pro- clamation against swearing and drinking. Four days later he was himself drinking to excess in the Mul- berry Gardens till two in the morning ; and on June 28 the Earl of Sandwich could not get to bed before five, as he had been supping with the King, Charles understood the art of devolution. There is ample testimony that he was an excellent, if somewhat unconventional, committee-man ; but, on the whole. 192 CHARLES II, " business was left to the Earl of Clarendon ; and the King, as he was of an age and vigour for it, followed his pleasures ; and if amongst those love prevailed with him more than others, he was thus far excusable, besides that his complexion led him to it, the women seemed to be the aggressors, and I have since heard the King say did sometimes offer themselves to his embraces. The two Dukes, his brothers, were no less lovers of the sex than himself." In other words, Charles gave the signal for idleness and debauchery ; and, by the middle of 1661, the "lewdness and beggary of the Court, the drinking, swearing, and loose amours," were too notorious for silence. To much of Newcastle's advice Charles gave sedulous attention. " For gameing sertentimes your Majesty will sett down." The Twelfth Night gaming tables were in full swing in 1662. Evelyn tells us that " according to custom his Majesty " — who does not appear to have gambled farther than in this formal way — "opened the revels of that night by throwing the dice himself in the privy chamber, where was a table set on purpose, and lost his ;^ioo. The ladies also played very deep. I came away when the Duke of Ormond had won about ;^ 1,000. ... At other tables, both there and at the groom porter's, observing the wicked folly and monstrous excess of passion amongst some losers ; sorry I am that such a wretched custom as play to that excess should be countenanced CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 193 in a court which ought to be an example of virtue to the rest of the Kingdom," On the last day of the year Whitehall was " crammed with fine ladies, the prettiest at the Court," who were well able to appreci- ate the delicate humour of the King when he called for the first country dance, "which was," says he, " ' Cuckolds all awry,' the old dance of England ". *' Dancing, with fiddlers, all night almost, at Lady Castlemaine's," and suppers, such as those reported to us by De Cominges, with " the most illustrious libertines of the Kingdom," at which took place scenes of licence which would lose by transcription ; such occupations would stand for a good many dates in the royal diary. These were the more innocent relaxations of the Court. To try to describe the darker side — to throw open fully the doors of that temple of unabashed wickedness, where Lady Castlemaine sat enthroned, triumphant goddess of lust — is forbidden by the re- ticence of modern life. The passage of sorrowful eloquence in which Clarendon describes the moral and social disintegration, the destruction of all family ties, the loss of individual honour in men and women alike, which had resulted from the political upheaval of the past thirty years, is well known. In such loose soil every base character grew unchecked to rankness ; the Berkeleys and the Bennets, the Buck- inghams and the Sedleys, the Chiffinches and the 13 194 CHARLES IL Bab Mays, among men ; the Castlemaines and their like, among women ; while austere men like Claren- don, and high-souled men like Ormond, and cultured men like Evelyn, and — bitterest condemnation and shame of all — prurient bourgeois like Pepys, looked on at '' the burning lusts, the profane and abominable lives," with sorrow and contempt. And there are a few pure women also, who gaze shuddering, or hide their faces in very shame. " The Committee to get Mrs. Stewart for the King " — Frances Stewart, with whom he was ''besotted," but who managed after all to rise so far above her sisters as to leave her virtue an open question, and to become, as Duchess of Richmond, an 'honest woman ' ; Charles, when she escaped him, furious as a satyr who has missed his clutch at a wood nymph ; his "sottish slavery" a jest to every boy in the street ; factions high between him and James, and all the bestial Court " in an uproar with their loose amours " ; Sedley and Buckhurst running naked through the streets, beaten by the watch, and locked up all night — " the King taking their parts " ; Charles too drunk to give audience to Arlington on his way to New- market, and making the fiddlers at Thetford sing all the obscene songs they could think of; Lady Castle- maine declaring that her little daughter will be " the first mayd in the court that will be married," flaunting ;^40,ooo of jewels upon her dress, and receiving the CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 195 " bold petition of the poor whores of London " ; swear- ing that the King should own her child, and that she would have it christened in the chapel at Whitehall to proclaim his assent, or she would bring it to the gallery and dash the brains of it out before his face ; the maids-of-honour at the royal chapel breaking out in unrestrained mirth when the chaplain discoursed on marriage and continence ; the " King's friends " whipped up from the taverns and brothels of West- minster to vote against some obnoxious measure ; Charles robbed and kidnapped in a disreputable house at Newmarket, and obliged to disclose his identity before he was set free ; or at supper at the rooms of his bastard son's young wife, with his usual associates, " all mad in hunting a poor moth,'' while the Dutch guns could be heard roaring in the Thames, and London lay in ruins ; all this, and a thousand times more, would be needed before we could duly gauge the riot of recklessness and sin in which the Court was steeped. With one anecdote we will close the record of shame — and we choose it because a historical writer of repute, who has given special attention to this time, has gravely stated that Charles was free of the vice of drinking. The King and his brother with a chosen band were out hunting when " they came to Sir George Carteret's house at Cranbourne, and there they were entertained and all made drunk ; and being drunk, Armorer did come to the King and swore to him, * by 13 * ige CHARLES II. God, Sir,' says he, *you are not so kind to the Duke of York of late as you used to be '. ' Not I ? ' says the King. ' Why so ? ' ' Why,' says he, ' if you are, let us drink his health.' ' Why, let us,' says the King. Then he fell on his knees and drank it ; and having done, the King began to drink it. ' Nay, Sir,' says Armorer, ' by God you must do it on your knees ! ' So he did, and all the company ; and having done it, all fell a-crying for joy, being all maudlin and kissing one another, the King and the Duke of York, and the Duke of York and the King ; and in such a maudlin pickle as never people were ; and so passed the day." So that men were constrained to say : " of all places, if there be hell, it is here ; no faith, no truth, no love, nor any agreement between man and wife, or friends ". Make what excuses we may — and they re- side only in the earlier pages of this book — of all this the memory of Charles must rightly bear the shame. '' Blush, oh heavens," — so speaks an anonymous writer — " and be astonished, oh earth ; a people loved of God, and so often saved by his wonderful provi- dence, are become the Tyre and Sidon, the Sodom and Gomorrah of the world. Let us repent in dust and ashes, let us turn to God from the bottom of our hearts, with fervent love and good works of our martyred ancestors, or their life and death will rise up in judgment against us, and God will yet suffer their and our enemies to swallow us up quick." CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 197 We must, however, guard against the impression that the vice of Whitehall was reflected in the homes of the country gentlemen — the Verneys, the Ishams, the Norths, the Harleys, and their like — or that it passed without protest from them. The private family correspondence of the time abounds with expressions of dismay at the state of London, " that wicked towne," and with hopes that the younger members who have to go there will '' remain pure in the general profanity of London ". " Sin,'' wrote Sir E. Harley, '* every day grows high and impudent : the Lord, I trust, will graciously provide a hiding place for his poor children." " My children " — said Lady Fitz- Jamesr — " are in no heart to marry ; and I believe if they do not marry till they can have religious men, they never will. I think they will not be in the worse condition if they never do, unless men were better . . . than as the world goes now." To leave Charles with no farther comment, no saving clause, would however be false to fact. His character was curiously multiple. There never lived a king who more openly, though in his own peculiar fashion, declared his admiration for honesty, purity, and loftiness of mind ; and while he led the devil's dance of drunkenness and prostitution, he never concealed his contempt for his followers : Sedley was good enough to drink with, and Buckingham made a rare fool. We know them all well, these ( I I I 198 CHARLES II. shameless men and women, and we are apt to think that none other were in the Court It is but right to lay emphasis upon the Ormonds and the Annesleys, the Evelyns, the Morays, and the Marvels. Charles's intellectual tastes moreover were keen, like his insight into character and his business aptitude, until all fell together into the dreary decadence which attends upon unbridled self-indulgence. He could talk — and talk admirably — upon naval architecture with Pepys and Petty and Evelyn, and the new yacht built for him in 1663 was fitted with navigating contrivances of his own ; he spent many long days in his laboratory with Robert Moray, who had been President of the Royal Society, and was certainly the ablest Scotchman of his day ; he could discuss theology with an austere divine i or a pretty Quakeress, politics with his sister, music and painting with all comers. And at any rate — and here we think may be found one key to his popularity then as now — there was no pretence in him. Claren- don knew him well, when — as we saw at an earlier page — he advised Dr. Creighton to suppress his dedi- cation. And we have already quoted his exclamation upon seeing his portrait, " Odd's fish, I'm an ugly fellow ! " He was genially ready to accept the official censure of those whose claims to give it he admitted. " I am going to hear little Ken tell me of my faults," he would say with gay resignation. Occasionally there was a gentle deprecation of what appeared to CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 199 him hypercriticism ; and he was no doubt sincere in believing that *' God would not damn a man for a little irregular pleasure". When compelled to listen to remonstrance, he made two provisos : it should be presented to him in good taste, and he must not be expected to alter his ways. *' Tell Dr. Frampton " — he said to a gentleman of his bedchamber, when that divine had preached before him upon the sin of adultery — " that I am not angry to be told of my faults ; but I would have it done in a gentlemanlike manner" ; and he read Burnet's letter of remonstrance twice before he threw it into the fire. His patience under the preachers to whom he was bound to listen was exemplary, whether it were a young man " playing the fool upon the doctrine of purgatory," or a royal chaplain who preached " an unnecessary sermon upon original sin ". One source of his strength has lately been given to the world. "We have" — he says in a delightful letter to his sister at Paris — " the same disease of sermons that you complaine of there, but I hope you have the same convenience that the rest of the family has, of sleeping out most of the time, which is a great ease to those who are bound to heare them." The urbane nonchalance of Charles was but seldom ruffled, and the storm was soon over. About matters of State he was never more than annoyed. It was only when some offence of a specially personal nature was committed that he lost his " natural mildness and 200 CHARLES II. command over his anger, which never transported him beyond an innocent puff and spitting ''. We have already quoted the letter to De Cardenas before the Restoration. An attempt to thwart his favour for a disreputable companion, or a blunder of his attendant in shutting the door of his room against someone whose admission he had sanctioned, would throw him into a tempest of anger for the moment ; and, at the close of his life, Monmouth was the cause of the most vehement fit of wrath that Bruce had ever witnessed. But the most detailed and striking instance of a loss of self-control was when Henry Savile, one of his gentlemen, voted for the address against Lauderdale in the House of Commons in 1678. "The King was mightily displeased against him, and to so high a degree, that when he was late that night going to bed, \ and Savile coming in after his ordinary way, the King upon the first sight of him fell into such a passion, that his face and lips became as pale (almost) as death, his cheekes and armes trembled, and then he said to Savile, * You Villayne, how dare you have the impu- i dence to come into my presence when you are guilty of such baseness as you have shown this day. I doe now and from henceforth discharge you from my service, commanding you never to come any more into my presence, nor to any place where I shall happen to be.' " It surprised no one to hear that Savile was in attendance again in a few days. CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 201 His magnificent constitution and his active habits enabled Charles to defy the effects of unrestrained debauchery for more than thirty years. Here, again, he reminds us of his ancestor, Henry IV. It was seldom that he passed a day without visiting the tennis court as early as there was light enough to see clearly. In the summer he was there at five in the morning ; on October 5, 1660, at eight, he told Claren- don at Council, " I am now going to take my usual physicke at Tennis ". It was in the tennis court that grave interviews were granted ; when the lords of the Hamilton party came, in 1678, to press their cause against Lauderdale, they kissed hands in the lobby of the court ; and it was in 1679 ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ serious illness from the chill which he caught, after a hard game, by sauntering along the water-side in St. James's Park. He was devoted to every form of open- air sport, especially hunting ; and a chief attraction of England to him was that there was no country where a man could be abroad so many months in the year or so many hours in the day. When not hunting, he generally walked three or four hours a day — "which he did commonly so fast, that, as it was really an exercise to himself, so it was a trouble to all about him to hold up with him '\ He would ride fourteen miles to dine with one of his Court, or to Banstead Down or Epsom to see a foot-race, returning the same evening ; and we hear how " The King tired all their 202 CHARLES II. horses and comes home with not above two or three able to keep pace with him ". On another day he covered sixty miles, rising at dawn on a summer day, and reaching home to consult with Moray at midnight. His early habits were a sore trial to those who had business with him : " this morning I went to wait upon the King, but he was gone by five o'clock to Hampton Court " — entries like this are frequent. And when the baffled visitor returned in the evening for the promised interview, Charles had been hunting all the day and was " very sleepye," and so " appointed the Bishop to attend to-morrow morning ". Long after eleven at night, on March 7, 1669, ^^ ^^^ writing to his sister, " so sleepye as I hope you will pardon the shortnesse of it," and at three in the morning was on his horse for Audley End, where he used to stay for the races until fitting lodgings were arranged for him at Newmarket. Excelling in every form of physical exercise, Charles was especially noted for his horsemanship, in the widest sense of the word. This was the gift of Newcastle, himself a noted horseman and breeder of horses, who relates with pride how he " had the honour to be the first to sate him on horseback, and did in- struct him in the art of horsemanship ". While quite a boy, Charles acquired an intimate knowledge of horses and the power to make the most of them. Newcastle notes how he saw " that his Majesty made CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 203 my horses goe better than any Italian or French riders (who had often rid them) would do, and to hear him say that there are very few who know horses, which was knowingly said and wisely judged of his Majesty ; it being very certain that all men undertake to ride them, but few know them or can tell what they are good for". It is not to be wondered at that horse breeding and racing should, as Newcastle had advised, be sedulously patronised, and that even though Britain's fell, Newmarket's glories should rise. There is not, we imagine, a noted racehorse of the present day which does not trace its pedigree to the Eastern blood imported into England by Charles. Racing, in a formal sense, with its spring and autumn meetings, began with the institution of the ' Twelve-stone ' Plate, in 1665, though the King's first personal visit was not until March, 1666. From that time he rarely missed a meeting, sometimes indeed being at Newmarket thrice in the year ; and, since the whole Court usually accompanied him, the little town became accustomed to the gay wickedness of Whitehall, which was made even gayer and more wicked by the absence of the usual formalities and ceremonial. Business was seldom allowed to intrude upon these holidays, and ministers and ambassadors attended him in vain : "there was nothing but hunting and horse-racing to be spoken of". "Most excellent preachers" indeed, as Newcastle had promised, came for Sundays from 204 CHARLES II. Cambridge ; and in 1673 Charles administered a severe rebuke to them for wearing their hair and wigs unbecomingly long, and bade them — possibly in the hope of effecting a curtailment there also — to deliver their sermons for the future by memory. A letter from Sir Nicholas Armorer, who had put two guineas on Lord Thomond's ' Thumps ' for the ' Great Race ' in 1668, on behalf of the owner, gives a glimpse of Newmarket existence. " Thy Armorer brings for you, and himself, two guineas which was improved on Thump's victory ; won but a yard and soe straight the entire six miles. The King is highly pleased with all his Newmarket recreations ; by candle light yesterday morning, and this morning, hunting the hare ; this afternoon he hawks and courses with grey- hounds ; to Norwich to-morrow, on Monday here again. The Cup ridd for here next week before the Oueene. As thou prizes earthly Paradise, bringe a mayde of honour behind thee next week." All kinds of sporting feats, professional and amateur, were arranged for Charles's pleasure ; and we need not fear the charge of degeneracy in these days, when we read how, on October 10, 1670, Lord Digby, who was then quite young, bet £^0 that he would walk five miles within the hour on Newmarket Heath, and lost the match by half a minute, although "the King and all his nobles attended to see him do it stark-naked and barefoot ". One chronicler does indeed add a loin- CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 205 cloth. It was at these times that Charles was best able to carry out Newcastle's admonition to *' put off King". "On Tuesday the King and the jockeys met at supper at Ned Griffin's, when there were made six horse matches for ^500 a match to be run at New- market next meeting." Charles himself does not appear to have betted, except a guinea or two upon a cock-fight ; nor, for all records to the contrary, did he run horses of his own until the autumn meeting of 1671. But he then put his horsemanship to practical use by becoming a gentleman rider. On October t2 there was a match between his horse * Woodcock ' and Tom Elliott's ' Flatfoot,' in which ' Woodcock ' was beaten. According to the old Newmarket Calendar, this race was run with * owners up,' though Evelyn, who was there, does not say so when he mentions it. But it is certain that two days later Charles rode the winner — not named — for the Plate, against Monmouth, Elliott, and Thomas Thynne ; and, in October, 1672, he rode two heats, being, we presume, beaten in the second, since he is not named in the * course,' or deciding heat, when the Duke of Albemarle's horse fell and broke his neck. It was in the spring of 1675 that, after riding several races, he won his last and greatest success on the turf. " Yesterday," we read in a private letter of March 21, " His Majesty rode three heats and a course " — on his ' topping horse Blew Capp ' — " and won the Plate ; all fower were hard and 2o6 CHARLES II. neer ridden, and I doe assure you the King wonn by good horsemanshipp." ' Blew Capp/ ' Tankot/ ' Dragon ' — a famous animal which he bought from Mr. May after seeing him run on March 17, 1680 — with ' Cork,' * Roan/ ' Mouse,' and ' Postboy/ were the most noted of Charles's stud. In the midst of the wild rout of the Court, there remained one infinitely pathetic figure. Such as we have seen her, possessing no quality of mind or person which could attract him, Charles's wife was for a short time free from absolute insult. It amused him to teach her to say a few words like a parrot. " You lye ! " was her first English to him when, with delicate raillery, he had laughed at her for thinking herself with child. It was not long, however, before he began the breaking-in process, by forcing upon her the insolent presence of the reigning prostitute as lady of her bedchamber. That Clarendon should have yielded at length to Charles's passionate in- sistance, and consented to take his part in this brutality, comes upon us as a shock at the end of his honourable career. Insignificant and helpless as Catherine was, she had the feelings of an honest woman, and the scene which took place — a scene to which Balzac alone could have done justice — was per- haps the most disgraceful of Charles's private life. But after that, "though she has spirit enough, yet seeing that she did no good by taking notice of it, she CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 207 forbears it in policy". And then the real pathos of the situation is felt : " The Queen begins to be brisk, and play like other ladies, and is quite another woman. It may make the King like her better and forsake his other mistresses." She rapidly adapted herself to the situation ; cutting her dress immodestly low, and in- dulging in unseemly frolics in the streets. She even aspired to lead fashion, by wearing the skirts short to show the feet and ankles ; and " The other day " — Charles wrote to his sister — " my wife made my Lord Aubigny, and two others of her chaplains, dance country dances in her bedchamber ". Her excessive bigotry gave him an opportunity for a piece of careless indulgence. " Pray send me " — it is as if he were speaking of a child whose whims should be consulted or disregarded as best suits the convenience of the elders — " some images to put in Prayer Books. They are for my wife who can get none here. I assure you it will be a greate present to her, and she will look upon them often, for she is not only content to say the greate office in the breviere every day, but like- wise that of our Lady too, and this is besides going to chapell, where she makes use of none of these." He even seems to have acquired some tolerant affection for her, for when she was seriously ill, he wept by her bedside — a strange but not unfrequent instance of his southern descent ; but " he supped none the less with Madame de Castlemaine, and had his usual talk with 2o8 CHARLES IT. Mademoiselle Stewart". On May 19, 1664 — and farther than this we do not remember that he per- mitted his usual habits to be disarranged — Charles wrote, " I have been all this afternoon playing the good husband, having been abroad with my wife ; and 'tis now past twelve o'clock, and I am very sleepye ". While the Anglican Church was exacting the ven- geance she deemed her right for the injuries of twenty years, the country was reeling under the stress of a great naval war. England and the Dutch Republic were engaged in the second part of that tremendous contest for the commercial supremacy of the world of which the first had been fought out between Tromp and Blake. Long before any declaration of war was issued, and while all the forms of amity were preserved between the governments, the nations themselves had been actually in fierce and incessant strife in every quarter of the globe — in the East and West Indies, in America, in the Mediterranean, and all along the African shore. Naval engagements on a large scale had taken place, fleets of merchantmen had been cap- tured on both sides, and ships of each nation, which were lying in the ports of the other, had been seized as prizes. The countries necessarily drifted into formal war. The declaration of war, on March 17, 1665, was a notable event in the reign, for it marked the only CHARLES AND CLARENDON, 209 occasion upon which Charles was in complete harmony with his people. The landed gentry and the merchants were alike eager for the struggle ; while " the Parlia- ment men would pawne their estates" — it came to their shirts later — ''to maintain a warre/' and sup- ported their words with the unheard-of grant of ;£'2, 500,000. When Charles wrote that he found himself the only man in his kingdom who did not desire war, his words were intended for Louis XIV., and need not be taken seriously. Everything indeed led him to favour war. His private and famil}' feelings were enlisted against the Dutch. He bore them deep and lasting resent- ment for their treatment both of himself and of his sister Mary during his exile ; while a constant flow of lampoons and caricatures in Holland since his restora- tion — and especially one in which he was represented between two women, with his pockets turned inside out — added keenness to his longing for retaliation. He was anxious to restore the young Prince of Orange, his nephew, to the Stadtholderate ; his honour, he thought, demanded that he should be hostile where Cromwell had been in alliance ; and he hoped that a war would unite parties at home, and that he would be able to fill his purse with the liberal supplies given by Parliament. Nor was he likely to be deterred by the remonstrances of the Dutch ambassador, who, with a plentiful lack of humour, represented that the prayers 14 2IO CHARLES II. put up for him in Holland would have to cease. He replied that he was not much interested in the prayers of a country which permitted the publication of lam- poons. There is no doubt that the attraction which every- thing connected with salt water possessed for Charles had much to do with his pleasure at the prospect of watching a naval war. On November 5 he took De Cominges, the French Ambassador, with him to Sheer- ness to see the launch of a man-of-war of 1,200 tons burden ; and he then carried out a joke of the kind in which his soul most delighted. An excellent lunch was served on the royal yacht ; Charles drank the health of Louis, and De Cominges that of Charles. " Both were honoured with so many guns and so much noise that the weather changed. While we were thus carousing, the sea became rough and completed what the wine had begun. The Queen, who was on the river with the ladies, escaped the sickness. All the rest were less lucky, as was only too apparent. . . . The Queen went home with the coaches prepared for the King ; but he, who was greatly amused at seeing the others discomposed, did not care to allow us to do the same." Not content with this, he made the miserable De Cominges get up at five in the morning to go with him to Chatham, " to see six vessels, or rather six war machines, the finest and largest to be seen at sea ". Charles had but one anxiety. He knew that by a CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 211 treaty of 1662 Louis was engaged to help the Dutch if hostilities broke out, and if they were the attacked party; and he was anxious to avoid this complication. Louis was equally desirous to avoid being compelled to waste the strength which he was storing up for his intended attack upon the Spanish Low Countries, upon a war for which he had no heart. For the success of that attack he knew he must neutralise the certain opposition of the English nation ; and to that end he must secure the friendship and the personal co-opera- tion of the English King. Already, before December, 1664, Charles had offered to refrain from all hindrance to his design if he would throw over his treaty and refuse to help the Dutch, on the ground that they, and not England, were the aggressors. In reading the letters which passed at this time between Charles and his sister Henrietta, who was the confidential secre- tary of both monarchs, it is not easy to settle whether questions of imperial policy such as these, or the new fashion of waistcoats lately introduced into France, occupied the chief place in Charles's mind. Louis did his utmost, first to induce Charles to stop short of hostilities, and then to avoid his treaty obliga- tions. When he failed in both efforts, he declared war against England in January, 1666. But the conduct of the French showed how little their sympathies lay with their nominal allies. The troops whom Louis sent to help the Dutch against Charles's strange and 14 * 212 CHARLES 11. picturesque ally, Bernard van Galen, Bishop of Munster — a prelate '* in his naturals rather made for the sword than the cross " — behaved as if they were in a hostile country. They pillaged the people and insulted their religion, they openly cursed the Dutch cause, and they drank publicly in the market-place of Maestricht to the healths of the King of England and the Bishop of Munster. At sea the squadrons of Louis were care- fully kept back from assisting the Dutch fleets ; ai it was evident that at the first opportunity the t) Crowns would come to a perfect understanding. Tl opportunity — we must here anticipate for a moment came at the beginning of 1667, when England, toi bleeding, and utterly weary of the war, prayed Charles, in the Speaker's address on January 18, to make peace. In February he secretly sent Lord St. Albans — the Jermyn of former years — to conclude an engagement on the basis that England should form no connection with the house of Austria during that year, while Louis was to support all Charles's designs ' in or out of the Kingdom '. The final form which the agreement took was a mutual pledge not to enter into any alliance contrary to the other's interests for a year, an engage- ment by Louis to keep his fleets in harbour, and the promise of Charles to allow him a free hand in the Spanish Low Countries. This was the first of those private arrangements with France which represent Charles's personal share in foreign policy to the end CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 213 of his reign. It was kept from the knowledge of his ministers, and was contained only in autograph letters from both monarchs to Henrietta Maria. England had entered upon the great contest with a light heart and a full assurance of success. Even Admiral Lawson asserted that '* according to an eye of reason, and if God says amen to it, the Dutch are not able to deale with our master the King of Eng- land". In the beginning of May, 1665 — in spite of chaos in the Admiralty — a fleet such as had never before been gathered together — 109 large vessels, with 30 of smaller size, manned by 21,000 men, armed with j 4,200 guns, and largely commanded by old Common- ^ wealth captains who had learned the art of sea warfare with Blake, sailed under the command of James. Rupert was to have led them, but he was accounted an 'unlucky' man. On June 3 took place the first battle, off Lowestoft, resulting in a victory for Eng- land which might well have seemed crushing. But an unexpected ally appeared to sustain the Dutch. Four days later came the hottest day in London that Pepys had ever known, and the red cross was on the doors. That week there died 112 of the Plague, the next, 700 ; by September 20 the official weekly mor- tality showed more than tenfold that number. There was no heart for farther effort, and the Dutch again asserted their supremacy. A fresh fleet sailed from Holland, in the midst of the stormy season, to 214 CHARLES II. challenge their foes wherever they might be found. The challenge was not taken up. London was panic- stricken by her affliction, and sixty ships lay inside the Thames in sullen inactivity. The Dutch returned to their own shores without firing a gun. By May, 1666, the country had rallied sufficiently to send out another fleet. This time Monk and Rupert confronted De Ruyter and Tromp ; and a terrific battle, which lasted for four days, began on June [4 off the Dunes. The "blockhead Albemarle," who " hath strange luck to be loved, though he be the heaviest man in the world, but stout and honest to his country," was a picturesque figure, as he walked his quarter-deck in the hottest of the fight, phlegmatic- ally chewing tobacco. Rupert continued to earn his epithet. The victory of the Dutch was signalised by the slaughter of 5,000 English ; eight ships of the line were sunk, and nine more, with 3,000 prisoners, taken. But on August 4 another long day of carnage off the Norfolk coast gave Monk his revenge ; and a few days later the daring act of a single English frigate and five fireships destroyed in one fell conflagration 160 merchantmen which were riding at anchor in apparent safety at Flie, in the entrance to the Zuyder Zee. A month later happened the second great national disaster to England; and '* London y^^/^". Once more De Witt sent out a fleet to seek Rupert at the mouth of the Thames, and once more he found CHARLES AND CLARENDON, 215 no foe. For this Charles was directly responsible. Two more grants had been voted by Parliament, of sums unheard of before the Restoration, and yet the Treasury was empty. On the whole Charles had had considerably over ;f 5,000,000 for the war. He now re- trenched expenses in his own way. His women never wanted money — at one gift Lady Castlemaine had ;^30,ooo ; but he starved the navy to such an extent that England was obliged to act strictly on the de- fensive ; the sole office of her warships being to creep along the coast, convoying colliers from Newcastle to London. The country was indeed, as soon appeared, defenceless. " The enemy can come and cut our throats when he likes," wrote one well-informed country gentle- man to another. Peace was clearly a necessity : " We must have a peace, for we cannot have a fleet". "If the warre continue," declared Sir Roger Burgoyne, " which God forbid, I am sad to think what will become of us next yeare ; may it prove happy to all, and let not a 66 come these hundred yeares again." But ' 6y ' saw greater national humiliation yet. In May a conference opened at Breda. For a long time it was found impos- sible to come to terms ; for neither nation had so ex- hausted the other as to gain the commercial advantages upon which each was bent, and Charles had gone into the conference strong in his secret treaty with Louis. In the end De Witt resolved upon a stroke which 2i6 CHARLES 11. should extort peace. On June 7, the sound of guns in the Thames was suddenly heard in London. Sixty- one Dutch men-of-war under De Ruyter and Cornelius De Witt were avenging the insult at Flie. Driving the English vessels before them, they took Sheerness, and ascended the river to Gravesend ; sailed up the Med way to Rochester, burned three English men-of- war, and captured the Royal Charles, the noble vessel which De Cominges had seen launched. On July 31 the Treaty of Breda was signed. Its terms were the terms of a drawn battle. The great struggle for the command of the sea and the commerce of the world was over for the time, only because the , combatants, exhausted and bleeding, needed repose. It had decided nothing, and left behind it hatred and mistrust. ** Though this may end in peace," wrote the sagacious Temple, *' yet I doubt it will be with so much unkindnesse between the nations, that it will be wisdom on both sides to think of another." And meanwhile the King's government, as he understood it best, had to be carried on. " The King is always with Mrs. Stewart, and sees Lady Castlemaine only once a week ; " Monmouth is spending his time " most viciously and idly " ; Mrs. Stewart has " her lockes done up in puffs " ; the King is " mad with Mrs. Stewart," who has married the Duke of Richmond and sent him back his presents ; Lady Castlemaine has consequently resumed her CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 217 sway. "The King, who minds nothing but his lust, hath taken ten times more care and paines in making friends between my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Stewart when they have fallen out than ever he did to save his Kingdom." And, to sum up the whole matter, " There is a lazy Prince, no Council, no money, no reputation at home or abroad " ; so that " It is strange how everybody do now reflect upon Oliver, and commend him, what brave things he did, and made all the neighbour princes fear him ; while here a prince, come in with all the love and prayers and good liking of his people . . . hath lost all so soon that it is a miracle what way a man could devise to lose so much in so little time". But there were compensa- tions^ for Charles and for all the town. The new waistcoats had arrived from Paris ; and '* Little Nelly at the King's play house " — " pretty, witty Nell " — had been discovered, and was bewitching all beholders with the piquancy of her acting. Charles had been every day realising how narrow were the limits of his freedom, except in the domain of pleasure. His parliament had been showing itself imbued with precisely the same views as the Long Parliament of his father, except that, whereas that had been Puritan, this was Anglican. Its enemies were the same — Popery, military force, and an un- controlled use of the purse by the Crown ; and upon 2i8 CHARLES II. all three points the action of Charles had excited keen suspicion and discontent. It was largely through that suspicion and discontent, aided by the base desertion of the King, a desertion less notorious than his father's desertion of Strafford only because the circumstances were less tragic and the personages less grandiose, that Clarendon was now struck down. During the years of exile Clarendon had main- tained his place practically unchallenged, because he was indispensable. He was equally indispensable, and equally unchallenged, during the Restoration settle- ment. All business, as we have seen, was left by Charles to him — or, as he himself modestly says, ** to their natural course of God's providence". For the present, " though many do endeavour to undermine him, the King (though he loves him not in the way of a companion as he does these young gallants that can amuse him in his pleasures) yet cannot be without him for his policy and service". But Clarendon himself had no illusions. He knew that in time he would have to yield to the " lewd instruments, who had only a scurrilous kind of wit to procure laughter, and whose skill in mimicry was the best faculty in wit many of them had ". " He had enemies at Court," said Evelyn bitterly, " especially the buffoons and ladies of pleasure." It was not indeed until 1666 that he began to find himself in direct antagonism with the Commons. He then incurred their displeasure by opposing, as an im- CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 219 proper limitation upon the prerogative of the Crown, the proviso that the supply of ^1,250,000 should be applied strictly to the war. He incurred it even more when, upon offering another still larger grant, they demanded a public inspection of accounts. His view of the constitution in this respect was precisely what it had been when he served Charles I., despite the lessons of the last twenty years. He declared that this was "an encroachment as had no bottom, and that the scars were yet too fresh and green of those wounds which had been inflicted upon the Kingdom from such usurpations ". His counsel to dissolve Parliament, and thus put an end to the an- tagonism, was a farther grievance ; but it was the knowledge that he was responsible, not only for raising troops, but for exacting money from the counties for paying them without Parliamentary sanction, which created so strong a feeling that it was certain that when Parliament met in the autumn of 1667 be would be impeached. It was not the first time that he had excited jealousy on this score. After Venner's plot it was supposed that he was making that event an excuse for raising an army ; " But the House did, in very open terms, say they were grown too wise to be fooled again into another army ; and said they had found how that man that hath the command of an army is not be- holden to anybody to make him King ". Throughout these years Clarendon was surrounded by enemies. 220 CHARLES II. Lady Castlemaine hated him with the hatred of dis- appointed vanity and avarice. Not only had he stead- fastly declined to court her favour — he would not even permit his wife to visit her — but he had frequently refused to pass grants for her from the King. It was at her house that those nightly meetings were held, at which a knot of young political adventurers, to whose rise the all-absorbing power of the Chancellor was an obstacle, met to plan his overthrow. Ashley, Lauder- dale, William Coventry, and Henry Bennet — better known as the Earl of Arlington — who was now Secretary of State in the place of Nicholas ; Berkeley, who helped Bennet to provide for the more intimate pleasures of the King ; and Buckingham, for whom Clarendon had never concealed his contempt ; each had good reasons for wishing his fall. With these were many, like Clifford and Osborne, not yet famous, who followed the fortunes of one or other of them. The disappointed Cavaliers owed him a deep grudge for the Indemnity Bill and the Bill of Sales, which had baulked them of their revenge. The Catholics hated him as the representative of that Anglican triumph which was the chief obstacle to their recognition ; the Presbyterians and other dissenting sects laid their per- secution at his door. He was disliked by the courtiers for the decency of his private life, and for the integrity of his public conduct. His daughter's marriage with the presumptive heir to the throne awoke the jealousy CHARLES AND CLARENDON, 221 of the nobility ; while the report was industriously spread that he had knowingly chosen for the King a wife whom he knew to be incapable of bearing children. The citizens of London were alienated by his haughty reserve. He was envied for his wealth. He was denounced as the author of the surrender of Dunkirk, and as the man who had secured most benefit from its sale ; and all the failures of the war — the subject on which he had practically no influence with Charles — were laid to his account. The peculiarity of Clarendon's personal relations to the King must not be forgotten. Charles had grown up under his governance. He had been tutored by him in England twenty years before — lectured and controlled by him in exile ; and Clarendon could not throw off the * dominie ' merely because his pupil was King. Charles himself declared that his Lord Chan- cellor would barely let him speak in Council now any more than when he was a boy at Bristol ; and he was certainly kept to his work with scant ceremony. One of the notes which passed between the two at Council runs thus — " I doubt you do not think enough of the business of Scotland " : another when Charles wants his dinner, "This debate is worth three dinners, I beseech you be not weary of it, but attend it with all patience". "Will your Majesty never put an end to this business ? " " The business will not do itself," and so forth. Clarendon remonstrated boldly with 222 CHARLES II. Charles on the licence of his life, and took whatever line he thought right without much reference to his wishes. Instead of waiting upon the King, he " made the King to trot every day to him, although he was well enough to visit his cousin ". For a long time Charles took it all good-humouredly enough. When he was told by Lord Gerard that Clarendon had said openly that he '^ was a lazy person and not fit to govern," he laughingly replied that that was no news, " for he hath told me so twenty times, and but the other day he told me so ". But at length he grew annoyed at hearing on every side that, so long as his minister was in power, he was but half a king. The situation, and Clarendon, grew tiresome, and to be tiresome could have but one ending with Charles. " The truth is," he wrote to Ormond — who, on hearing of the King's intention to dismiss his old comrade, dispatched from Ireland a very beautiful letter of remonstrance — '' his behaviour and humour were grown so insupportable to myself and all the world else that I could not longer endure it, and it was impossible for me to live with it." When to all this it is added that Clarendon opposed him directly in many matters upon which his mind was bent, and that in especial the King believed him to have been the author of the marriage of Frances Stewart, which robbed him of a much- desired accession to his establishment, there were reasons enough and to spare for a Stuart and Bourbon CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 223 to show a want of generous feeling, *' which was a flower that did never grow naturally in the heart of either of the families". Finally — and this was with Charles throughout life the most potent argument — it was easier, in the presence of popular clamour, to abandon than to support him. On August 30, 1667, orders were sent to him, ill as he then was, and mourning the death of his wife, to deliver up the Great Seal. Three days before this, when he had had his last interview with the King, Lady Castlemaine had sprung from her bed and run out in her smock into her aviary looking over Whitehall Gardens, where she " stood blessing herself at the old man's going away". "As soon as Secretary Morrice brought the Great Scale from my Lord Chancellor, Bab May fell upon his knees and catched the King about the legs, and joyed him, and said that this was the first time that ever he could call him King of England.'* So it was that, strong in the gratified hate of a harlot and unshamed by the congratulations of a pimp, Charles abandoned the wise old man to whom he owed his throne. Did he re- member his father's last injunction, "never to give way to the punishment of any for their faithful service i to the crown upon whatsoever pretence or for whatso- ever cause"? Whether it were so or not, he seems to^ have heartily enjoyed Jacob Hall's robe-dancing on that day, unconscious that he was watching a rival in the affections of the mistress en titre. 224 CHARLES 11. It may well be doubted whether, had neither Par- liament attacked nor Charles betrayed him, Claren- don could have long maintained his position. He did not instinctively feel, and therefore could not guide, as Pym had guided, and as Shaftesbury was to some extent to guide, the desires of his generation. His essentially negative views had not stood in the way, had rather been advantageous, at the Restoration itself But when his task of restoring the parliament- ary monarchy in strict alliance with the old Anglican Church had been completed, the weakness of a position based upon negations showed itself. He had neither ' the keenness to discern a coming change, nor the elasticity of mind to adapt himself to it when it came. Had it been otherwise he might have died Prime Minister, for no one contested his usefulness. But / then he would not have written the great Epic of the ' Rebellion. The Treaty of Breda, we have said, had left behind it hatred and mistrust. But hatred and mistrust yield to a common danger. Even before peace was made, Louis XIV. had begun his war of aggression upon the Spanish Low Countries, which he claimed in right of ^ his wife. Giving out that he was going to travel in her inheritance, he suddenly crossed the frontier, and in less than two months was master of all the southern towns. To both English and Dutch the prospect was CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 225 full of alarm ; and it was this alarm, and all the accre- tions of distrust which Charles's conduct allowed to gather round it, which form the key to the events of the next ten years. Flanders had for centuries been connected by the closest commercial bonds with England, and was indeed regarded as a sort of con- tinental annex ; while the Dutch dreaded to see themselves become a maritime province of France, even as faint-hearted Englishmen, a century ago, dreaded to see England. It happened that at this moment the English resident in Brussels was Sir William Temple, the most cultured of our public servants, whose despatches and memoirs can still be read with the fullest pleasure for their vivacity and literary grace. A keen opponent of French aggression, he had anticipated the action of Louis, and had already sketched the plan of a close alliance between England and the Republic which should compel that monarch to hold his hand. John De Witt, acting in accord with Temple, now ap- proached Charles with such an agreement in view ; while Louis strained every nerve to secure the King's neutrality or active help. Ruvigny, a personal friend of Clarendon, was sent hastily to England, with ample funds to enforce his arguments, and with instructions to offer to Charles himself the promise of French help against his own subjects. Before he reached London, Clarendon had fallen, and he IS 226 CHARLES 11. had to deal with Buckingham and Arlington, who were attempting to fill the vacant place. It is in- teresting to watch Charles in his first serious essay in foreign politics. He received Ruvigny with perfect frankness, and expressed the warmest personal regard for Louis, but declared that Parliament would never assent to an alliance with France under such circum- stances. Nevertheless he made it clear that this did not close matters on his own part. Concealing the active negotiations which were at the moment going on with De Witt, he hinted that a large supply of ready money, a part of the French conquests in the Low Countries, and important commercial concessions, might move him in the required direction. Louis at once instructed Ruvigny to promise the money, in- creased facilities for trade with France and the Low Countries, and assistance in ships and supplies where- with to conquer the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. The contest between France and the Republic for Charles's alliance was accentuated by the personal rivalry of Buckingham and Arlington. Buckingham was on the whole the most worthless of all the men who claim attention in this reign. His person was extremely graceful — Reresby held him to be the finest gentleman in the land ; and he was naturally quick of understanding ; he was for a time probably the richest subject of the King ; he had a certain insolent CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 227 ease of speech, was regarded by his dependents as a wit, and had attained considerable power of mimicry, the lowest form of intellectual exercise ; and there panegyric must cease. He was essentially a trifler, heeding nothing but the fancy of the moment, and so inordinately vain and selfish that he was at once the easiest and the most satisfactory of dupes. His pro- fligacy was such as to give him an evil pre-eminence even in the Court of Charles ; his outrages upon religion were of vulgar indecency ; while to men of honour and steadfastness he was the object of alternate contempt and distrust, which he repaid as he best could by insolent ridicule or dishonourable intrigue. He could not even claim that which, in popular esteem, will always cover a multitude of vices, a reputation for personal courage. The story of his life does not record a single honourable action. And Charles rated him at his real worth. He drank with him, and drabbed with him ; but he never gave him office or command of any moment, and he duped him relentlessly when he essayed to be a politician. At the present moment Buckingham was wholly in the French interest, for his whim at the time was the command of an English contingent in the service of Louis. In this he was steadily opposed by Arlington, who, unscrupulous as he was, a ''' fourbe in politics," had acquired the principal direction of foreign affairs by his evident capacity for business and coolness 15 * 228 CHARLES II. of judgment, and by the fact that he alone among Charles's ministers was able to converse easily with the foreign ambassadors in their own tongues. Arlington perfectly understood the temper of the English people, did not play entirely for his own hand, and, having married a lady from Holland, was inclined to the Dutch, rather than the French connection. The oppor- tunity which was now offered of thwarting Buckingham drew him in the same direction. While therefore en- gaged, in apparent concert with his foolish rival, in preliminaries with Ruvigny, he busied himself, with Charles's sanction, but without Buckingham's know- ledge, in direct negotiations with De Witt, At the same time — a lively illustration of diplomatic honour — Charles was offering to Spain also his active alliance. His terms were, as always, ready money and commercial privileges. The poverty and the pride of Spain forbade their acceptance. The choice therefore lay between France and the Republic ; and in the face of the rising clamour of Parliament the policy of the line of least resistance claimed its votary. Early in January, 1668, Temple was sent in haste to the Hague. Charles threw himself into the matter with zeal, even to the correcting of the wording of Temple's despatches — *' for the undecency of the word force I would willingly have left it out/' he writes in the margin of one — and by January 13 Temple had finished a brilliant piece of diplo- CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 229 matic work by the Triple Alliance, so called from the later accession of Sweden. England and the Republic bound themselves to assist each other, if attacked in Europe, with specified forces ; to restore peace between France and Spain upon clearly expressed conditions ; and finally to compel both parties, if necessary, to make peace. This last provision was kept secret. If France were recalcitrant, the war upon her should not cease until she had been reduced to the limits imposed by the Peace of the Pyrenees. The Triple Alliance was the first formal expression ^ of European resistance to the aggressions of Louis. But on the part of Charles himself it was a piece of gross political knavery, surpassed only by what shortly followed. His hopes were in reality fixed upon France. On the very day upon which the treaties were signed, he wrote both to his ' sister and to Louis himself, pointing out that " the effect of it is to bring Spaine to consent to the peace ... so as I have done nothing to prejudice France in this agreement"; emphasising his desire '' to execute it with every possible regard to your satisfaction " ; and explaining his action as forced upon him by his subjects. The secret article, of course, he carefully concealed for the time. But by this secret article, whenever he thought fit to disclose it, he knew that he had fatally com- promised the Dutch before Louis, and had thus secured their isolation when he should himself desire to attack 230 CHARLES 11. them again. That this was no distant prospect is seen from the exclamations of the fiery Clifford, who was in his confidence. On the very day when London was blazing with bonfires for the conclusion of the Peace of Breda, Clifford was heard to declare that, for all the rejoicing, there must soon be another war. Louis bowed before the Triple Alliance, and the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was concluded at the end of May, 1668. Temple had no hope in the permanence of "a peace which both France and Spain come to so unwillingly, and which both England and Holland promote upon conditions which both dislike". Even before it was ratified the disintegrating forces were at work. It was not likely that Louis would contentedly accept his rebuff at the hands of the Dutch. As republicans, as traders, and as Protestants, they were the objects of his haughty contempt. The arrogance of speech in which they were unwisely indulging — their " fanfaronnades de pecheurs " ; the medal in which France was represented as the sun stayed in his course by the Republic ; these and other grievances so rankled in his mind that he never, he says, entered his Council without thinking how he might make them pay dearly for the great role they had assumed. But, before attacking, he set himself to remove from them all possible sources of support, to destroy the coalition limb by limb ; and he began with England. Since CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 231 " stinking Dutchmen " was the best appellation that Charles could find for his friends, success did not seem improbable. The ties which bound him to France — his French blood, his love for his sister, his admiration for Louis XIV. and the system of personal rule which he had inaugurated — no less than his desire to be re- venged for the Chatham disaster and the caricatures — all tended in the same direction. He had already betrayed his nominal allies to Louis by informing him of the secret article. Charles had shown that he intended — in pale imitation of Louis — to be his own foreign minister : he now made this clearer. Buckingham might be allowed to play at statesmanship, and to believe him- self the confidant of Charles, Louis, and Henrietta of Orleans ; Arlington needed humouring, for he had openly expressed the opinion that Louis's wings must be clipped ; he was a useful secretary and could be trusted to conduct formal negotiations with ability. But neither of them had any real influence of ai direct kind. " One thing," wrote Charles to his sister, " I desire you to take as much as you can out of the King of France's head, that my ministers are anything but what I will have them ; " and, a little later, " whatso- ever opinion my ministers had been of, I would and do always follow my own judgment, and if they take any other measures than that they will see themselves mistaken in the end ". They were used, tricked, 232 CHARLES IT, allowed to trick one another, and repudiated, as was most convenient, and Charles enjoyed no part of the business more. It would be a grave mistake to regard the King, in what followed, as making a surrender of himself to Louis. He was for the time master of his own game, and he exacted his own terms. But the game was not an easy one to play. He was to break off an alliance upon which his people were earnestly bent ; he was to enter into fellowship with the representative of European aggression and Catholic despotism, and these were what his people most dreaded. Scarcely a week had passed after the signature of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle before Charles signified his wish for a strict union with France, and asked to be met half-way. The guarded reply of Louis called forth his private assurance, through Ruvigny, that he " would willingly make treaty with you, as between gentleman and gentleman, and that he preferred your word to all the parchment in the world ". But Charles made two conditions, one of his own, that he should be " assisted,'' since his people thought differently from himself; the other, suggested by Arlington, that Louis must speak first, because, " if he made proposals, and they were not accepted, but became known to the Hollanders, he would suffer". Louis accepted the situation without demur, and replaced the Protestant Ruvigny by the more wily Colbert de Croissy, a CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 233 Catholic, without however letting the new ambassador know the length and breadth of his designs. At Colbert's first audience Charles told him plainly that he himself was the only man in his dominions who wanted the French alliance ; and that there were two difficulties in the way. France had been developing her trade, and increasing her navy. This must stop. Trade was the idol of England, and sea power her only effective claim to consideration ; these interests — at any rate the second — must be secured, if dealings were to proceed. More than once he held the same language. " The only thing which can give any impediment is the matter of the sea, which is so essential a point to us heere, as an union upon any other security can never be lasting, nor can I be answerable to my Kingdoms, if I should enter into an alliance wherein their present and future security were not fully provided for." The second obstacle he mentioned with his tongue in his cheek. " The other difficulty is the treaties I am entered into of late, which I am sure the King my brother would not have me violate upon any terms, since he has given me the good example of being a martire to his words." Louis at once instructed Colbert to set on foot a commercial treaty, which could give no ground for suspicion, prolonging the negotiations while the pre- liminaries of a more practical alliance were carried on. Charles entered willingly into this scheme, and amused 234 CHARLES II. himself in duping both Buckingham and Colbert, by setting them, with every circumstance of mystery, to work upon it as if it were the only matter in hand ; but he again expressed his extreme jealousy of the growth of the French navy. At the same time he thanked his sister for the gloves, which are " as good as is possible to smell," and for " the petticoat, which is the finest I ever saw ". He needed however assistance of a more solid kind than gloves and petticoats. Economies had been made in his expenses, chiefly by diminishing pensions ; but economy was an " exotic at court," and he was very soon sorely put to it for money. Secrecy was essential if the intrigue was to pro- ceed without hindrance, and we have an interesting example of the manner in which this secrecy was maintained. " I had written thus far," he wrote to his sister Henrietta, ^' when I receaved yours by the Italian whose name and capacity you do not know ; and he delivered your letter to me in a passage where it was so darke as I do not know his face again if I see him ; so as the man is likely to succeede, when his re- commendation and reception are so sutable to one another." In prolonged negotiations however it was impossible to maintain such secrecy for any length of time, and Arlington and Colbert were successively admitted to just so much confidence as was necessary to keep them at work. Arlington, who shrewdly suspected what was going on, soon gave evidence of CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 235 his readiness to help to the farthest extent ; his change of front was probably due not only to his warm attachment to Catholic views, but especially to the fact that James had already declared his conver- sion, and, with all a convert's ardour, had been urging his brother to the same course. It was not however until May, 1669, that Charles reported Arlington as " intirely mine " ; it was six months later before Col- bert was entrusted with the whole secret. Bucking- ham, as a Protestant and a babbler, never knew it at all. On January 25, 1669, Charles announced to James, Clifford, Arlington, and Arundel, in the strictest con- fidence, his desire to be a Catholic. The political aspect of Catholicism was as convincing as the re- ligious ; only under a Catholic constitution, he said, might a King of England hope to become absolute. In the previous August — if the documents in the archives of the Jesuits can be regarded as genuine — he had sent to the General of the Order a request that the son of his Jersey boyhood (p. 33) might be sent to him in order that he might practise with him in secret the mysteries of the Catholic religion, " without giving a shade of suspicion that We are Catholic ". But the hope that he might be received into the Catholic Church while outwardly appearing a Protestant was destroyed by the uncompromising statement of the Pope in the case of James, who had made the same 236 CHARLES II. request, that even the Head of the Church himself had no power to grant such a dispensation. The formal conversion was therefore left until his alliance with Louis should make him strong enough to brave the country ; and there it remained until the im- minence of death set him free. Out of the pourparlers with Louis two main ideas now definitely shaped themselves : in return for large ^ subsidies and a share in the spoils, Charles was to join in the invasion of Holland ; and he was to make a public confession of Catholicism, receiving for this, also, a generous supply from Louisf with additional help in men and money in 'iase of trouble with his own subjects. It would be tedious to enter upon the labyrinth of negotiations that now went on ; Charles, Louis, and Henrietta alone seeing the whole matter clearly, the agents working in such dim light as was vouch- safed them. The episode of the Abbe Pregnani is however too characteristic of the time and of all con- cerned to be omitted. The frequent journeys of messengers between England and France, and the conferences between Charles and Colbert, were arousing public suspicion. It was openly declared in the streets that a compact was already concluded, and the price was named for which English honour had been bought and sold. To avoid this public attention, the Abbe Pregnani, an CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 237 Italian monk, who had acquired a reputation among the ladies of Paris by his pretensions to astrology, the fashionable nonsense of the day, was sent over by Louis, under pretence of helping Charles in his favourite chemical experiments, but really in order that, favoured by the privacy of the laboratory, he might act as a go-between for Charles and Colbert, without any initiative of his own. The arrangement for a time worked well. Incidentally we learn to what extent Charles believed in astrology : " You may be sure/' he said to Henrietta, " that I will keepe the secret of your prophet. I give little credit to such kinde of cattle, and the lesse you do it the better, for if they could tell anything it is inconvenient to know one's fortune beforehand, whether good or bad, and so, my dearest sister, good night." This letter was written very late in the night of March 7, 1669. At three next morning Charles had dragged Pregnani out of bed to ride with him to Audley End ; and on the 1 2th he wrote, in malicious delight, how he had made him trot hard from Audley End to New^market to see a foot-race, and had completely tired him out. On his return to London he related with infinite satis- faction how the foolish Abbe, not content with the safe telling of remote fortunes, had lost his money " upon confidence that the starrs could tell which horse would win, for he had the ill luck to foretell three times wrong together, and James (Monmouth) believed 238 CHARLES II. him SO much as he lost his money upon the same score ". There was clearly nothing to be done, in a sporting country, through an agent who proved himself an unreliable tipster, and Louis at once recalled him. Charles had a softer heart. " I finde the poore Abbe Pregnany very much troubled, for feare that the rail- leries about foretelling the horsematches may have done him some prejudice with you, which I hope it has not done, for he was only trying new tricks, which he had read of in bookes, and gave them as little credit as we did. . . . The man has witt enough, and is as much your servant as is possible, which makes me love him." On June 6 a very important letter reached Henri- etta, in which Charles detailed the preparations which he was making to meet the dangers that he foresaw : — I am securing all the principal ports of this country, not only by fortifying them, but lykewise the keeping them in such hands as I am sure will be faithful to me on all occasions, and this will secure the fleet, because the cheefe places where the ships lye are Chatham and Portsmouth. . . . There is all the reason in the world to join profitt with honour when it may be done honestly, and the King will find me as forward to do Holland a good turne as he can desire . . . and I am sure we shall never be satisfied till we have had our revenge, and I am willing to enter into an agreement upon that matter whensoever the King pleases. Arlington, he added, " will be as forward in the matter as I am, and farther assurance you cannot expect from an honest man in his post, nor ought you to trust him if he should make any other professions CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 239 than to be for what his master is for". Elsewhere he told how he was cautiously increasing the number of his troops — which was done by adding insensibly more men to a troop or company, and then more troops or companies to a regiment, until in 1673 there were 18,000 men encamped at Blackheath — while Lauder- dale, his vizier in Scotland, had formed an army of 22,000 men, bound by Act of Parliament to march where and whither he pleased in his dominions. Ire- land was in good hands under Berkeley, and he had every confidence that Ormond would support him. He would proclaim his conversion as soon as he felt perfectly secure ; and he had no doubt that he should easily be able to satisfy the holders of the lands which in pre- Reformation days had belonged to the Church, which would of course — if Catholicism were established — revert to her. Finally, we are told by James, " the rigorous Church of England men were let loose and encouraged under- hand to prosecute according to the law the Non- conformists, to the end that these might be more sensible of the ease they should have when the Catholics prevailed ". It is easy to rate Charles's words about his pre- parations too highly. That floating ideas of force passed before him is more than probable. But a fixed resolve was foreign to his nature ; and, day by day, as his character deteriorated under continual 240 CHARLES II . debauchery, he grew less capable of sustained effort. Often we see him forming great designs, and pro- ceeding with them just so long as they do not meet with formidable resistance. Careless as he always appeared of public opinion, he never deceived him- self for long as to the facts of his position. He did not forget his father's fate, nor had he any intention of again '' going on his travels ". As to the Church lands, no one knew better than Charles that to move Olympus would be an easier task than to oust their possessors ; while the idea that Ormond would be a party to the subjection of the country to military force, or to a betrayal of English Protestantism, sounds no less absurd to all who remember who and what Ormond was. An amusing game of fence now took place upon the question whether the English declaration of war against the Republic should precede or follow the announcement of Charles's conversion. The object of Louis was to attack at the earliest moment, and he cared very little about the King's religion ; Charles on the other hand was in no haste to bind himself to the cost and risk of a great war a moment sooner than necessary. Upon the religious question, he said, re- peating the theory expressed by James, he could reckon upon the neutrality, if not the active support, of the Dissenters, for they hated the Church more than they hated Catholicism ; with his troops and fortresses he sl^ould be strong enough to carry the matter CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 241 through, and he could then begin the war. Colbert in reply laid stress upon the fact that the Dutch would in this case stand before Europe as the champions of Protestantism, while the difficulties which would arise at home would impair the King's strength for the joint enterprise. But if — sustained by the commercial jealousy of his own people — he declared war first, he would have a ground for demand- ing large supplies from Parliament, and with the troops and ships thus provided he would find it easy, at the close of a successful conflict, to secure a quiet acquiescence in his conversion. To Charles's next suggestion, that Louis should first begin hostilities, and that he himself should then carry out both parts of his scheme simultaneously, Louis replied with an absolute refusal to enter upon the war without the explicit con- currence of England. The French monarch had been well served by the English Parliament in the session which began on October 19, 1669. In asking for a generous supply Charles had prided himself upon being the happy instrument which had secured the Triple Alliance, and the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. He had used language which, though not verbally mendacious, was intended to lead to the belief that the Triple Alliance stood firm. Temple had been sent as am- bassador to the Hague, and had more than once been allowed — all unconscious of the deceit — to pledge his master's honour to the Dutch ; it is indeed possible that 16 242 CHARLES 11. Charles might even yet have kept faith if Parlia- ment had given money with a free hand. But the Commons had voted him a sum quite inadequate even to strengthen his hands in the negotiations. He was thus compelled to meet Louis half-way ; but it was not until January, 1670, that he proposed terms which showed that he was in earnest. It was characteristic of him that while acceding to the main position of the French monarch — precedence for the war — he insisted upon one provision which showed how well he knew the temper of his people. He told Louis bluntly that no English captain would take orders from a French admiral ; if therefore the fleets were united, they must sail under English command. Once more his reconciliation with Parliament in the session of February 10, 1670, with its practical result of a large supply, enabled Charles to call the game. He began to hang back, and to raise his terms ; and on every point — commercial advantages, the com- mand and numbers of the fleets, the payment of subsidies in hard cash and not in letters of exchange, even his demand that in the powers given to the commissioners he should be styled * King of France ' — Louis found himself compelled to yield. The few remaining difficulties were left to be overcome by Charles's sister — ** deare deare sister " — through whose hands all the confidential letters had passed, and who now paid a long-promised visit. With CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 243 a suite of 257 persons, among whom was a young girl named Louise de Keroual, she reached Dover on May 5 ; and Charles, with his old boyish eagerness, rowed far out to sea to meet the squadron. On June i, 1670, Colbert for France, and Arlington, Clifford, Arundel, and Bellings for England, signed the Treaty! of Dover — the Traite de Madame, On the 12th Henrietta returned to France, leaving behind her an impression of beauty, goodness, and charm which is reflected in the correspondence of far-away country homes. On the 29th she was dead. By the famous compact Louis secured his immedi- ate object. But Charles was, except for honour, no loser ; nor, he might claim, was England. He was indeed bound to declare his conversion ; but the date was left absolutely to himself, while he was at once to receive ;^i 50,000 to aid him in any difficulties which might arise upon that score. For the war he was to have ;^225,ooo a year ; and the command of the coasts of Zealand was to be his share of the spoil. One of the conditions acknowledged the supremacy of England at sea. The French fleet — of thirty vessels only — was to be regarded as auxiliary ; and the whole was to be under the command of an English admiral. And now followed one of the most curious pieces of by-play in history, one exactly in consonance with Charles's genius. It was impossible to show the 16* 244 CHARLES II. treaty as it stood to the King's Protestant servants — to Buckingham, Lauderdale, Ashley, Ormond, or Rupert ; it was equally impossible to keep from them for any length of time the fact that a treaty had been made. With Buckingham's frothy egotism to play upon, the matter was however very simple. He was allowed to negotiate — believing the suggestion to be his own — a fresh treaty, the Traite simule. Stimulated by the flattery of Louis, and still more by the feigned hesitation of Arlington and Colbert, while Charles looked on with infinite amusement, he laboured zeal- ously in preparing a draft differing from the original one in only two important respects. All mention of the conversion was omitted, the subsidy offered for that purpose being now added to that to be given for the war; and the commander of the English land- contingent was to take precedence of all the lieu- tenant-generals of France. This latter condition was inserted in order still farther to quicken Buckingham's zeal, since he hoped to have the post. It led a little later to a scene described by Colbert in a letter to Louis on November 9, 1671, which aptly illustrates Charles's tone with his servants, and his regard for Buckingham in particular. The King had by that time induced Louis to waive the demand for the troops, and Buckingham complained in sulky petu- lance to his master of what he regarded as a personal grievance. Charles replied that ** it was folly to CHARLES AND CLARENDON. 245 imagine he could put in competition the interest the Duke had in commanding a body of troops with that of the public," and added angrily that, on such occa- sions, he considered him no more than his dog. The Traite siintde was duly signed by Bucking- ham, Lauderdale, and Ashley, in the beginning of 167 1. Among all the immediate servants of the Crown, there was thus scarcely one whose hand was not given to this shameless betrayal of an alliance which England had herself sought. The treaty being made, Charles had good reasons for desiring an early war. He must engage the country beyond recall before Parliament should meet again ; and his abandonment of toleration, and his duplicity, had placed him for the moment in posses- sion of ample funds. On October 24, 1670, he had opened Parliament with a speech in which he had carried deception regarding foreign affairs to the farthest point short of absolute falsehood. The neces- sity of raising the navy to a strength which might challenge both France and the Dutch was dwelt upon. Not a hint was dropped that the Triple Alliance was in danger ; the first of Temple's treaties indeed, which bound England and the Republic to mutual defence in case of attack, was specially mentioned. Completely deceived, the Commons answered the demand for a supply by a vote of ;6^8oo,ooo. To avoid being after- wards confronted with the proof of his own falseness, 246 CHARLES II. Charles took the unusual step of forbidding the Lord Keeper's speech to be printed. It was not until long afterwards that Andrew Marvel, when writing his great pamphlet upon the ' Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government,' was able with much labour to recover a written copy ; and it is to his diligence alone that we owe our knowledge of the trickery. The importance of the Treaty of Dover can scarcely be overrated. Charles had, entered upon a course of subservience to France, or father of paral- lelism with Louis, which placed it henceforth in the power of the French King to neutralise the opinion of free and Protestant England, and even to enlist her material support in the interests of despotism and Catholicism. This political profligacy, this dissocia- tion of the King from his people, was responsible for the miseries to which Europe was subjected for more than a generation. Without the support of Charles, Louis would not have dared to attack the Dutch, for their fleets would have swept his commerce from the seas ; while the union of the two great naval powers would have stood like a wall against all schemes of aggression. Had England at this moment possessed a king of lofty temper, proud to lead, or apt to con- trol, the current of national feeling, the chapter of bloodshed and desolation which began at Dover and ended at Utrecht would probably never have been written. CHAPTER IV. CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. Had Charles been asked to justify the deception which he had practised upon his people, he would probably have answered that foreign alliances, and questions of peace and war, were prerogatives of the Crown, and no concern of theirs. That he was, as he had said, the only man in his dominions who was in the interest of France was a matter of regret, but could not be sup- posed in any way to affect his decision. If therefore he had reason to believe that his people would forsake their proper province and oppose his designs, should they become aware of them, secrecy and deception were, he would hold, at once legitimate and necessary. But in domestic affairs such deception had been im- possible ; and to illustrate this we must now briefly retrace our steps. The dismissal of Clarendon had removed an obstacle to the fulfilment of the King's purpose of resting his power upon the goodwill and gratitude of Dissent. Buckingham and Arlington, the successors to Clarendon's place, though not to his authority, 247 248 CHARLES II. " hating one another mortally," " still pecking one at the other," were for a time united by their common antagonism to the fallen Chancellor and their common fear that he might return. Their private inclinations moreover led them towards toleration ; Buckingham posed as the patron of Protestant Dissent, Arlington sympathised with the Catholics. So long as the recess lasted they had their way. The penal statutes were ignored, the prisons were opened, the meeting houses were again thronged. The Presbyterians received os- tentatious favour, and many old Commonwealth men, like Wildman, showed themselves again in public. A bill for comprehension was drafted to which it was confidently hoped that Parliament, rendered tractable by the Triple Alliance, and by its success over Claren- don, would give its consent ; and the speech from the throne (February lo) contained a request that the Commons would " seriously think of some course to beget a better union and composure in the minds of my Protestant subjects in matters of religion ". All mention of Catholics was carefully avoided. But Charles was at once undeceived. His intentions had leaked out before the Houses met, and the country gentlemen, already angry at the mismanagement of the last war, were in a state of excessive irritation. The King was straightway petitioned to proclaim the suppression of all unlawful assemblies, whether Papist or Protestant. He knew that any hesitation would CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 249 mean a refusal of supplies ; and the short-lived hopes of the Dissenters came to an end. The Commons then threw aside the proposal that Charles should be asked to hold a conference of divines, and in May, 1668, passed a bill for continuing the Conventicle Acts. There was clearly nothing to be done with the House in its present humour ; and Charles wantecl freedom for his negotiations with Louis. Taking advantage of a deadlock which had arisen between Lords and Commons, he postponed any farther meeting of Parlia- ment for nearly eighteen months — until October 19, 1669 — when money was again absolutely necessary. Had he been careful to maintain at least a moder- ate execution of former acts, it is possible that the Commons might have accepted some indulgence for Protestant Dissent. As it was, they came together possessed more than ever with the doctrine that an overwhelming and exclusive Anglican ascendency was the only weapon with which to fight their arch-enemy, Catholicism. Sheldon had collected ex parte informa- tion as to the character of the conventicles, and even before the meeting of Parliament had carried it to Charles and compelled him to issue a fresh proclama- tion to enforce the law. The Commons at once made it clear that they would support the Primate ; and on December 11, 1669, Charles again closed the session. When Parliament reassembled — February 14, 1670 — an unusual scene was witnessed. For the first time 250 CHARLES II. in English history the sovereign was attended to the House of Lords with military pomp. It can hardly be doubted that the design was to accustom the people to the idea of a standing army. Charles met the Houses with confidence begotten by the dealings with Louis which have been described, and addressed them ** stylo minaci et imperatorio ". But he had another reason for this attitude. In the interval between the sessions he had taken the lessons of the past to heart. For once his speech did not contain a word about toleration. He had cynically determined to offer to Parliament the one condition necessary to secure an unstinted supply, a supply which he intended to use for the objects most distasteful to the members. The Commons understood that they might have tlieir swing of persecution ; and they showed their instant recognition of the fact by voting a supply of ;^300,ooo a year for eight years. " We are all venal cowards, except some few/' was the bitter comment of an honest man. Charles then left them without demur to settle down to their favourite work. On April ii, 1670, he gave his assent to the second and more pitiless Conventicle Act. Sheldon hounded on the bishops ; and so severely was the Act executed that a trustworthy witness declared soon afterwards that there was scarcely a conventicle to be heard of throughout England. We are told of violent arrests in churches " even during sermon time, nay, of CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 251 one taken out betwixt the bread and the cup in re- ceiving the sacrament". So successful was this policy that, in Marvel's words, " the King was never since his coming in, nay, all things considered, no King since the Conquest, so absolutely powerful at home". Protestant Dissent being now out of the way, the Commons attacked the other wing of the forces hostile to Anglican supremacy. On March 10, 167 1, they made a series of demands which implied a denial of the right of Catholics even to dwell in peace. To the cry for the banishment of priests and Jesuits, and for the enforcement of the penal laws, Charles yielded at once, with but slight reservations. For this second surrender he received a farther supply, and then, taking advantage of a fresh conflict between the Houses, he again used the weapon of prorogation. Parliament did not meet again for business until February 4, 1672. Before we deal with that session, certain domestic matters claim attention which were of more absorbing interest in Charles's eyes, and one of which at any rate was of real political importance as well. Hitherto Lady Castlemaine's sway had been un- disputed ; the ladies who were introduced to Charles's casual notice by Bab May, Chiffinch, Arlington, and his other purveyors, were but creatures of a day. Suddenly however she awoke to the fact that '' poor 252 CHARLES II. Allinda" was "growing old/' and that she had two rivals whose appointment seemed likely to be perma- nent. Nelly Gwyn, then just nineteen years old, was "sent for by the King" in the winter of 1669, and remained his playmate to his death. She had already been mistress successively to Charles Hart, her fellow actor, and to Charles, Lord Buckhurst, with whom she kept "merry house" at Epsom; but, while Lady Castlemaine, under the King's very eyes, ranged from peer to rope-dancer in the bestowal of her favours, Nelly Gwyn, having reached the height of ambition, was, for all evidence to the contrary, faithful to her Charles the Third, as she dubbed him, for more than fifteen years. Captivating in looks she must have been, to attract the King, although her portraits show none of that regular beauty which in Lady Castlemaine and Frances Stewart defies criticism. But it was clearly the frank recklessness of the Latin Quarter, the fearlessness of her banter, her irrepressible gaiety, the spontaneous- ness of her practical jokes, her camaraderie and un- failing goodness of temper, which made her hold on him secure. She was a true child of the London streets, apt of wit and shrewd of tongue ; and her very honesty of vice, her want of reticence, her buoyant indiscretion, her refusal to take herself seriously, or to regard herself as anything but what she was, have strangely enough secured for her a sort of positive CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 253 affection in the respectable England of to-day, as they did during her joyous, irresponsible life. Nobody ever thought of kissing Nelly's hand, as they kissed the hand of the mistress en titre. Her regular waees were comparatively insignificant, a bare ^^4,000 a year, while the Duchess of Portsmouth was receiving many times that amount. For politics she cared nothing. Politicians might indeed meet and intrigue at her lodgings ; but " Nelly and her merry gang " were not politicians ; and she neither made ministers nor ap- pointed to bishoprics. She was, as we have said, Charles's playmate ; and his dying words, " Don't let poor Nelly starve," aptly express the relations between them. Very different were the birth, character, ambitions, and functions of Louise Renee de Keroual de Penan- coet, the daughter of two noble Breton houses, who, when just twenty years of age, came in the train of Henrietta of Orleans to Dover. On the eve of his sister's departure, when presenting her with some choice jewels, Charles prayed her to leave one of her own with him. She bade Louise fetch the casket, and told her brother to make his choice. Charles thereupon asked with a smile that her maid-of-honour might remain in England, for that was the only jewel which he coveted. There is no reason to suppose that Henrietta had brought the girl over for the purpose ; indeed she utterly refused Charles's request. But after her death, 254 CHARLES 11. Louis, who was constantly informed of all details of this nature in Charles's Court, saw the opportunity thus afforded for supplying the place which had been left in his affections, and for thereby securing that influence over him, in French interests, which the Queen from ignorance, and Lady Castlemaine from vulgarity, were unable to exercise. Louise was instructed to accept the King's urgent invitation to return to England as maid-of-honour to the Queen, and was doubtless well aware of what that meant. It will be seen how far she succeeded in the political ro/e assigned to her. But from the very first she began, with the sweet languor of her girlish face, and the refined charm of manner which was a new experience for Charles, to weave around him the meshes of the net, and to introduce into the anarchy of the harem something at least ot female reticence and grace. Alone among Charles's mistresses she had a conception of /a haute politique ; she alone in that ignoble court could command the re- spect and co-operation of statesmen and ambassadors. She met the vulgar furies of Lady Castlemaine, and the banter of Nelly, with quiet disdain ; she held her own with a certain dignity against the anger of the Commons, the hatred of the people, the attacks of politicians, and the waywardness of Charles ; and for many years she was virtual Queen of England. A curious scene followed her arrival. Furious with jealousy, Lady Castlemaine prepared for war ; CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 255 Nelly was boisterous in her defiance ; and the other ladies were proportionately aggressive. Louise adopted a behaviour of piquant reserve. Month after month she strengthened her hold upon Charles by a gentle but effectual resistance to his importunities. Her progress was eagerly watched from France. The ministers of Louis began to fear that she was overacting her part, and she received hints to that effect. Still she held out. At length Lady Arlington was deputed by Colbert to put the case plainly to the girl ; she must lay aside her scruples without delay, or retire to a French convent. At a dinner given by Colbert to Charles it was arranged that she should accompany Lady Arlington to Euston, where the King could join them from Newmarket, and that there the last resist- ance should be overcome. The revels of that night, the mock marriage and the rest, are told by Evelyn. On October 9, 1671, she became Charles's acknow- ledged mistress. Of all strange scenes in this aban- doned reign, perhaps the strangest to modern eyes is the audience which she gave on November 2 to Colbert, who came to tender her the formal congratu- lations of Louis XIV. Her advancement was rapid. Countess, Baroness, Duchess, in quick succession, it is said that she even aspired to share Charles's throne should the expected death of the Queen take place. Barbara Palmer, Nelly Gwyn, and Louise de Keroual, typify, as they contented, the three sides 256 CHARLES II. of Charles's nature. The first had held him by the purely animal passions, the lustfulness of his southern blood. Nelly was a Bohemian, like himself, and would have been as good a comrade had they both been strolling actors. But when he wanted refinement, charm of conversation, and delicacy — and it is a mis- take to forget this side of his nature — he retired to the apartments of Louise de Keroual. Upon these three women the treasure of the country was squandered in wanton profusion. The supplies voted by Parliament, the subsidies of Louis, ran like water through their hands. Pensions, patents, mono- polies, Crown lands, reversions of lucrative posts, were showered upon them and their bastards. Louise had before long, besides casual gifts, an annual income of ;!f 40,000 ; and it is computed that, in 1681, the enormous sum of ;^ 136,000 passed through her hands. It was clear that the empire of the older woman over Charles's affections had gone. But he had been too long her slave to relegate her to insignificance or poverty, and he dared not allow her rancorous tongue to be unbridled. In August, 1670, she was created a Duchess, and her children were ennobled. Wealth was given her as much as her hands could hold. The farmers of the customs "have signed and sealed ;^io,ooo a year more to the Duchess of Cleveland, who has likewise near iJ" 10,000 a year out of the new farm of the county excise of Beer and Ale, ;£^5,ooo a CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 257 year out of the Post office, and, they say, the reversion of all places in the Custom House, the Green wax, and indeed, what not? All promotions, spiritual and temporal, pass under her cognisance." The privy purse was shaken into her lap and the Irish treasury was plundered for her. Charles actually gave her a grant of the Phoenix Park ; and the design was aban- doned only when Essex, the Lord Lieutenant, one of the few honest men who held office, protested against this outrage with petitionary vehemence, as "one of the unseemliest things I have ever known " — " a thing so indecent" — offering, however, to find concealed lands of as good a value as the Park, or to induce the Irish Parliament to give a small tax to reprieve it. The idea of a tax being raised upon a whole nation to satisfy the harlot's needs is as edifying as the sight of dignitaries of the Church seeking promotion at her hands. "We are," says Hallam, in one of his few moments of irony, " much indebted to the memory of Barbara Duchess of Cleveland, Louise Duchess of Portsmouth, and Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn. We owe a tribute of gratitude to the Mays, the Killigrews, the Chiffinches, and the Grammonts. They played a ser- viceable part in ridding the kingdom of its besotted loyalty. They saved our forefathers from the Star Chamber and the High-Commission Court ; they laboured in their vocation against standing armies and corruption ; they pressed forward the great ulti- 17 258 CHARLES II. mate security of English freedom, the expulsion of the house of Stuart." It is difficult to associate with these scenes of ex- travagance and effrontery the self-control, the serious purposes, and the austere reticence which distinguished William of Orange from childhood. In the late autumn of 1670 the Prince paid a visit to England, when the Court were apparently thinking of nothing but New- market, with the first suggestion of future marriage with Mary, the eldest daughter of James. Evelyn describes him as having a " manly, courageous, wise countenance, resembling his mother and the Duke of Gloucester " ; "a very personable and hopeful prince," says Reresby. From him, as from every one else, Charles managed to extract sport. He " made him drink very hard one night at a supper given by the Duke of Buckingham. The Prince did not naturally love it, but being once entered, was more frolic and merry than the rest of the company ; amongst other expressions of it, he broke the windows of the chamber of the maids-of-honour and had got into some of their apartments, had they not been timely rescued." "I suppose," adds Reresby, *'his mistress did not less approve of him for that vigour." By his prorogation in the spring of 1671, Charles had set himself free from the control of Parliament, in order, as Marvel put it, " that the architects of our ruin CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 259 might be so long free from their busie and odious in- spection ". The manner in which he used his liberty led to the first great crisis of his reign. We have seen, from his letters to Henrietta, in what light he regarded his ministers ; they were merely the exponents of his personal will, without initiative and without any collective responsibility, or any neces- sary harmony of opinion. It had been the custom to form within the Privy Council a small committee or ' cabal ' — a term at least as old as the reign of James I. — to which were referred, not only foreign affairs, but other matters of importance and secrecy. This committee represented the Crown, neither ex- isting nor ceasing to exist with any direct reference to Parliament and people. Each member held his place purely at the King's will ; he gave his advice, but his duty then was to support whatever decision the King might adopt. " Satisfy yourself," said Arling- ton in 1672, "that you doe your duty of serving the King according to his direction." It was in fact the antithesis of the modern * cabinet'. The logical se- quence of this aspect of ministerial responsibility to the King alone, was that the minister should not suffer for his obedience ; and in 1679 we find Danby taking up, with respect to his own impeachment, the position that " in no case ought a minister of State to be made a sacrifice of State to the will of the people ". The doctrine under which Buckingham had been 17 * 26o CHARLES II. attacked and Strafford had been struck down was explicitly denied. The Cabal at the tinie of the Treaty of Dover consisted of Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale ; though Bridgeman, Ormond, Rupert, and others were at times included. Among these five there was, besides the guilty knowledge of one or other of the treaties of Dover, but one bond of union. Buck- ingham hated Arlington, Arlington was jealous of Clifford, Clifford was bitterly opposed to Ashley, and Lauderdale had no English responsibility at all. But all of them, though from widely differing motives, were in favour of toleration. Of Arlington, astute and useful, with the " very pedantick carriage of a true penman," and of Buckingham, " flashy and vain," much has already been heard. Of the other three, men in a far higher plane, some notice must here be given. Sir Thomas Clifford was perhaps the most pictur- esque figure of the Cabal. ' A valiant, incorrupt gen- tleman, ambitious, not covetous, passionate, a most constant, sincere friend,' says Evelyn. ' Boisterous/ 'overbearing,' and 'dangerous,' are Bolingbroke's epi- thets. An ardent Catholic in sympathies, if not by actual conversion, he was as ardent an advocate of an uncontrolled monarchy. He saw salvation for the State only in the combination of religious freedom and royal despotism. So irritated was he at the idea of Parlia- mentary control that he told Charles that " it was better CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 261 to pay dependence to a great and generous King than to 500 of his own insolent subjects," and, in judging the King, such an utterance as this, coming from an Englishman of ancient traditions, deserves attention. Clifford's temper was vehement, his eloquence striking, his personal courage conspicuous. The story is well known, how during the former war, when on a visit to Arlington at Euston in Suffolk, he and Ormond's son, Ossory, hearing the guns off Harwich, mounted their horses in haste, galloped to the coast, and put off in an open boat to join the fleet and serve as volunteers through one of the bloodiest days in English naval warfare. Although a poor man, and although willing to make the fullest use of the corruptness of others, his own hands were clean of bribes, and his life was remarkably pure. His horoscope foretold him fame and fortune, but an early death. He answered that he did not shrink from an early death if, before he died, he might witness the triumph of the Catholic Church. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley, had been in the forefront of political life since boyhood. In the days of the Commonwealth he had striven for religious tolerance against military government, and after the Protector's death had assisted energetically to break down the despotism of the army ; in spite of his present complicity in Charles's counsels he was still a keen upholder of Parliamentar)^ rule. He was violently anti-Catholic, because, as he expressed it, 262 CHARLES 11. " Popery and slavery go ever, like two sisters, hand in hand " ; but he had been a supporter of every at- tempt to secure toleration for Protestant dissent since the Restoration, and in the constitution which Locke drew up at his request for the new colony of Carolina, this was a leading feature. He had established a reputation for business power and tact ; and although he never affected to censure the prevailing private and public immorality, he shunned debauchery in his own person, and his career, like Clifford's, was free from any well-established charge of personal corruption. Small and slight in stature, and of delicate health, he had a soul as ambitious and fiery as that of Clifford himself; and it was not until the end of his career that his keen political foresight gave way under the excitement of faction and the harassments of ill-health. But although he possessed an intuitive perception of those causes which had a great future before them, his conduct was liable to be determined at any moment by the resolve to ride upon the crest of the political wave ; and while he was always formidable by reason of his ready and incisive eloquence, his unceasing activity, and his skill in party warfare, which in its modern form he may be said to have originated, he is far more often spoken of by other politicians with dis- trust than with admiration or respect. John Maitland, Earl, and afterwards Duke, of Lauderdale, held a position so distinct, that he de- CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 263 serves a fuller notice. He can scarcely be regarded — for many years after the Restoration — as an English politician at all ; and while his colleagues of the Cabal were occupied in manipulating votes of the House of Commons and in over-reaching one another, he was ruling a nation. The foundation of his close intimacy with Charles was probably laid when he brought the terms of the Engagers to the Downs in 1649 > i^ survived the nine years of exile after Worcester; and in April, 1660, Charles signed himself, as he did twenty years later, " Your most affectionate friend ". But his fortune was not secured until he obtained the Secretaryship for Scotland, a post which gave him constant access to the King's person, and afforded opportunities which he was quick to improve. From that vantage-ground he overthrew the blundering Middleton and his * Drunken Administration ' ; observed, and at the fitting moment, brushed away the ambitious schemes of the Duke of Rothes and James Sharp ; and in October, 1669, went down to Scotland as High Commissioner, with far-reaching designs, which he carried out with remarkable success. His methods were simple and efficacious. He had in past years made himself agreeable to Charles ; he now made himself indispensable. So long as the King chose to busy himself with governing, he posed merely as the devoted servant of his will, to whom 264 CHARLES 11. his commands were, he assured him, above all human laws. When Charles tired, he relieved him of his burden. For Scotch business he was as useful as Clarendon for English, and, unlike Clarendon, had no scruples about paying court to the royal mistresses ; he had a brutal humour that was to Charles's liking ; in drunkenness and filthy lewdness he could participate as freely as Sedley or Rochester ; his buffoonery was as entertaining as Buckingham's ; he was a master of strong and caustic language ; and his wit, though clumsy, was pungent. Charles loved to have scholars about him ; Lauderdale was at home in Latin, Italian, French, and Hebrew. It was soon noticed "that My Lord Lauderdale is never from the King's ear nor council, and that he is a most cunning fellow". To be ill-affected to the Kirk had meant political outlawry ; and Lauderdale's career had therefore been, up to the Restoration, a carefully arranged hypocrisy. A veil of decency had been thrown over his earlier life, and he acquired a complete mastery of the Covenanting tongue. But, as the comrade of Charles, he became notorious for the grossest forms of vice. There is a French proverb, 'Jeune hermite, vieux diable'. To Robert Baillie he had been a 'pious nobleman,' a 'gracious youth'. By the time at which we have arrived he had become, according to the sorrowful remonstrance of Richard Baxter, that most terrible of all things — a dirty old man. CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 265 Crippled as he was at the outset in fortune, and with signal disadvantages of person, Lauderdale pos- sessed in an eminent degree the qualities best adapted to the wear and tear of that strange time. He was of a rougher and more robust type than his English colleagues. He had strength of will, coolness, courage, watchfulness, readiness of resource, and perception of the right moment at which to strike his blows. He chose his agents and his tools with discernment ; he knew, he said, " how to make use of a knave as well as another " ; and he discarded them, when they had served his turn, as passion or policy dictated. He was willing to take any oaths — such had been the discipline of the Covenant — " a cart-load of them," if necessary. A bold and unabashed liar, he was as eloquent against what he called "damned insipid lies " as Hotspur was against women's oaths. Such was the man who for fifteen years exercised an irresponsible dominion over Scotland. As to what happened there in the way of good or bad govern- ment, Charles does not appear to have cared at all, so long as he was not seriously troubled. He was, indeed, fond of saying that he understood Scotch affairs better than anyone about him ; and Lauderdale sedulously flattered this boast. But Charles remem- bered Scotland only with disgust, and he interfered with his Viceroy no more than an oriental despot interferes with a Pasha of a distant province who 266 CHARLES 11. knows no law but his master's will and his own enrich- ment. In October, 1669, however, as we have said, Lauderdale was sent to Scotland, with a distinct mission, which had an important bearing upon the King's wider designs in England. There Charles found himself bound hand and foot by the Church, thwarted and controlled by Parliament, and unable to raise a troop of soldiers without arousing the keenest jealousy. Lauderdale's business was to do for him in Scotland what could not be done at home ; and his success was complete. By a clever and audacious stroke he secured an alteration of the * Articles ' which made the Parliament a mere registry of the royal will. It was then easy to carry the Act of Supremacy, whereby the Church of Scotland was robbed of the least shade of independence. And finally he created, by Act of Parliament, an army of 22,000 men, who were bound to march when and whither the King pleased within his dominions. " In a word," wrote Arlington to him, " Your Grace hath played your part well ; nothing but the proverb of ' La Mariee est trop belle ' can be said against it." The brilliant correspondence between Lauderdale and Robert Moray, whose intimacy with Charles has been already mentioned, and by whose appointment as Deputy Secretary, during his absence, Lauderdale preserved his hold upon his master, is deeply interest- ing ; although the notices of the King's habits and CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 267 ways of speech are unfortunately too much bound up with their contexts to be inserted. Charles's par- ticipation in the scientific movements of the time is illustrated by the fact that many of Moray's letters describe conversations in the royal laboratory. We feel from these letters how pleasant must have been the hours there spent with the King ; how shrewd, with all his vagabond habits, Charles was in business, and how active and penetrating was his mind ; how clearly he saw through the intrigues and jealousies which surrounded him ; how bright was his talk, how cheery his companionship ; how cleverly he went through disagreeable work which had to be done ; how resolute he was to do nothing disagreeable that he could avoid or postpone. ^ In spite of his incontestable usefulness, and of the social qualities which we have enijmerated, it never- theless astonishes us that the King should have per- mitted Lauderdale such prolonged intimacy. Charles liked polite manners in society ; he wrote in quite a pained way to his sister on the want of good breeding in England. Now there is incontestable evidence that Lauderdale picked his ears in the presence chamber, and performed other personal duties of the dressing- room with unnecessary publicity. Thomas Bruce, afterwards second Earl of Ailesbury, who, as a gentle- man of the bedchamber, had excellent opportunities for observation, declares, indeed, that the King " grew 26S CHARLES 11. quite weary of him, and that he owed his being kept in for some years by reason that the King would not have laws prescribed to him by the House of Commons". Bruce describes him to have been "of a most extraordinary learning and great memory ; as disagreeable in his conversation as was his person ; his head was towards that of a Saracen fiery face, and his tongue too big for his mouth ; and his pro- nunciation high Scotch — no Highlander like him — uttering bald jests for wit, and repeating good ones from others, and ever spoiled them in relating them, which delighted the good King much ". Then follows an amusing illustration of Charles's methods. " Besides tiring the King with his bald jests, he was continually putting his fingers into the King's snuff-box, which obliged him to order one to be made which he wore with a string on his wrist, and did not open, but the snuff came out by shaking." Bruce finally describes a scene which is truly surprising in the coarseness of its humour. Lauderdale, by way of emphasising his intimacy with Charles, was in the habit of intruding himself, uninvited, at all parties at which the King was present ; and it became necessary to devise a cure. Accordingly, " a courtier desired of the King to do him the honour of dining with him, which he accepted, 'but,' said he, 'we shall be pestered with such an one ' — meaning Lauderdale " ; whereupon " that person (the inventor of the scheme) ordered a CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 269 double sillibub glass, and it was concerted that the King, after having drunk plentifully, should ask the master of the house for a sillibub to refresh him, and by a token the King knew which of the two to take ; and commending it greatly, the Duke of Lauderdale, he having a great share of confidence (very natural to one of his country), and drinking the other half, which was prepared with — unmentionable filth — swore that no person had such a taste as his Majesty. In some little time it worked as it was natural ; and the King, perceiving it, cried out, * My Lord Lauderdale is sick ' — and they carried him away, and the King was never troubled more with him on such diverting occasions." Such were the men through whom, with Louise de Kcroual, Charles ruled his dominions. The first work before the Cabal was to find money. In August, 1671, the Kings debts were over three millions. A state of things so desperate, with an ex- pensive war in prospect, suggested desperate remedies. All evidence points to Clifford as the author of the masterful scheme of finance, whereby, to the per- manent ruin of the royal credit and widespread com- mercial distress, Charles laid violent hands upon a sum of i^ 1,400,000. For carrying through the 'Stop of the Exchequer,' Clifford was rewarded with a peer- age and the Lord Treasurer's staff. Ashley has the credit of the second important measure, the fresh attempt which the King now made to secure the dis- 270 CHARLES IL pensing power, in the hope that, at the close of a successful war, he would be in a position to dictate terms to Parliament. On March 15, 1672, Charles published his Declaration of Indulgence, " as well for the quieting of our good subjects as for inviting strangers in this conjuncture to come and live under us, and for a better encouragement of all to a cheerful following of their trades and callings". He claimed "the supreme power in ecclesiastical matters, which is inherent in Us," and announced the suspension of " all manner of penal laws in matters ecclesiastical against whatsoever sort of Nonconformists or recusants ". There was no mistake this time about the challenge to his people. It was taken up in the first instance by one of the King^s own ministers, Orlando Bridgeman, Keeper of the Seals. Bridgeman had already raised difficulties regarding the Stop of the Exchequer ; he now abso- lutely refused to put the Great Seal to the Declaration. Independence of this kind did not fit in with the King's theory of ministerial duty. Bridgeman was removed, and Ashley, as Earl of Shaftesbury, was made Lord Chancellor. Two days after the issue of the Declaration war was declared against the Dutch. As early as the spring of 1668 De Witt had re- ceived mysterious warnings of the danger which threatened the Republic. For a long time he could CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 271 not believe that his work would so soon perish, although Louis concealed his intentions under the thinnest of disguises. In the spring of 1672, however, it was clear that the blow was about to fall, and that the Dutch were almost defenceless. Against the superb army of 175,000 men, and the fleet of 120 ships, mounted with 5,000 guns, which Louis had collected, they had, through the weakness of their decentralised system, but 50,000 men in the field ; their fortresses were in decay, their commissariat dis- organised, their magazines almost empty. If any doubts remained as to what the French preparations meant, they must have been dispelled when, in retort to the medal which had so aroused his anger, Louis caused another to be struck in which the sun was por- trayed dispersing the fogs from a marsh, and bearing as its motto, in allusion to the fact that the Repubh'c had been created through French assistance, the words " Evexi sed discutiam '\ The awakening to the treachery of Charles had been still more painful. Temple had done his best to sustain the alliance which his master had resolved to betray ; as late as September, 1670, he was vouching for the King's sincerity, while Charles was privately repudiating his action to Louis. But his uneasiness appears as early as October, 1668: "if only we were what we have been, what we might be, and God knows why we are not at home". His suspicions gained ground 272 CHARLES II. when he was ordered to magnify every trifling dif- ference into a subject of acrimonious dispute; still more when Henrietta of Orleans went to Dover, and when, after her death, Buckingham was sent to Paris — not, De Witt bitterly surmised, merely to learn the language ; and most of all when he himself was suddenly recalled to England in July, 1670. He found his reception by the King and his ministers very different from that which had awaited him when he returned with the Triple Alliance. Arlington, who had hitherto greeted him with open arms, kept him waiting an hour and a half for an audience, and then talked of indifferent matters ; Charles asked him half a dozen questions about his journey and the Prince of Orange, and walked on ; it was the passionate Clifford who made matters plain. When, after a heated conversation, Temple asked what he could have done more, Clifford retorted " in a great rage " that ''he would tell me what a man might do more . . . which was to let the King and all the world know how basely and unworthily the States had used him ; and to declare publicly how their ministers were a company of rogues and rascals, and not fit for his Majesty or any other Prince to have anything to do with". An opportunity was afforded by Temple's recall for a wanton insult to the Dutch. The captain of the yacht sent to bring back Lady Temple was ordered by Charles to sail through their fleet in the CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 273 Channel, to insist upon their lowering their flags, and, in case of refusal, to take such action as would compel them to fire upon him and thus appear the aggressors. The scheme was however frustrated by the self-re- straint of the Dutch Admiral, Van Ghent. With Charles, as with Louis, De Witt had tried every means of conciliation. Hearing that the King was deeply irritated at the pamphlets, medals, and pictures which glorified the Chatham achievement, and especially because the captured Royal Charles was made a common show, he had the moulds of the medals broken, the pamphlets suppressed, the royal arms removed from the vessel, and her name altered. These concessions were viewed merely as signs of weakness. In December, 167 1, Sir George Downing was sent in Temple's place as ' bon acteur et propre a faire querelle'. In the most offensive terms he de- manded reparation for the insults of which Charles complained, and specifically insisted upon the ac- knowledgment of the maritime supremacy of England over all seas, going so far as to require that whole fleets should lower their flags to a single English war- ship. Even to this insolence De Witt was willing to give way, provided that England would engage to assist the Republic against France. As late as March 3, 1672, he endeavoured to conjure away the danger by the offer of a large personal bribe to Charles. Charles had endeavoured to appear as the attacked 18 274 CHARLES II. party. When he found the attempt useless, he began hostilities by an act which Louis himself contemptu- ously characterised as sheer piracy. The Dutch mer- chant fleet from Smyrna was lying at anchor off the Isle of Wight ; and Admiral Holmes was ordered to attack without warning, and to capture the convoy. But the Dutch were prepared, and the fleet escaped with the loss of only two ships. War was declared by England four days later. There is nothing ante- cedently improbable in Marvel's statement that the Council clock was purposely set forward on that day, lest the compliance of the Dutch before the appointed hour should prevent the declaration of war. Of the treachery displayed in the inception of this war — a war of pure selfishness on Charles's part, a ' work of darkness ' conceived and carried out in face of his people's wishes and against their interests — enough has been said. It was a great crime, and with the exception of his treatment of the Popish Terror it was the most discreditable political act of his reign. The events of the struggle — the desperate appeal to Nature whereby De Witt and the men of Holland baffled Louis in the very flush of conquest ; the valour with which, under the eye of the indomit- able De Ruyter, they four times drove back the attacks of fleets manned by seamen as valiant as themselves, and led by Rupert ; the murder of the De Witts, who were sacrificed to the need of concentrating CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 275 power in the hands of one strong man ; the tenacity of purpose with which William of Orange, in whom that power was vested, kept two mighty monarchs at arm's length, and inspired the States to refuse the dishonouring conditions of Louis, and to disregard the arrogant demands and menaces of Charles ; all this we must thus briefly pass over. To the disgrace of the war had been added the humiliation of defeat ; in not one battle had the English fleet been victorious, nor had a single soldier of the forces so industriously collected been landed upon the Dutch coasts. Charles was forced to bring the barren and in- glorious struggle to an end. He was once more in need which Louis could only partially satisfy. A very bitter feeling had grown up between the crews of his vessels and the French, who were charged with intentional failure to support their allies, and who " must either excuse their cowardice by their treachery, or their treachery by their cowardice ". The sailors were utterly weary of the war, and the regiments at Blackheath were showing a mutinous spirit. More- over Charles had not anticipated that a war begun against De Witt would resolve itself into one against his own nephew. Under the stress of these consider- ations, and of circumstances still to be related, he yielded to the conditions imposed upon him by Parlia- ment, and in the teeth of his engagements with Louis made peace on fairly favourable terms with the Dutch. 18 * 276 CHARLES 11, ' Even this could not be done in the light of day. Temple's services were again called in ; he was sent to Holland in haste, and a peace was "huddled up without the participation of the mediators " — without the knowledge even of Charles's own plenipotentiaries at the conference of Cologne. The Treaty of London (February 19, 1674) closed England's European history, so far as active war was concerned. But it gave ample opportunities for a further exhibition of the political profligacy with which we have become familiar. The agents of the King of England remained at Cologne to work for France ; the English troops who were serving in Louis's armies were not withdrawn ; Charles allowed Louis to recruit in Ireland and Scotland, while at the same time he refused William the like privilege ; he continually furnished him with ammunition and guns ; gave him the benefit, not only of his own observa- tions and experiments in shipbuilding, but also of those of the persons about him most skilful in that art ; and betrayed to him the information he re- ceived from Temple. In an interview with Ruvigny, and through Lockhart, who was still ambassador at Paris, Charles deprecated his cousin's wrath, as he had done at the time of the Triple Alliance. He went even farther; on February 14 he himself wrote to Louis asking him for pity rather than blame. The reply was full of fine irony : " Je ne puis que je ne com- CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 277 patisse a la peine que vous souffrez, et a la necessity ou vous vous trouvez de faire sans moi une paix qui nous devait etre commune. Je vous en plains au lieu de m'en plaindre." One belated victory was achieved after peace had been declared. In January, 1675, ^ redoubtable antagonist, Tromp, came to England, and among other places visited Oxford. And Bishop Prideaux tells us how " we got a greater victory over Van Tromp here than all your sea captains in London, he confessing that he was more drunk here than any- where else since he came to England". Dr. Speed, and " five or six more as able men as himself," were no doubt good drinkers, but we question whether they could have forced Tromp's old rival Monk to so ignominious a confession. De Cominges thus ends his description of a supper given by the Earl of Oxford at which that veteran toper was present : " Having been warmed by their morning and after- dinner doings, each resolved to see his companion aground. The General struck a master stroke; he presented to each a goblet of the deepest. Some swallowed the contents and some did not; but all peaceably remained where they were till the following morning, without speaking to each other, though in the same room. Only the General went to Parlia- ment as usual, with his mind and thoughts nothing impaired." 278 CHARLES IL We must now travel back over two years to follow the fortunes of the Cabal and of Charles at home. The subsidies of Louis and the Stop of the Exchequer had enabled him to dispense with Parliament until February, 1673. When he at length faced the Houses, he was ''puzzled how to save his own honour to the world, and gratify those who can only give him a supply against his enemies '*. Assuming a tone of confidence, he put lightly aside the question of the standing army of 18,000 men, and gave his usual as- surances to the Church. Then, trusting to waive all attack upon the Declaration of Indulgence by a strong expression of his personal will, he ended his reference to it with the words : " And I will deal plainly with you, I am resolved to stick to my Declaration ". The mind of the Commons had been made up before they met. They attacked neither the Stop of the Exchequer, nor the war, nor individual members of the Cabal : but without hesitation they took up the challenge thus thrown down. The question at issue was a simple one. Granting that the King had power to pardon crime in individual cases, had he power to license crime by dispensing with law ? The Declara- tion broke through forty Acts of Parliament, repeal- able by Parliament alone. The first debate closed with a vote that " Penal statutes in matters ecclesi- astical cannot be suspended but by Act of Parliament ". The Commons next resolved that no one refusing the CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 279 oaths, or the sacrament according to the Anglican rites, should be capable of holding office under the Crown. And this, although, as Marvel wrote, "it appears at first sight that men ought to enjoy the same propriety and protection in their consciences which they have in their lives, liberties, and estates ". Charles appealed to the Lords for advice. On March 7, they joined the Commons in desiring him to give full effect to their vote. Pressed to yield by Arlington and Shaftesbury; by Louis, who saw that without Parliamentary supplies the King would be driven to , peace ; and by the women, whose sources of wealth were endangered by obstinacy; urged on the other hand by Buckingham and Lauderdale to stand firm, Charles wavered from day to day. On a Wednesday he had resolved to yield ; on the Thursday he was equally determined to dissolve and make peace ; on the Friday he had finally given way to the arguments of Colbert ; and on March 8 he cancelled the Declara- ' tion to which only a month previously he had declared his fixed resolve to adhere. The Commons pressed hard upon the King's withdrawal and turned it into utter defeat. Three weeks later he gave his assent to the Test Act, which (made it impossible for a Catholic to hold any office under the Crown. And then a supply of nearly ;^ 1, 2 50,000 was granted without a protest. ' For at last the victory had been won, and the 28o CHARLES II. conquerors were not inclined to haggle about money. From this moment Charles abandoned all attempt to secure Parliamentary favour for the proscribed creed. James resigned his post of Lord High Admiral. The second part of Clifford's horoscope was fulfilled. He laid down the Treasurership, went into strict retire- ment, and shortly died — it was reported by his own hand — of the disappointment of his hopes. From this moment also Charles appears to have ceased to take the least interest in domestic politics, except when they assumed a personal aspect. He continued to be his own foreign minister ; that is, he continued to depend upon Louis XIV. for supplies of money, which were given upon conditions to which he had no objection. But he left all domestic matters to the sole and unquestioned control of Clifford's successor, Thomas Osborne, created Earl of Danby. Danby had been introduced into public life by Clifford, and had been one of the younger members of the anti-Clarendon gang. He had since attached himself closely to Buckingham. He was a man of clear views, independent character, and marked ability, and through his incontestable usefulness as a financial minister he secured abiding influence over the King. The Commons might triumph, the people might " cry out for peace, and that with some earnestness/' Lord Treasurers might commit suicide, soldiers might mutiny, fleets might be defeated ; but the world CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 281 went well with Charles. He spent a good deal of time in " divising many pretty projects to enlarge the little park at Filberd's and make it more fitt for deere ". He was delighted equally with a present of jackdaws and with the gift by Louis of the Duchy of Aubigny to Louise de Keroual. He had been able to find agreeable lodgings for poor Nelly, who had complained that she had no house of her own. And, when Parliament was not sitting, he was able to ignore the Test Act as he pleased. "The truth is, this yeare the Government begins to thrive marvellous well, for it eats and drinks and sleeps as heartily as I have known it, nor doth it vex and disquiet itself with that foolish, idle, impertinent thing called business." Un- avoidable vexations only served to emphasise the generally comfortable aspect of affairs. The Duchess of Cleveland was found to be with child by Mulgrave. Louise de Keroual had requested Charles, for sufficient reasons, to discontinue his visits for a time, and Danby had refused to pass a gift of ;^ 10,000 to her. Charles had heard that when Parliament met, "one of the bears intended to be brought to the stake at the great baiting " was " his beautiful paramour, his Grace of Lauderdale ". Worst of all, " Signor Scaramuchio and his band have begged his Majesty's leave to re- turne, their affaires requiring their presence att home ". This last anxiety — which after all proved groundless — was forgotten in the great preparations at the Duke's 282 CHARLES 11. house for an opera ; '' they will have dancers out of France, and St. Andre comes over with them, who is to have a pension of the King ". One matter of State was hurriedly concluded during the recess, in order that it might be beyond recall when Parliament next met. Ever since the death of Anne Hyde in 1670, James had been looking for a second wife. His choice at length lay between ^ Maria, sister of the Duke of Modena, and daughter of Mazarin's niece, Laura Martinozzi, and her aunt Leonora, fifteen years older. So doubtful was it which would be chosen that in the instructions to Peter- borough, who went as James's prox}^ the name was actually left blank, to be filled up by him as circum- stances might decide ; while each courier from England brought letters which contradicted those last received. The desire of both princesses to become nuns caused delay; and it was not until September 14, 1673, ^^at the urgency of Peterborough, the influence of Louis, the paternal direction of the Pope, and the prospect of aiding in the conversion of England, overcame the scruples of Maria, who had been finally selected. The proxy marriage took place on September 30, but the arrival of the Princess was delayed by illness until November 21. Maria, then only fifteen, had been educated in the strictest seclusion ; " so innocently bred that till then she had never heard of such a place as England, nor of such a person as the Duke of York ", CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 283 The descriptions of her person are as various as the describers. Conway struck the mean between Peter- borough's enthusiastic admiration of her charms and Mademoiselle de Montpensier's shrewish description of her as " une grande creature melancolique, ni belle ni laide, fort maigre, assez jaune," when he wrote : '' She hath very good eyes, very good features, and a very good complexion ; but she wants the air that should set off all this ; and having been bred in a monastery, knows not how to set one foot before another with any gracefulness ". She was however by no means uncultured ; she was a good Latin scholar, and had studied French as well ; and within a year and a half of her marriage she spoke English with ease. She was simple, pure, charitable, and kind. '' Her only failing,'' says that refreshing person Charlotte Elizabeth, in later years, "was her extreme piety." To Parliament the marriage was intensely un- popular, for Maria's devotion to Catholicism was well known ; the King had already been twice addressed to prevent the consummation of the proxy marriage. But all classes shared the jealousy. " Should she arrive to-night (November 5) she would most certainly be martyred, for the common people here, and even those of quallyty in the country, believe she is the Pope's eldest daughter ! " No congratulations were offered by the courtiers to the Duke ; libellous songs were 284 CHARLES 11. published about the innocent girl, though "it was hoped her sweete carriage would have abated her enemies " ; her mother was openly insulted by " the ladies of the court " ; the Lord Mayor refrained from paying a civic visit of compliment, '' nor would the City be brought to make bonfires ". The people, we read, ''still on all occasions expresse their aversion to this match ". She had other lessons to learn. Before she had been two months married, her husband had already " made his visits to Mrs. Churchill ". We hear however that she improved rapidly in looks and bearing after a few months, and there is no doubt that before very long she had acquired a complete ascen- dency over James's affections, partly no doubt through the fervour of her religious sympathy. His later devotion may be measured by the fact that when he was at the Spring meeting at Newmarket in 1680 he rode to London and back on successive days merely to spend the evening in her company. The marriage of James — a marriage known to have been arranged in deference to the personal wishes of Louis — not only opened up the prospect of a long Catholic succession, but expressed in a con- crete form the alliance of Charles with France and Catholicism. It was however but one of many causes which accounted for the fighting mood in which Parliament met on October 20, 1673. The open evasion of the Test Act during the recess, and the CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 285 ' flaunting of Papists ' in Whitehall ; the * dark- hovering ' of the army at Blackheath, commanded by a foreigner and largely officered by Catholics ; the fever pitch to which the national jealousy against the French had been aroused by the beh'ef, which was sedulously encouraged by Rupert, ' angry and rageing/ and by every captain and sailor who came back from the war, that the backwardness of the French squadrons had been due to the desire of Louis to see the two great naval powers destroy one another's strength ; the demand of Louis that Catholic churches should be established in the conquered Dutch towns : all these things led to a rising tide of passion against which the ' ratting ' of a few leading members of the old op- position availed but little. When it appeared farther that ;^400,ooo had been given away since the last session, of which the Duchesses of Cleveland and Portsmouth had had the greater share, it is not sur- prising to read that the most influential members of the Country party rose in succession to urge a refusal of supplies until grievances were redressed. '* Here is money asked of us to carry on a war we were never advised about: and what we have given is turned to raising of families, and not to paying the King's debts." The member who declared that the army had not been raised for the war, but the war made for raising an army, was nearer to the truth than he probably knew. In the end, " Sir William Coventry came with 286 CHARLES IT. his subtile allay to make the vote pass in these words : not to graunt any supply till the i8 moneths tax were expired, unless the obstinacy of the Hollanders should make it necessary ; and this at last we were glad to swallow ". Passing then to ' evil counsellors,' they had just uttered Lauderdale's name when they were prorogued until January 7, 1674. Even at that date it was understood that " if the King of France furnishes our King with a million of our money besides our salary, then Parliament will not meet ". The Commons were not without scandals of their own, which vividly illustrated the laxity of public morals. The Speaker, Edward Seymour, was vio- lently attacked. '' Sir Thomas Littleton began the assault . . . ; Will Harbord seconded it, and ac- cused him of gaming and playing great summes of the publicke money, as appeared by the markes of the bags. And, to make up the matter, at night a meane whore brought a bastard to his doore and charged it upon him, which drew 500 people about his house to learn the matter." Charles was forced by his necessities to let the Houses assemble on January 7, the appointed day. And this time he did not hesitate to meet them with a gross and deliberate lie. To remove their suspicions, he said, he would lay his treaties with France in their completeness before a small committee of both Houses ; and he added, '* I assure you there is no CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 287 other treaty with France, either before or since, which shall not be made known". The treaty which he showed was however the second treaty of Dover, the Traiie simule\ which had been executed afresh in February, 1672, in order that Parliament might be the better deceived. The real treaty of June i, 1670, the Traite de Madame, with the damning article which pro- vided for the announcement of the King's conversion and the subsidy of Louis for that purpose, remained in darkness until unearthed by Dalrymple more than a century later. We are almost disappointed with Charles when we find him betraying embarrassment, though the presence of Arlington, who knew of the real treaty, is some explanation. " I beseech your Excellency " — wrote Conway to Essex — " to consider the last part of the King^s speech. It was the con- sultation of many days and nights that produced it. He fumbled in delivering it, and made it worse than in the print : yet there you may observe 'tis inco- herent, and all this is for feare of the Duke of Yorke." The fraud availed little. The Houses went steadily on with the work which had been inter- rupted by the prorogation ; and they were now under guidance which rendered them doubly formidable. Shaftesbury had during the recess been dismissed; and, as Colbert remarked, " a discarded minister who is very ill-conditioned and clever, left perfectly free to act and speak, seems to me much to be feared in this 288 CHARLES 11, country". Since the cancelling of the Declaration, Shaftesbury's sympathies had never been with the Court. He had already been in close communication with William of Orange. He now did credit to Col- bert's remark by organising a regular opposition in the Lords, the members of which — Halifax, Hollis, and Buckingham being the most influential — met frequently at Hollis's house to arrange the plan of attack. The downfall of Danby and the prevention of the evils of a Catholic succession were their immediate objects. In the Commons, ^ evil counsellors ' once more formed the theme. . Lauderdale, Buckingham, and Arlington were severally attacked, but on very differ- ent grounds. Lauderdale, '*a man so unprincipled and so arbitrary," was practically master of an army of 22,000 men ; and he had been heard to say in Council — *' Your Majesty's edicts ought to be obeyed ; for your Majesty's edicts are equal with the laws, and ought to be observed in the first place". Aware of the impending blow he had gone to Scotland with a pardon which covered all his offences ; and there he received letters from both Charles and James assuring him of safety and of their personal affection. The reply of Charles to the address which was carried against Lauderdale is not on record ; it pro- bably was the same as to that against Buckingham : " That he would take it into his consideration ". CHARLES, LOUIS. AND PARLIAMENT. 289 The attack upon Buckingham was virtually upon other than political matters, although they figured in the accusation. He had succeeded — incredible as it may appear — in outraging the public moral sense. '' The House of Lords were entertained with a peti- tion against the Duke of Buckingham and my Lady Shrewsbury, setting forth the killing of the late Earl of Shrewsbury, their open and scandalous way of living together, and the public enterment of their bastard child in Westminster as Earl of Coventry;" and in the Commons even more heinous crimes were laid to his charge. Upon the political matters Buck- ingham defended himself with characteristic impu- dence ; he threw all the blame upon Arlington, whom he still longed to ruin, and, with obvious reference to Charles and James, asserted that " Hunting was a good diversion, but if a man would hunt with a brace of lobsters, he would have but ill sport". In anticipa- tion of this attack he had " soe personally courted all the members in towne, the debauchees by drinking with them, the sober by grave and serious discourses, the pious by receiving the sacrament at Westminster," that he believed himself safe. He was twice at church on Christmas Day and received the sacrament ; a fact from which knowing people like Titus were sure that Parliament would meet as arranged, since he would never have taken the trouble to do this except to con- ciliate opinion. To the Lords he later ''made a very 19 290 CHARLES IL submissive recantation, acknowledging the miserable and lewd life he had led ; and although it was a very heavy burden to lye under the displeasure of the House and the sense of his transgressions, yett he hath reason to give God thanks for it, since it had opened his eyes and discovered to him the foulness of his past Hfe, which he was resolved for the future to amend ". He had previously " become a greate con- verte, and to give a public testimonye of it he went with his own lady to St. Martin's to church in the afternoon on Sunday last ". He had not indeed left all to the chances of the Lords relenting on the merits of the case, or to their appreciation of his penitence. *' In the meantime his Grace and my Lord Shaftes- bury are reconciled, and both labour hard to get him fairly quitt of my Lady Shrewsbury's businesse." Shaftesbury was never very scrupulous as to the re- cruits he obtained to help in political schemes. Having disposed of Buckingham and Lauderdale, the Commons next turned upon Arlington, as the great ' conduit pipe ' of all the previous misdoings of the government. His defence however was so able, his friends so numerous and earnest, and the credit which he had gained from the knowledge that he was supporting Monmouth against James so great, that he secured a majority. It was at this point that Charles announced that terms had been offered him by the Dutch which he CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 291 could accept, and expressed his confident expectation of a generous supply. He trusted that, " having cast this bone before Parliament," he should now find them compliant. He found, instead, that " those who thought the French allyance a grievance doe now think a peace, nay, a seperat peace, to be the greater grievance". Not a farthing would the Commons give, since " feare of the Duke makes them every day fetter the Crowne " ; and it was evident that distrust had gone so far that it was hopeless to expect any change of temper for the present. To obtain immediate relief from annoyance Charles again used the constitutional weapon of prerogative with telling effect. " 1 never saw such consternation as was among the members of both Houses ; every man amazed and reproaching one another that they had sat so long upon eggs and could hatch nothing." A fear of the King's personal venge- ance was added to the disappointment of the Country party. It caused " many of the guilty commons . . . who had bespoken a large dinner for that day at the Swan Tavern in King Street, to leave their provisions to Mr. Dod and his wife, and to haste away (some by coach, some by water) into the City, suspecting them- selves insecure in the suburbs ". Louis remained Charles's only source of funds. That monarch had been forced to relinquish his enter- prise against the Republic without having wrung from her a single concession ; but he was now facing the 19 * 292 CHARLES II. formidable coalition arrayed against him with splendid success. To gratify him Charles coldly declined the offer of a second visit from William. He went still farther. In spite of the anger caused by the last prorogation, he determined on a fourth. To eliminate as far as possible all sources of embarrassment, he had forced Arlington — who knew too much — to sell his Secretary- ship to Sir Joseph Williamson ; while Buckingham had been thrown over on the ground of the late vote of the Commons, although soon restored to favour by '* Nelly, Middlesex, Rochester, and the merry gang ". Concealing his intentions even from Danby to the last moment, Charles announced to his silent and astounded Council that Parliament would not meet for business until April, 1675. ^^^r this he received from Louis 500,000 crowns. Meanwhile it occurred to him that he might retain the friendship of both Louis and William by inducing the Prince to accept the French monarch's terms, and by reviving at the same time the scheme of marrying him to Mary, the eldest daughter of James. But peace was found impossible upon William's conditions ; and as for the marriage, it was this time William's turn for declining the offer. Another child was about to be born to James, and, if this were a boy, the eventual advantages to William of such a marriage would be slight ; while he was urged by his friends in England CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 293 to avoid an association with the Duke which must weaken his connection with them. It was probably this rejection at WiUiam's hands which accounted for the extreme ill-humour displayed by Charles at the time. His bewilderment is forcibly shown in his being closeted for hours at a time in the morning with Arlington, and in the afternoon of the same day with James, Danby, and Lauderdale, by whom Arlington, as Monmouth's adherent, was bitterly hated. In this dubious state of affairs the approaching meeting of Parliament excited the attention of all Europe, for upon its success or failure to force Charles to an anti-French policy would probably depend the issue of that year's campaign. For a while it was doubtful whether it would meet at all, for Louis had promised Charles another subsidy for dissolution or a year's delay, and " King says, He had rather be a poore King than no King". But here Danby had his way. He was sincerely opposed to the influence of France. He had shaped a bold policy of his own, which might checkmate Shaftesbury and Arlington — a return, namely, to the ideas of Clarendon, a cordial union of Royalism and Anglicanism against all forms of Nonconformity and limitation of the constitutional prerogative. He had induced Charles to make a complete change of front by publishing a fresh body of edicts framed in conference with the bishops at 294 CHARLES II. Lambeth, enforcing the penal laws ; and by profuse bribery he had bought up the votes of so many members of the Commons that he was sanguine of a large supply. Clifford, the first systematic briber, had proceeded on the principle of corrupting the in- fluential men ; Danby found that the same money would purchase a larger number of votes, if spent on the more obscure members ; and at least two hundred of these had good reasons for supporting the Govern- ment. " You were not against me to-day," said Charles to one of these. '' No, Sir, I was against my conscience to day," was the reply. Charles yielded to Danby's insistence. The only promise he would give Louis was to dissolve Parliament should it prove too aggressive. Louis in turn fell back upon bribery of the Commons ; and it was now that Parliament justly earned the name of 'Pensionary'. English, French, Spanish, and Dutch money jingled in the same pockets. Ruvigny had ;^io,ooo for direct bribery, with a large sum for a lavish table. " C'est un sale trafic," was his disgusted comment. The Spanish ambassador came with full hands. Van Beuninghen took a house in Westminster, and exer- cised splendid hospitality in William's interests ; and the Danish resident had a grant from the Republic for the same object. The Shaftesbury opposition was equally ready. Their leader, following the modern practice, had sounded the immediate note of attack in CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 295 a letter to Lord Carlisle : Uanby was to be overthrown, and a dissolution forced upon the King. Danby had meanwhile been trying to put the finances into a decent condition. '' When these were searcht into, it appeared that every year since the King came in he had exceeded his constant revenue by a million of money, except one year that it was but halfe so much." Danby insisted that the Fleet should be paid off, and that all salaries and pensions should meanwhile be stopped. The clamour that arose among the pensioners might have driven even a bolder man to pause. The scare of a fresh Stop of the Exchequer caused a rush upon the bankers, and de- stroyed all credit in the city. " Anglesey swore he knew not how to go to markett ; Keeper grumbled as much as any ; " and Arlington, who had not then lost the Secretaryship, '' took it ill his private intelli- gence money should not be reckoned upon as an indispensable thing". But Danby had taken care to be safe in one quarter where opposition would have been really serious. The Duchess of Portsmouth had bought a pearl necklace for ;^8,ooo from a merchant, and a pair of diamond pendants for 3,000 guineas from Lady Northumberland ; but neither merchant nor peeress would part with their jewels until the price were paid. Between the minister in need of support and the mistress in need of money it was 296 CHARLES II. easy to form the alliance which was suggested by- Charles ; and thus is explained the sudden coalition between them which so puzzled people at the time. The only condition made by Danby was that the money should be raised in Ireland ; and Charles readily agreed to this farther spoliation of the poorer and more helpless country. Danby's economic measures were soon successful ; by September 15, 1674, he had brought the public expense to ^10,000 a week below the revenue, "so that probably Parliament will not sitt". He was of course careful to feather his own nest, *' laying about him and providing for his family ; so that if ever he come to be out with the King his enemies will maul him ". One episode of the understanding between Danby and Louise de Keroual deserves record, as illustrating the graver anxieties of the King. Louise was anxious to obtain the Dukedom of Richmond for her son, while at the same time the Duchess of Cleveland hoped for that of Grafton for hers. The question of precedence depended of course upon the date of creation ; and the very foundations of Charles's peace were shaken in the contest. He weakly proposed to make the creations at the same moment. Louise however was not inclined to compromise. She forced Danby to receive her agent at midnight, as he was in the act of stepping into his carriage for Bath, and her son's CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 297 patent was sealed before he set out. The Billingsgate fury of the elder woman may be imagined when she appeared at Danby's office as early as possible next morning, and found herself thus cleverly jockeyed. But even Louise had her troubles. In the spring of 1674 France was deprived of her good offices by an illness of a nature not exactly indicated by the chroniclers ; and, pursued by the frank laughter of Nelly Gwyn, she was obliged to visit Tunbridge Wells for a cure. Even there she was not secure from annoyance ; for when she haughtily complained that the Marchioness of Worcester, although of inferior rank, had occupied the house which she had wanted, that great dame reminded her that titles gained by prostitution were not yet regarded in England as valid. All that Charles could do to soothe the injured pride of his mistress, he did ; he gave her large presents of money and jewelry, sent an escort of guards to bring her in pomp to Windsor, and placed her in the hands of his own physician. While the situation, political and domestic, had been thus troubled, the Court seethed with personal jealousies and intrigues. " As in sick bodies, so in sick governments, change is desired ; King sticks very close to Arhngton, who hath a faire game to play ; . . . I feare Treasurer will not be able to play his part with any successe." Arlington "had a cruel dispute with Anglesey yesterday, and told him that he was a knave. 298 CHARLES IL which was too true '\ " Ranelagh and Bridgeman are laying a plot to divide Arlington and Essex;" " Ranelagh is very well with the King, and governs Treasurer absolutely, and I think it is Essex his in- terest to keep up the dispute and animosity between Ranelagh and Ormond ". By May, 1674, "Treasurer is esteemed the great support of the Crowne, Arlington makes his interest amongst the discontented members of the House of Commons, and Duke and Lodderdale are his mortal enemies ; Keeper is now as ill with Arlington as any of the rest ". An English title was conferred upon Lauderdale in June, in order that he might be qualified for the privilege of being tried as a peer, if the need should arise. Williamson — who was a mere cypher in the Government — the " poor fool/' Savile calls him — is " struck in with Treasurer and Lodderdale, or makes them believe so, and that he will abandon Arlington, towards whom the Duke is implacable". He is "a creature of Lodderdale's, as he was before of Clifford ". Essex, who was not afraid to say that he did not desire the friendship of the Duchess of Portsmouth or " any of that sort," was safe in his Viceroyalty of Ireland when there was a prospect of Parliament, but at the mercy of men like Orrery and Ranelagh at other times, although the King was severe upon their " dirty tricks ". In July " the Duke governs absolutely, and I think my Lord Treasurer and D. of Lodderdale derive all their favour CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 299 from his countenance, and will signify no longer than they are subservient to his design ". In September " Duke, Treasurer, Lodderdale govern all " ; Williamson, though now Secretary, was kept waiting more than two hours before being admitted to Danby's presence. " Keeper acts fearfully and warily ; Lodderdale braggs like a madman." At the end of the month " there is a great feud between York and Monmouth ; the whole Court backs Monmouth, and Arlington hath wisely made him head the party, which will give him credit now and in Parliament". In December, " it is wonderful to see how bold Treasurer is in making enemies, depending wholly on his creditt with King, which all people wonder at, he having seen so many effects of King his inconstancy ". " If France sinke, Arlington will be too hard for them all. Duke, Treasurer, and Lodderdale are all very busy to persuade King to dissolve this parliament and call another ; but King is fearfull." By January 23, 1675, "Duke has given over rayling at Arlington, which makes men think that King will not abandon him to Duke '\ In November we have a frank criticism of Charles himself. " Everybody clamers against him extreamly for his difficulty of accesse ; and indeed his Bucking- ham Hours are insufferable and destroy his health." Like master, like man : " On Sunday night last. King being at supper at Treasurer's, Harry Savile, being very drunk, fell so foully on Lord Mulgrave, that 300 CHARLES II. King commanded Savile to be gone out of his presence ". But Danby ''hath greater credit with the King than any man ever had," although " in open defiance to the whole Kingdom ". Through the influence of Louise de Keroual, and as one condition of the compact between them, his eldest son, Lord Latimer, was ad- mitted to the bedchamber ; " and it's wonderful to see his good fortune in the marriage of his children, and setting his family in order " ; while '* his lady drives a secret trade of taking bribes for good offices, and not without my lord's knowledge ". And over it all was waiting the Nemesis of vice. Four years later Latimer and his wife were both dead from the results of debauchery ; while Lord Dunblane, the second son, a mere boy, " was sent to France to be cured of the same disease, in-so-much that their mother passionately wished herself Lady Osborne again, and in the same condition wherein she was in Yorkshire seven years ago . It was, then, with a frank return to the policy of Clarendon that Charles and Danby met Parliament on April 13, 1675 ; and the Lambeth edicts were quoted in the King's speech as an earnest of his intention to regard the Church in its double aspect as a Protestant Church opposed to Popery and an established Church opposed to Dissent. But Danby altogether outdid CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 301 Clarendon in the bid which was made for Cavalier support. " Among other chimeras, they discoursed of none having any beneficial offices but Cavaliers, or sons of Cavaliers. But, for more pageantry, the old King's statue on horseback, of brass, was brought out to be set up at Charing Cross, but does not yet see the light. The old King's body was to be taken up, to make a perfect resurrection of loyalty, and to be reinterred with great magnificence ; but that sleeps." Before they grappled with business, both Houses, and no one more heartily than Charles himself, gave themselves the luxury of a good laugh over another King's speech which was found scattered about the House of Commons, and which is one of the most precious pieces of contemporary literature. It was ascribed, and with probability, to Andrew Marvel, who was member for Kingston-upon-Hull, the most complete master of prolonged banter that the language owns. It ran thus : — April ye 13, 1675. My Lords and Gentlemen, I told you at our last meeting that the winter was the fittest time for business, and in truth I thought it so till my Lord Treasurer assured me that ye Spring is ye fittest time for salads and subsidies. I hope therefore this April will not prove so unnatural as not to afford plenty of both ; some of you may perhaps think it dangerous to make me too rich, but do not fear it, I promise you faithfully (whatever you give) I will take care to want ; and yet in that you may rely on me, I will never break it although in other things my word may be thought a slender authority. My Lords and Gentlemen, I can bear my own 302 CHARLES II. straights with patience, but My Lord Treasurer doth protest that the revenue as it now stands is too little for us both ; one of us must pinch for it, if you do not help us out. I must speak freely to you, 1 am under incumbrances ; for besides my whores in service, my reformado ones lie hard upon me. I have a pretty good estate, I must confess, but. Odd's fish, I have a charge on't. Here is my Lord Treasurer can tell you that all the moneys designed for the Summer's Guards must of necessity be applied for the next year's cradles and swaddling clothes; what then shall we do for ships? I only hint that to you, that's your business, not mine. I know by experience I can live without them ; I lived twenty years abroad without ships and was never in better health in my life, but how well you can live without them you had best try. I leave it to yourselves to judge, and there- fore only mention it ; I do not intend to insist upon that. There is another thing which I must press more earnestly, which is this ; it seems a good part of my revenue will fail in two or three years except you will please to continue it, now I have this to say for it, why did you give me so much except you resolved to give on as fast as I call for it ? The nation hates you already for giving so much, I will hate you now if you do not give me more. So that your interest obliges you to stick to me or you will not have a friend left in England. On the other hand, if you continue the revenue as desired, I shall be able to perform those great things for your religion and liberty which I have long had in my thoughts but cannot effect it without this establishment, wherefore look to it, if you do not make me rich enough to undo you it shall be at your doors ; for my part I can with a clear conscience say I have done my best and shall leave the rest to my successors. But if I may gain your good opinion, the best way is to acquaint you what I have done to deserve it out of my royal care for your religion and property. For the first my late proclamation is the true picture of my mind. He that cannot (as in a glass) see my zeal for the Church of England doth not deserve any other satisfaction, for I declare him wilful, abominable, and not good. You may perhaps cry, how comes this sudden change ? to that I reply in a word, I am a changeling ; that I think a full answer, but to convince men yet further that I mean as I say, there are these arguments — ist. I tell you so and you know I never break my word. 2nd. My Lord Treasurer CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 303 says so and he never told lies in his life. 3rd. My Lord Lauderdale will undertake for me, and I should be loth by any act of mine to forfeit the credit he has with you. If you desire more instances of my zeal, I have them for you ; for example, I have converted all my natural sons from popery, (and I may say without vanity) it was more my work and much more peculiar to me than the getting of them. It would do your hearts good to hear how prettily little George can read already the Psalter ; they are all fine children, God bless 'em, and so like me in their understandings. But (as I was saying) I have, to please you, given a pension to your favourite my Ld. Lauderdale ; not so much that I thought he wanted it, as I knew you would take it kindly. I have made Carwell a Duchess and married her sister to my Lord Pembroke. I have made Crewe Bishop of Durham. I have at my brother's request sent my Lord Inchiquin to settle the protestant religion at Tangier ; and at the first word of my Lady Portsmouth I preferred Prideaux to be Bishop of Chichester. I do not know what factious men would have ; but this I am sure of, that none of my predecessors did ever anything like this to gain the goodwill of their subjects. So much for religion. I must now acquaint you that by my Lord Treasurer's advice I have made a considerable retrenchment on my expenses in candles and charcoal, and do not intend to stick there, but, with your help, to look into the like embezelments of my dripping pans and Kitching Stuff, of which (by ye way) on my conscience neither my Lord Treasurer nor my Lord Lauderdale are guilty ; but if you should find them dabbling in that business I tell you plainly I leave them to you, for I would not have the world think I am a man to be cheated. My Lords and Gentlemen, I would have you believe of me as you always found me ; and I do solemnly profess that, whatever you give me, it shall be managed with the same thrift, trust, conduct, and prudence and sincerity, that I have ever practised since my happy restoration. The session which had been so anxiously antici- pated, and so humorously ushered in, disappointed the expectations of both sides. Danby failed completely 304 CHARLES II. in establishing his Cavalier-episcopal system ; the opposition failed — though barely — to drive Charles from his positions. Wholesale bribery had practically made the Court and Country parties even ; votes were lost or carried by a single voice, and passions were so heated that on one occasion swords were drawn, and but for the promptitude of the Speaker blood would have been shed on the floor of the House. But the objects of the Country party were clearly defined : the recall of the English troops in the French service, the defence of Flanders against Louis, the disbanding the army in England, the suppression of Catholicism, and the refusal to allow men holding office under the Crown to sit in Parliament. The Commons were on guard against France, Popery, and Absolutism, and declined to consider any legislation. Their proceedings were watched with eager anxiety by the foreign ambassadors, who personally waited upon members as they came in and out of the House. So pressed was Charles by his own people, by Spain, and by the Republic, to defend the Low Countries and force Louis to peace, that he declared to Ruvigny that he was like a besieged fortress. In June he once more took the natural way of escape by proroguing Parliament until October. By that time Louis needed more than ever to secure the neutrality of England. Turenne had been killed and Cond6 had given up his command ; the French arnjies had suffered disaster after disaster, and their CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 305 allies, the Swedes, had been crushingly defeated by the Dutch. The state of France itself was deplorable. The treasury was exhausted ; the peasantry were seething with discontent ; armed revolt had broken out in Britanny and in Bordeaux. Ruvigny redoubled his efforts to secure a French party. But a French party in the House of Commons he found it impossible to secure ; it was clear indeed that the next session would be vehemently anti-French, especially as Danby made no secret of his views. Louis was now well served by the fact that there were two oppositions, the opposition in the Commons — the * Country party ' — and the clique of which Shaftesbury was the leader. The Country party had causes first in view ; Shaftesbury had persons. The one wanted, as has been said, to frustrate the designs of France and the Catholics, and to be rid of the fear of military force ; the other, while hoping to secure toleration for Protestant Dissent, sought in the first place to overthrow Danby. Louis therefore applied to Shaftesbury and his friends. Their terms were simple. With political immorality which outdid that of Charles himself, they threw over the aspirations of the Country party without hesitation. If Louis would help them to destroy Danby, they would with- draw their opposition to his plans. Shaftesbury was closeted with James ; and a coalition was established of Nonconformists, Catholics, and Louis, a retort to Danby's scheme of Cavalier Anglicanism. James 20 3o6 CHARLES II. received £20,000 from France for distribution at the end of the session, on the condition that the English troops were not recalled nor any vote passed hostile to France. Louis had tricked both Charles and the Commons by this intrigue, which was carried out in the profoundest secrecy. In the same secrecy he pressed upon Charles, through the potent influence of Louise de K^roual. the necessity of being free from the control of Parliament; and in September, 1675, by the promise of i^ 100,000 a year, drew from him an engagement to decline William's proposed visit to England, and to dissolve Parliament if it were still violent against France, or if it refused to provide him with money. Thus he was safe on both sides. Parliament met on October 13, 1675. It gave no supply except to build ships ; while Shaftesbury, hopeless of overthrowing Danby so long as the present House of Commons continued, pressed both there and in the Lords for the dissolution which Louis was urging directly on Charles. A Parliament, he said, elected sc many years before, no longer represented the people especially when a large proportion of the members had offices or pensions. He forgot that a still largei number hoped for them. As Danby said long after- wards, they came about him " like so many jackdaws for cheese at the end of every session". There wai indeed — we quote Marvel once more^ — " an handful o salt, a sparkle of soul, that hath hitherto preserved thi< CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 307 gross body from putrefaction, some gentlemen that are constant, invariable, indeed Englishmen " — like Marvel himself But the handful was growing less, the sparkle dimmer. Shaftesbury was foiled in his principal design ; but he succeeded in rendering business impossible by raising the former dispute between the two Houses, and Charles was forced to close the session. None the less he bitterly disappointed Shaftesbury and his friends. It was certain that a new House would consist of men still more opposed to the prerogative. Instead, therefore, of dissolving, he prorogued, '' contrarie to the desire of most and the expectation of every man," to February, 1677, an interval of fifteen months. He then with cool audacity demanded his subsidy from Louis, which had been promised for a dissolution only. To Louis, however, English neutrality was the essential point ; and that neutrality was safe for those fifteen months if he could keep Charles dependent on him. After a good deal of haggling, and with a clear intimation that he regarded the whole thing as a swindle, he gave way. He was rewarded when, in spite of all that Danby could do, Charles farther agreed, at the very moment when his representatives were supposed to be acting at Nim- wegen as impartial mediators in the negotiations for peace, that neither monarch should listen to any pro- position from abroad contrary to the other s welfare, or make a treaty with the Dutch or any other State ex- cept by mutual consent. Danby utterly refused to sign 20 '^' 3o8 CHARLES II. the treaty, declaring that his head would not be safe. Even Lauderdale kept aloof. Charles was obliged to write out and sign the document with his own hands. ''This he did yesterday morning (February 26, 1676) ; after which he lighted a wax candle himself, and affixed his seal to his signature, at the same time saying it was only a seal with his cypher, for that a little while since he had lost his seal with his arms, which were engraved on a diamond of King James's grandfather, and which, when the deceased King was on the scaffold, he gave to the Bishop of London to be delivered into his hands." The interval of political repose thus secured by Charles was occupied by a serious crisis within the domestic circle. For a long while the empire of Louise de K^roual had been unquestioned. But she was now threatened by no unworthy rival. In January, 1676, Hortense Mancini, Duchess Mazarin, with whom we have met thrice before, was received by Charles and his Court with all the curiosity and admiration due to one whose attractions had excited and whose adventures had scandalised every Court in Europe. Of precocious beauty at fourteen, she had preserved that beauty unimpaired to thirty ; and twenty years later she was able to say, " I have never been more beautiful ". The Windsor miniature shows the proud Italian beauty, the superb development of CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 309 figure, the lustrous eye, " neither blue, nor grey, nor quite black," the rich blood mantling under a skin which needed no rouge, the silken waves of jet-black hair. In default of becoming a Queen she was married to the son of the Marshal de la Meilleraye. This ex- traordinary man, created Duke Mazarin, allowed his natural abilities to be ruined by a religious mania which turned him into a drivelling monk. He re- linquished all his offices and governments, as too worldly in their nature ; he mutilated valuable statues and pictures, because they represented the worship of the creature rather than of the Creator. It is difficult to believe that he forbade the farm maidens to milk the cows lest gross thoughts should invade their minds, and that he wished to have the front teeth extracted from his daughters' mouths, that they might not be- come vain of their own beauty. Such insanity had its natural result. With another girl wife — of like nature and treatment — Hortense broke the bounds of the convent in which her husband had placed her, dressed herself as a man, and fled — not unaccompanied — to Italy. On her return to France her husband again caused her to be confined in a religious house, but Louis XIV. himself insisted on her being set at liberty. For the next three years she lived with the so-called Abbe R6al, one of the most depraved men of the age; and in January, 1676, still in male attire, she reached London, under pretence of visiting Mary of 3IO CHARLES 11. Modena. The men raved about her beauty ; the women were consumed with jealous anxiety. The Duchess of Cleveland gave up the contest at once, and retired to France. Louise de K6roual stayed at her post, though ill from a miscarriage, neglected for the time by Charles, and conscious of the popular hatred. In April she was again ill, **her sickness increased by discontent at somebody's visiting the Duchess Mazarin at Lady Harvey's house". Nelly, the irrepressible, went into deep mourning, in mock- ing sorrow for the Frenchwoman's approaching fall. The whole Court rallied to the new adventuress. Arlington and Monmouth hoped to use her against James and Louise ; Mary of Modena accorded her the closest intimacy ; Charles, though not yet an acknow- ledged lover, visited her constantly, and himself supplied the increase of her husband's allowance which Louis had refused. Louise now despaired of recovering her lost dominion. On August 6, Courtin described, for his master's amusement, a visit he had just paid her. " Elle m'ouvrit son cceur en presence de deux filles qui sont a elle. Ces deux filles etaient collees contre la muraille, les yeux baisses. La Maitresse versait un torrent de larmes. Les soupirs et les sanglots coupaient ses paroles. Enfin jamais spectacle ne m'a paru plus triste ni plus touchant." *' La scene de la signora adoloradal' answered Louvois, " a assez divert! sa Majeste." CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 311 But, while giving him material for cynical amuse- ment, the matter became politically serious for Louis. The fall of Louise would imply to foreign Courts the weakening of French influence with Charles, and this might have a baneful effect upon his prospects at the Congress of Nimwegen. His representatives there were accordingly instructed that both her health and her credit with Charles were unimpaired ; although Charles was at that very time visiting Hortense in the apartments of the Countess of Sussex, his own daughter by the Duchess of Cleveland, and although Courtin himself was emphatic as to the newcomer's supremacy. *' If you had only seen her dancing the 'furlane' to her guitar you would at once have espoused her interests." Charles, he added, saw Louise frequently, but only in public ; he spent his leisure far more often with Nelly — a fact which that young lady laughingly quoted to Courtin in support of her demand for a present from Louis. But on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, Courtin's address saved the situation. He secured a formal reconciliation between the two sultanas, while Nelly looked on with unrestrained merriment. Charles, who greatly disliked quarrels among his women, en- couraged them to actual amity ; Louise gave a dinner to her rival, and appeared with her in the same carriage ; and peace reigned in the camp of the concubines. But, as always, these domestic complications meant 312 CHARLES II. vast expense ; and, largely through them, the financial position was again desperate. Louis was not in a condition to give more than he had bargained for. So strained was French finance that he was himself forced to borrow at ten per cent, interest. But he regularly paid his quarterly ' salary ' to Charles. On February 14, 1677, Courtin wrote : " I received the October quarter. It came very a propos — for the King of England wanted money to give to those accustomed to make a noise in order to be better bought." On April i, he wrote again : "To my knowledge he had distributed all this money to gain the votes he stood in need of; he has so well served the King that he deserves to be assisted in his necessities ". And at the end of each quarter, Louis received from Charles the following holograph form of voucher: "Jay regu du Roi tres chrestien, par les mains de M. Courtin, la somme de cent mille escus, monnoie de France, pour le second quartier qui est escheu le dernier jour de Juin. . . . Fait a Whitehall. . . . Charles R." But these supplies were not enough for Charles's needs. So low had the credit of the Crown sunk, that it was found impossible to raise a loan in London ; and it was an obvious necessity that Parliament should meet Danby promised Charles that if he would but break with France he would have supplies far beyond anything that Louis could ofPer. But although Louis could not prevent Parliament from CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 313 assembling on February 25, 1677, he could afford ^80,000 for bribery, and he strengthened his alliance with the Shaftesbury coalition. Courtin was ordered to give Charles no rest ; every day — he tells us — he was at Whitehall, and he never left the Court until eleven at night. Berkshire was bribed to create a party in the Lords : Coleman, James's secretary, was bribed ; Lauderdale — though he refused bribes, as Arlington had refused them — was secured, as Arling- ton had been, through his rapacious wife. All due economy v/as used in this ' sale trafic '. Very often, Courtin reported, a few dozens of champagne, which were less costly than a money bribe, would command a useful vote. A blunder of the Shaftesbury party gave Danby a marked advantage at the outset, by which he was enabled, not merely to carry an unconditional vote of ^600,000, but also to rid himself of his most powerful foes for a season. " A prorogation without precedent was warranted by an imprisonment without example," that, namely, of Shaftesbury, Buckingham, and Salis- bury, for which an excuse had been given by their assertion that Parliament was ipso facto dissolved by a prorogation of more than a year. Discussion of grievances also was postponed until some broken windows could be mended ; for the early March winds were too much for the most ardent member of the Country party. But when damages had been 314 CHARLES II. repaired, the Commons showed how deeply moved they were by the tidings of the successes of Louis against William and his allies. Both Houses addressed the King to recall the troops serving in the French army. Twice they urged him to declare war against France, with offers of unlimited support. Louis heard from Courtin that the English would give everything for a war with France, *' even to their shirts ". As William's position grew ever more desperate, the Commons became more aggressive. Charles had already, as we have seen, made an important concession of principle by showing them the Traite sUnuli^ even though he lied in doing it. They now told him that they would give no money for alliances which were not first laid before them for discussion. This was a new departure of a very serious kind. Foreign alliances, and the decision of peace and war, were the choicest flowers of the royal prerogative. The demand implied a violation of the constitution, as it had been under- stood for centuries, much more marked than that contained in the King's claim to the dispensing power, which had been so bitterly resented. For Charles to have given way would have been to confess himself utterly worsted in the running fight. The speech of angry contempt in which, on May 28, he rejected the demand, and which appears to have thoroughly cowed the House for the moment, is an amplification of his curt answer to Van Beuninghen, the ambassador of the CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 315 States, who had spoken of the sympathy shown by ParHament with the Confederates. Tossing his hand- kerchief into the air, Charles exclaimed, " I care just that for Parliament ". In the plainest language he now told the Commons to mind their own business : — Could I have been silent I would rather have chosen to do so, than to call to mind things so unfit for you to meddle with as are con- tained in some parts of your last addresses. . . . You do not content yourselves with desiring me to enter into such leagues as may be for the safety of my Kingdom, but you tell me what sort of leagues they must be, and with whom. Should I suffer this fundamental power of making peace and war to be so far invaded (though but once) as to have the manner and circumstances of leagues prescribed to me by Parliament, it's plain that no Prince or State would any longer believe that the sovereignty of England rests in the Crown ; nor could I think myself to signifie any more to foreign princes than the empty sound of a King. Wherefore you may rest assured, that no condition shall make me depart from, or lessen so essential a part of the monarchy. He emphasised this rating, and the little account he took of his listeners, by directing them to adjourn — not to adjourn themselves. Members rose to protest, but the Speaker, without any question put, pronounced the House adjourned, and left the chair. Charles added a parting cut of the whip by ordering his speech to be published in next day's news-book, while the transac- tions or addresses of the House were not allowed to be printed or even dispersed in a written form. " Thus,'' says the earnest Marvel in the bitterness of his heart, ** were they well rewarded for their itch of perpetual sitting and of acting, the Parliament being grown to 3i6 CHARLES I J. that height of contempt, as to be gazetted among runaway servants, lost dogs, strayed horses, and high- way robbers." From May to July, from July to December, from December to April, 1678, "this barn of Commons " was adjourned with a similar contempt of privilege, though Charles did in fact, for reasons now to be related, summon them to meet in January. '' In this manner they were kickt from adjournment to adjournment, as from one stair down to another, and when they were at the bottom kickt up again, having no mind yet to £"0 out of doors T Charles had spoken and acted boldly. But to any one who has become familiar with his methods it has of course been clear that both words and action meant that 'he had somehow acquired, or that he expected to acquire, the funds which Parliament refused to give. How far he was within his rights by thus meeting an attack upon his prerogative is a question of political casuistry which will be answered less by reason than by feeling. Clifford would have answered it in one way ; Andrew Marvel would have answered it in another. As a matter of fact he had only to take another step along the familiar road. So long as Louis was at war, he had, in the existing temper of Parlia- ment, a saleable article, the meeting or the not meeting of Parliament. Negotiations had been in progress ever since February. Haggling worthy of a couple of Jew peddlars went on throughout the spring and summer of CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 317 1677, in which Charles kept the whip hand of Louis by adjourning and not proroguing. Danby, to whom the job was thoroughly distasteful, and who drank openly at a public dinner to war with France, proved himself all the more a firm and audacious bargain-driver. Louis pleaded poverty, but in vain ; and on August 5 he was obliged to offer 2,000,000 livres for Charles's i promise that he would not allow Parliament to meet ^ until the end of April, 1678 ; and that, in order to discourage William's allies, they should be informed of his intention. The King was thus able to carry on the ordinary expenses of government, which included the satisfying of the women, while Louis gained the prospect of nine months more of freedom from English interference. The necessary touches of comedy were not want- ing. Courtin, who had carried out the negotiation, but who was considered scarcely equal to the part yet to be played, was replaced by that strange figure Paul Barillon d'Amoncourt ; but his feelings were carefully considered. He was allowed to ask for his recall on the ground that his health was suffer- ing from the London fogs ; and Charles considerately advised him in future always to wear Welsh flannel next his skin. Barillon^s first business was to deal with a little instance of sharp practice worthy of a stockbroker in a very small way. Charles declared that by 3t8 CHARLES 11. 2,000,000 livres he meant £200,000, which, at the existing rate of exchange, was higher in value. When Barillon remonstrated — " He immediately interrupted me, and said, ' In the name of God, do not speak of this affair ; I am so confused about it, that I cannot bear its being spoken of; go to the Treasurer, and do as you and he shall understand the matter ' ". Barillon replied that Danby's attitude was a foregone con- clusion. Finally, says Barillon, " The King conducted me to the door of the chamber, which he opened him- self, and again repeated, ' I am so ashamed that I cannot speak any more to you : Go see the Treasurer, for he has made known to me such large wants that I cannot believe the King my brother will leave me in this embarrassment ' ". The result was, of course, that Charles and Danby had their way. Courtin did not overstate the case when he asserted that in all this matter Charles and James stood abso- lutely alone against the wishes of the whole kingdom. And yet within three months we are startled to find the King taking a fresh step in which he had the sympathies of the nation at his back, and which, practically, if not verbally, cut right athwart his en- gagements to Louis. Well might that monarch remark : " L'Angleterre est un Etat qui ne demeure pas longtemps dans la meme assiette ". In September, 1677, William of Orange arrived on a visit to Charles at Newmarket, where as usual nothing was ostensibly CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 319 talked of but dogs and horses, although both his errand and the answer to be made to him were so perfectly understood that he wrote to the States General announcing the step he was about to take. It was not until he returned with the Court to West- minster, towards the end of October, that he formally asked for the hand of James's eldest daughter Mary, to whose peaceful and domestic disposition Temple had given a strong testimonial. Haste and secrecy were alike necessary if the matter were to be managed without impediment. Danby alone was consulted ; and he, with both Charles and James, avoided all reference to it until the last moment. It was of especial importance that Barillon should be kept in ignorance. Wooing there was none ; and Barillon was not informed by Charles that the marriage was decided upon until bonfires were blazing in the streets of London in satisfaction at the betrothal, " the greatest expressions of joy which I believe were ever in Eng- land, except at the King's restoration " ; and on November 5, no time being thus given to Louis for remonstrance, the marriage took place in the strictest privacy. Charles himself performed the last rites ; and the short homily which he delivered upon the duties and privileges of married life, as, after drawing the curtain about the bed, he turned to leave the room, may be read in the diary of Edward Lake, the grave young tutor of Mary and her sister Anne. 320 CHARLES 11. There can be little doubt that this marriage was the direct work of Danby ; and it is one of the many proofs, as it is the strongest, of the remarkable as- cendency which that very able minister had acquired over Charles. The advantages of the match were indeed obvious to the King. It would remove from his people, he said to Barillon, their incurable jealousy of his designs in favour of the Catholics, " the rock against which I must guard myself" ; while William would now regard the interests of the Crown as his own, and would support them against Shaftesbury and his friends. And it is probable that there was yet another, though unexpressed, reason. We believe that Charles, even now, would far rather have obtained his money from Parliament than from Louis, if only he could have arrived at some acceptable arrange- ment ; that he had by no means given up this hope, and that he was a good deal ashamed, or at least uneasy, at the bargain with Louis. Danby no doubt had his personal object, to strengthen himself against the eager and implacable enemies whom he knew to be straining every nerve for his downfall. But his advice was in entire accord with the principles he had hitherto expressed ; and he was assisted by William's clear perception that the close connection with the English royal house must strengthen him against both foreign and domestic trouble, besides giving him a hold upon England's foreign policy in CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT, 321 the future. James was induced to waive his opposi- tion by the belief that the marriage would enable men to look past himself to the Protestant husband of their future Queen, and would thus weaken the objections to his succession; but probably still more by the clear and unreserved expression of Charles's mind. " Odd's- fish " exclaimed the King, with that petulant contempt with which he more than once spoke of his brother, when he heard of possible difficulties on his part, " he 7nust consent." Louis took the news of this virtual breach of faith in the grand manner, and sent his ceremonial compli- ments with all punctiliousness ; but really, although he had dreaded it for years, he felt it " as he would have done the loss of an army " ; he never forgave Danby, and speedily, as we shall see, he showed his resent- ment towards both him and his master in a very practical form. Nobody seems to have thought much of the feel- ings of the little princess of fifteen, upon whom were focussed the plans of kings and statesmen, and who was thus suddenly called from childhood into the glare and stress of an alien world. On October 2i she heard of her fate from her father ; and while it was " gret joy to all the sety and everybody,'' " Lady Mary wept all that afternoon and the following day ". She had spent a singularly happy childhood with her sister, her governess, and her tutor ; the grief of her 21 322 CHARLES II. father and of her youthful step-mother, to both of whom she was deeply attached, intensified her own ; and she wept and would not cease weeping. After the marriage she refused to go to Whitehall ; she clung as it were to the protection of her home against the power of the cold and imperious man to whom she had been so unequally mated. Decked out in the jewels he had given her, a ring worth ;^io,ooo, a necklace valued at ;f 8,000, and with all her mother's jewels, the child appeared at the play, alone ; for her husband was busy. '* Within a week the Court began to whisper the Prince's sullenness or clownishness, that he took no notice of the Princess, nor came to see her at St. James's." But, if he neglected Mary, he did not neglect what to him were at the time more important matters. His business was to bring Charles to his terms. He was not the boy whom his uncle had made drunk for sport eight years ago. He was, as Charles said, '' the son of a father and mother whose obstinacy went to extremity, and he like them ". Resolute in action, steadfast in distress, calm and clear in political vision, he in turn gauged the weakness of Charles. " Was ever anything," he exclaimed to Temple, with a gesture of surprise and contempt, "so hot, and so cold, as this court of yours ? Will the King, that is so often at sea, never learn a word that I shall never forget since my last passage, when, in a great storm, CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 323 the captain was all night crying out to the man at the helm, * Steady, steady, steady!'" The new influence was at once felt The wavering resolutions of Charles were shaped by the will of the younger man ; and on November 23 conditions of peace were secretly proposed to Louis which would have robbed him, in the very flush of triumph, of that north-eastern frontier which had so long been the object of French statesmen. His answer was a haughty refusal, and the discontinuance of the payments pro- vided for in the last treaty. Charles in turn regarded that treaty as no longer in force, and summoned Parliament for January instead of the end of April. Repenting his haste, Louis once more offered an in- creased grant to Charles and a large present to Danby, and went half-way to meet the proposed conditions of peace. Both bribes and offers were refused through Danby's steady conduct; and on January 10, 1678, a treaty was signed at the Hague, embodying William's terms, and, as in the Triple Alliance, binding England and the Republic to compel the assent of both France and Spain, Ostend was handed over to Charles pro- visionally as a place of arms on the Continent. The King put 12,000 men in readiness, ordered the equip- ment of thirty ships, and at last recalled his troops from the French service. On February 7, confident of the concurrence of Parliament, he opened the session 21 * 324 CHARLES II, with a speech which meant war with France, and he demanded supplies for ninety ships and 40,000 men. But the Shaftesbury opposition utterly distrusted the honesty of Charles's purpose. The marriage, as being Danby's work, was regarded by them with suspicion ; and they affected to believe that this warlike language was once more assumed only to induce Parliament to give the King an army, which he would straightway use to secure despotic power. To overthrow Danby and to secure liberty of conscience for Protestant Dissent at home, were, as before, their main objects, and for these they were again ready to render Louis free of all interference from Charles. In fact, since Danby joined William, they joined Louis. Unable to oppose openly the war policy which had the ready assent of the bulk of the Country party, they determined to insist upon conditions of peace so onerous that Louis would be justified in continuing the struggle against the coalition, and at the same time to render Charles powerless to join that coalition. In the first part of their plan they succeeded. But farther than this they could not make head against Danby 's pensioners and the moderate men. By a large majority the men and the ships were voted to support the alliance with the Dutch, and on February 18 a resolution was agreed upon to raise ^1,000,000 'to enable his Majesty to enter into an actual war with the French King '. But Louis was less than ever disposed to yield, for he CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 325 had struck another unexpected blow. He had deter- mined to extort peace, as De Witt had extorted it by the Chatham exploit. During March, by rapid and skilful movements, he made himself master of Ypres and of the great city of Ghent. The effect upon public feeling in England was such that Charles, to keep his people within bounds, was obliged to send troops to Ostend. But once more, now that William was no longer by his side, his habit of looking to France ren- dered straightforwardness impossible. He privately assured Barillon that he had no desire for war, and that he would do all in his power to avoid it. He was indeed in a pitiable state of perplexity. Afraid of the popular outcry, but unwilling to commit himself to final measures, he went on with his vain attempts to find a compromise satisfactory both to Louis and to William. His difficulties were increased by the current of popular feeling in the United Provinces. There also the union of William with the English royal family was looked upon with keen suspicion, which was increased by the discovery of a secret article in the treaty of January, binding Charles and the States- General to assist each other against their rebellious subjects — a discovery which prevented its ratification. Upon the people of the Republic, therefore, the capture of Ghent and Ypres had the effect which Louis had intended. Now that their own independence was beyond question, and that he declared himself willing 326 CHARLES II , to satisfy one of their essential demands by abandon- ing to Spain a strong barrier for her Low Countries, the Dutch merchants thought only of their other great interest, commerce, which through England's freedom from war was every day passing into her hands ; and they clamoured for peace. Against them were Temple and William, who were supported by the whole body of the Dutch nobility, and who were so successful that all that the peace party could do was to secure from Louis the offer of a truce of three months, with a removal of commercial restrictions. Charles saw in this a welcome excuse for withdrawing from his forced connection with the Republic. He laid the matter before Parliament (April 29) in a tone of anger that such a step should have been taken without his consent, and requested its advice. After several days of eager debate, a resolu- tion of the most uncompromising adherence to a war policy was carried by a narrow majority. To this vote, so different from what he desired, Charles made no reply. But he warned the Commons that unless a supply were speedily given him he should be forced to lay up his ships and disband his troops — the very step to which the Shaftesbury party, in fulfilment of their pledges to Louis, were now bent upon driving him. The message raised a tempest in the House. And the belief expressed by Colonel Birch that the whole CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 327 matter was "a work of darkness," was fully justified. Charles had been again in secret negotiation with Louis, and, after the customary haggling, had agreed that he would do his best to secure peace on terms favourable to Louis within two months ; that, if un- successful, he would remain neutral and would recall and disband his troops, except 3,000 to be left in Ostend, and that he would prorogue Parliament for four months. For these services he was to receive a subsidy of ^^^240,000 a year for three years. This compact was drawn up and signed by Charles alone, for Danby once more refused to imperil his safety by adding his name. The suspicions of the Commons again tended to reduce Charles to the powerlessness which Louis desired. On the very day of the compact. May 27, they demanded either immediate war with France, or immediate disbanding ; and they provided money for the latter purpose. They gave him also an additional supply for other uses, tacking the bill to raise funds for disbanding on to that for the supply, so that they must both fall or pass together. Charles, having passed the bill, prorogued the Parliament, July 15. He found however an excuse more than sufficient in his eyes for ignoring the engagement to disband ; for the whole aspect of affairs abroad, and with it his intentions, had again undergone a complete change. 328 CHARLES II, Up to the end of June peace between France, the Dutch, and Spain, had seemed assured ; for WiUiam himself regarded it as useless to struggle any longer against the cry of the whole commercial class. Only at the last moment an attempt on the part of Louis to evade his terms threatened an immediate renewal of the war on the part of every nation engaged. In a moment the Provinces were in a blaze, and William re- gained his ascendency. Charles underwent the same revulsion of feeling. He refused to ratify his secret treaty with Louis, or to disband his troops in the Spanish Low Countries, declaring that his people would chase him from his kingdom if France were suffered to extend her conquests. He sent off Temple once more (July 6) in haste to make a strict alliance with the Republic ; and on July 26 a treaty was framed which bound the Dutch to continue the struggle, and England to declare war, if Louis did not withdraw his pretensions by August 11. Only one hour before the moment at which negotia- tions would have ceased — -at eleven on the night of August 10, 1678 — France and the Republic signed the treaty which removed the most important member from the coalition, and which gave the signal for the general Peace of Nimwegen, bringing temporary repose at last to Europe from the contest brought upon it by the Treaty of Dover. One country alone, or rather one person, had come CHARLES, LOUIS, AND PARLIAMENT. 329 out of the struggle with marked discredit. The position of Charles was contemptible. Peace had been made without his concurrence, and at last against his wishes. He had lived by chicanery, and his chicanery had ended in complete discomfiture. Louis now, neither needing nor fearing him, met his appeal for part at least of the money he claimed with a contemptuous refusal. In December, 1678, the Lords joined the Commons in again insisting on immediate disbanding, a demand which he could no longer find an excuse for evading ; and from that moment, baffled in diplomacy and crippled for war, he had no effective voice in Continental affairs. CHAPTER V. THE POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE COURT. The English Nation are a sober people. Such had been the judgment of Charles I. after seven years of conflict with them, and when he foresaw his fate at their hands. He would have been obliged to take back his words had he seen this same people after nearly thirty years of peace. The national outbreak of hysteria which will probably ever retain the name of the ^ Popish Plot/ but which should more properly be called the Popish ' Terror/ is a chapter in our history of which we can still be ashamed. And assuredly it is one which all apologists for Charles H. would willingly forget. In the course of our narrative we have met with many incidents since the betrayal of Montrose, which, deplorable as they have seemed, have not actually placed Charles outside the pale of personal honour. That he should choose to trick rather than to lead his people ; that he should lightly accept the savage acts of oppression by which the Church signalised her triumph, merely to obtain money which he might 330 POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 331 pour into the women's laps ; that ships should rot, and sailors mutiny, and the country suffer one dis- grace after another for the same shameful cause ; that Clarendon should fall before the hate of the pro- stitute and the mimicry of the buffoon ; that Ireland should be forced to give of her poverty to furnish the brothels of Whitehall ; that Scotland should be handed over, first to the rapacity of drunken soldiers of fortune and beggared nobles, and the spite of a knavish priest, and then to the ambition of a brutal favourite and the greed of his wicked wife : all these things and many like them have been palliated with varying degrees of failure. But we question whether there is any one who would care to put his name to an attempt to excuse or to palliate the course of personal dishonour and shame which Charles now followed out. For the outbreak of the 'Terror' — for its possi- bility in a ' sober nation ' — Charles and the Anglican Church must share the blame. The resolve of the Church to rebuild herself upon the destruction of the rival temples is intelligible enough. The desire of Charles to prevent the Church from becoming his master, to redeem his promises to the Catholics, and with this object to maintain Protestant Dissent in a state of tolerable comfort, surely does not call for blame. It was when the supremacy of the Church was assured, and when at the same time the belief had become fixed that Charles was a friend of ' the 332 CHARLES II. last and impudentest attempt upon the credulity of mankind,' that the rancour of the one and the flip- pancy of the other began to prepare the way for the scenes of madness at which we are arrived. Charles had two courses before him : he might have sur- rendered to the Church, openly and frankly, with whatever reluctance, however strongly expressed, and thus have created a confidence which in time would have begotten indulgence at her hands to the Dis- senters. He might have refused her terms and taken the consequences. The first would have been painful to his self-esteem ; the second would have been peril- ous, but kingly, and — we believe — successful. He chose instead a course which united and, by union, doubled the evils of both ; but, by dint of extreme baseness, he secured that the calamity should fall solely upon those whom he betrayed. He was like an un- skilful driver who first jerks the reins of a spirited horse to check him, and again lets him take his own pace, until, rendered nervous by this alternate caprice, the beast is ready to shy and plunge and stretch into a mad gallop at the sight of a figure by the road-side or a waving bush. By surrender to Parliament during the session, and evasion of his surrender during recess ; by acceding to savage laws against the Catholics, while he welcomed them at Whitehall and gave them commissions in his regi- ments; by his alternate alliances, first with the Pro- POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 333 testant Republic against the aggressions of Catholic France, and then with France against the Republic ; by his Popish mistresses, his Popish Queen, his Popish heir — himself nominally Protestant King of a Protes- tant country ; and most of all by the atmosphere of secrecy and intrigue in which he concealed both the inception and the performance of his designs, Charles had wrought this ' sober nation ' into a state of nervous irritation in which they were ready to lose all self- control, and all sense of proportion and fact, at the sudden occurrence of any fresh cause for alarm, how- ever trivial or manifestly absurd. That cause came in 1 the autumn of 1678, when Titus Oates, the wickedest / man in English history — with the one exception of i Jeffreys — gave, first to Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey in 1 September, next to the Privy Council, and lastly to ) Parliament, in October, his earliest bundle of lies. The worst and the most natural effect of the Conventicle Acts and the other persecuting measures of the reign had been the growth and the recognition of the infamous trade of ' informer ' ; and of this pestilent brood, though he had many forerunners, and was to have many imitators and comrades, Oates was the worst. But with the story of his vileness and of the progress of the Terror we cannot deal here. Our concern is to see in what manner it was used by those who saw political advantage to be secured from it ; and, chiefly, with the conduct of Charles himself. ^^34 CHARLES IT. The only tangible piece of evidence was a bundle of letters in the possession of Coleman, the Duke of York's secretary. They contained the expression of the desire of the more ardent Catholics to do a little of what Charles actually had done, to obtain French help to govern without Parliament and secure toleration ; and they stated that James wished to owe the crown to the help of France, Spain, and the Pope, and then to show favour to the Catholics. For this Coleman died, the first victim to the Terror ; and there are few more piteous expressions than his, when, urged to make disclosures to save himself, he said that " he knew there was enough already known to take away his life, and he did not know enough to save it ". Apart from this, the case is not overstated by James. " Such in fine was the prepossession of all ranks of people in favour of the Plot, that the highest improbabilities, the absurdest contradictions, the most apparent falsities, the asseverations of dying men, the infamy and manifest perjury of the witnesses, made not the least impression in behalf of the accused, either upon Parliament, Judge, or Jury." And sight should never be lost of this fact, that among all who died, from Lord Strafford and Archbishop Plunket down to the lowliest priest or secretary, not one, even in the presence of immediate death, or under any inducement, admitted his guilt. The instances from the State POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 335 Trials of the truth of James's words are too numerous and too familiar for quotation. But the following is less likely to be known, and might, we feel, have come straight from the hand that wrote Peveril of the Peak, When Thomas Bruce landed from France at Hastings, *' The Mayor, with a grave countenance, told me there was sad news. * Lord, is the King dead ? ' He made slight of that in comparison to what he told me, that the Lord Castlemaine and Sir G. Wakeman were ac- quitted. I replied, 'No doubt they were not guilty'. * O, my Lord,' replied he, ' if they had not been guilty they never would have had their trial.' " There is nothing to show that any leading poli- tician was concerned in the actual inception of Oates's villainy. But no sooner was the game on foot, and the scent hot, than all looked to see how they might utilise the frenzy of the chase for their own ends. Danby thought he found in it a false trail which might serve to lead his adversaries off their pursuit of himself ; and having induced the King — who would gladly have kept things quiet — -not to put off his usual autumn New- market meeting, he took care that the hounds should be in full cry before his return. But he had miscalcu- lated both the ability and the unscrupulousness of his enemies : " The Earl of Danby thought that he could serve himself of this plot of Oates, and accordingly en- deavoured at it ; but it is plain that he had no command of the engine ; and instead of his sharing the popularity 336 CHARLES IL of nursing it, he found himself so intrigued that it was like a wolf by the ears ; he could neither hold it nor let it go ; and for certain it bit him at last ; just as when a barbarous mastiff attacks a man, he cries, poor cur, and is pulled down at last. So the Earl's favour did but give strength to the creature to worry him. Herein he failed — (i) in joining to aid a design of which he did not know the bottom ; (2) in thinking that a Lord Treasurer that had enriched himself and his family could ever be popular. '' That Shaftesbury had an interest in fathering the Plot is obvious. No more convenient weapon could have been put into his hands for the destruction of Danby and for getting rid of James and the Catholic succession. The cry of exclusion followed naturally upon that of the ' Plot,' and Shaftesbury soon went far ahead of Danby in his parental care. His exclama- tion '' Let the Treasurer cry never so loud against 1 Popery, and think to put himself at the head of the \ Plot, ... I will cry a note louder," rests, we believe, on the authority of James alone ; and we may give what credit we will to the statement that he was heard to say, " The more nonsensical the better ; if we can- not bring them to swallow worse nonsense than that, we shall never do any good with them ". But the authority cannot be rejected which tells us that Shaftesbury made it his business to procure the evi- dence of informers and to hound them on, by what- POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 337 ever means of threats or bribery ; and Bishop Prideaux had good reason to say two years later : " I mightily suspect that old knave hath been guilty of many subornations in the management of the Popish Plot ". Charles himself complained with great scorn of the im- putation of suborning witnesses. " He did not wonder that the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was so guilty of those practices, should fasten them on others ; and he used upon that a Scotch proverb very pleasantly" — a pro- verb quite in the royal manner, for which Burnet's text may be consulted. It is deplorable enough that unscrupulous men like Shaftesbury and Danby should have hoped to find their account in what they knew without question to be murder. It is even sadder that men incapable of dishonour, like Russell, believing " that Popery is, and was, breaking in upon us like a flood," should have lent a helping hand to the wickedness ; and that, with- out apparently themselves investigating the truth or the untruth of the allegations, statesmen like Halifax should have allowed the possible dangers of the future to warp their minds so far from the paths of ordinary rectitude as to declare that " the Plot must be handled as if it were true," and that " the notoriety of the fact, as our lawyers have it, is evidence enough of the Plot ". Had the rule of Charles been such as to foster honour in statesmen, such infamy could not have been. He was responsible for the possibility of the conduct 22 338 CHARLES ^'11. of Danby and Shaftesbury, as he was responsible for the possibility of the Terror. It is true that he dis- liked the agitation, and would gladly, as we have said, have kept it quiet. He was extremely angry when on his return from Newmarket he found what Danby had done. And when he opened Parliament on October 21, and was forced to say something, he merely re- marked : " I have been informed of a design against my person by the Jesuits, of which I shall forbear any opinions lest I may seem to say too much or too little, but will leave the matter to the law ". But from that point his action can excite nothing but disgust. It is in the first place absolutely certain that he never for one moment gave credit to the evidence of Oates and his associates. Thomas Bruce, who was in his intimate confidence, says : " The good King, that had a pene- trating judgment, never believed one word of all their Plot, but dissembled it, and some thinks too much ". On October 23 he told Reresby *'he did think it some artifice, and did not believe one word of the Plot ". And yet, three days later, he gave way without a word of remonstrance to the ' desires ' of the Commons, which made life a burden to all Catholics. He did not even endeavour, after the fashion of the Commons, to con- vince himself, or stifle his own conscience, by assevera- tions such as that of November i, when they voted that *' There hath been, and still is, a damnable and hellish Plot, contrived and carried out by popish POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 339 recusants, for the assassination and murdering of the King, and for subverting and rooting out and destroy- ing the Protestant religion ". On the contrary, on November 12, when Reresby was with him at the Duchess of Portsmouth's, " he was very free in his dis- courses concerning the witnesses of the Popish Plot, making it clearly appear that several things which they gave in evidence were not only improbable but impossible"; and on the 21st he again said that " Bedloe was a rogue and had given false evidence". Nor did time alter his opinion. On April 20, 1681, " His discourse was generally of the impossibility of such a thing as the Popish Plot, and the contradictions of which it was framed ". Like Bruce himself, he " re- garded Oates's testimony no more than the barking of a dog," and he declared without reserve that he believed that the packet of letters produced by him and Tonge had been forged. But he did not confine his opinions to his private friends. He exposed the arch-impostor unmercifully before the Council. Oates had described how Don Juan had, in his presence, subscribed ;^ 10,000 to further the assassination plot. Charles asked him what manner of man Don Juan was. " A tall, lean, black man," replied Oates ; whereas Charles, who, as we have seen, had been personally concerned with him in Flanders before the Restoration, knew that he was short, fat, and red-haired, and said so. An interview, Oates said, had taken place ^*in the Jesuit College just 22 * 340 CHARLES II. by the Louvre ". " Man," said Charles, '' the Jesuits have not a college within a mile of the Louvre. " And he laughed still more appreciatively when Lord Bellasis was named to him as destined by the con- spirators to be the future commander of the Popish army, since that nobleman was crippled with gout. Charles, then, knew Oates and his fellows to be liars, and did not conceal his knowledge ; and yet he permitted him to be lodged in splendour at Whitehall, and gave him a large weekly pension from the privy purse. He knew them to be liars, and yet out of their mouths he allowed men of whose innocence he was assured to go to mutilation and death without speak- ing the word which would have saved them. We may well feel baffled before the psychological problem presented at this time by the King. He ap- pears to have had a strange faculty of self-deception. At the moment when he was committing deeds of im- measurable baseness, not a single word escaped him to show that he feared he might be charged with acting any but a worthy part. It would be inconceiv- able, if it were not certain, that at this very time he confided to one of his courtiers that " he knew he had led a bad life, of which he spoke with some sense ; but he was breaking himself of all his faults, and he would never do a base or wicked thing ; he looked on falsehood and cruelty as the greatest crimes in the sight of God ". He waived all responsibility for what POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT, 341 he recognised to be judicial murder, a sacrifice to the wild beast cry for blood, with a plausibility which would have been impudent if it had been fully conscious. " In all these affairs," he said, " the laws should have their course ; and whatever his private opinion was, he should govern himself according to them ; " the very laws which he had been endeavour- ing to evade, administered by a bench which he had corrupted, and from which he knew that justice was not to be had. " I cannot pardon him, because I dare not," was the frequent and unabashed excuse. " Be- cause it is inconvenient," is what Charles meant. There is something very Spanish, curiously like the relations between Philip II. and his grandees, in all this. We have already quoted Bruce on "the good King". How completely Charles had debauched the opinion of his courtiers is shown when Reresby, in like manner, follows up his account of Charles's resolve to leave all to the laws with — " Indeed it was a great happi- ness to his people to live under so just and gracious a prince". And when an innocent man, who was awaiting the hangman's cord and knife, appealed to the King, Reresby again remarks : " He could not be so ignorant as not to know that at that time it was not in the King's power to pardon him, while the tide went so high ". Only when it affected his wife did Charles show the slightest chivalry in his treatment of the Plot. On 34^ CHARLES II. October 29 James wrote to the Prince of Orange : " Yesterday Madame de Mazarin was accused by the same man, and when he will make an end of accusing people, the Lord knows ". But Oates then struck at the highest game. On November 24 he denounced the Queen before Secretary Coventry as privy to the design of poisoning the King ; on the 28th he repeated the accusation before the King himself in Council, and at the bar of the House of Commons. An address to Charles was carried in the Commons to remove Catherine from his presence and counsels. The Lords refused to agree to it ; and against this refusal Shaftes- bury and two others, to their disgrace, signed a protest. As late as December 26, 1680, Oates was repeating the audacious charge. That he should be a guest at the table of Gunning, Bishop of Ely, was enough to show at once how far the Church could fall, and what infamous power the wretch had acquired ; that he should dare in such society to mouth the lie is still more extraordinary. Fortunately there was also present an honest gentleman, Sir John Reresby ; and from him Oates received the check which Gunning was afraid to give. '* Nobody daring to contradict him, for fear of being made a party to the Plot, I at last did undertake to do it, and in such a manner that he left the room in some heat." The accusation of the Queen was probably a device of Shaftesbury to further the design of securing a POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 343 divorce. In public the poor woman bore herself bravely enough : " The Queen was brisk, and looks well ; " " The Queen shows herself in the Park and is very merry ;" such was the account, when there was a cry for sending her to the Tower : " but yesterday, when she was in private, she ceased not weeping, bewailing her condition ". Charles had manhood enough to refuse to be a party to the persecution of his wife. The relations between them had greatly improved with years ; a few months previously we hear that " the Queen has be- come a mistress, the passion her spouse has for her is so great ". '* They think "—said Charles — " I have a mind to a new wife ; but for all that I will not see an innocent woman abused." And Ossory, her cham- berlain, whom we have quoted as to her distress, and who was incapable of falsehood, confirms this : '' The King carries himself most worthily, showing a detestation of what some thought might be acceptable to him ". To Bruce Charles said, in words which it is hard to reconcile with the ' passion ' mentioned above, that " she was a weak woman, and had some disagree- able humours ; but was not capable of a wicked thing ; and considering his own faultiness to her in some things, he thought it a horrid thing to abandon her \ The poor woman actually trusted to him for pro- tection. When Charles was at Newmarket at the 344 CHARLES II. Spring meeting in 1680/' The Queen came hither, pretending she can be nowhere safe but where the King is present to protect her". This, then, is the sum of what can be claimed for Charles, that he would not desert his wife at the bidding of Titus Oates. While the Country party in the Commons — like yelling hounds — were running blindly on the hot scent of the Plot, and in every hamlet of England men and women were living in vague and senseless terror of outrage, they knew not what, at the hands of the * bloody Papists,^ who numbered at the utmost one in two hundred, the cool huntsmen who hallooed on the pack — Shaftesbury and his friends in the Lords and their correspondents in the Commons — were leading them straight to their quarry. They persuaded Barillon that the two objects — the destruction of Danby, for which he was as anxious as themselves, and the putting aside of James — went necessarily together ; and he joined eagerly in the scheme. On Saturday, November 2, 1678, Shaftesbury began the attack. Supported by Halifax, Essex, and Barlow, Bishop of London, he demanded that the King should be requested to dismiss James from the Council. On the following Monday an address to the same effect was moved by Russell in the Commons. " The Duke " — said one member — *' has houses in the country and loves fox-hunting. ... I would have POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 345 him retire to some of them, to be out of the influence of these damned Jesuits/' But it was reserved for Sacheverell to throw out in the form of a question the pregnant suggestion upon which the conflict turned. He asked " Whether the King and the Parliament may not dispose of the succession ? " And here Charles recovers our respect. He took his line with unwonted clearness of perception, and held it with a constancy of decision foreign to his nature. He told Danby privately that "he would be content to pare the nails of a Popish successor ; but that he would not suffer his brother to be taken away from him, nor the right Une of the succession interrupted ". Translated into official language, this resolve was given to the House of Commons on November 9 ; and in a little skirmish outside the lines of the main conflict the King showed himself at his best. Finding that Sir Joseph Williamson, the Secre- tary, had countersigned commissions to Papists, the Commons ordered him to be sent to the Tower. The next day Charles informed them with perfect temper that " Though they have committed his servant with- out acquainting him, yet he intends to deal more freely with them, and acquaint them with his intentions, to release his Secretary". Turning from this tone of banter to sterner language, he declared, in almost precisely the same words as those used by his father on the like occasion, that with their proposal that part 346 CHARLES 11, of the militia should be kept in arms for six weeks — a proposal which would have established a force of 60,000 men over whom he would not have full control — " he would not comply, though but for half an hour". On December 16 he administered a final rebufT. By- arrangement between Barillon and the Shaftesbury opposition, and with the eager concurrence of the Country party, the Commons had once more insisted upon the disbanding of the army, and had given a supply for the purpose ; a supply which, to mark their distrust of Danby and the King, they had ordered to be lodged, not in the Royal Exchequer, but in the Exchequer of London. A committee was appointed to wait upon Charles with this decision. They had to tell the House on their return that he had sent out word from the House of Lords that he was very busy, and could not see them. The intrigue by the sudden development of which, as by a bolt 'from the blue, Danby was now struck down in the plenitude of his power, had two points of special interest. Its success was effected by the first violation of the law of secrecy which constituted the political honour of statesmen, and it was signalised by one of the most dramatic incidents in the history of the House of Commons. Ralph Montagu, who had been our ambassador at Paris, held the originals of letters from Danby, which had been written by the POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 347 King's command, and without the knowledge of the Secretaries of State ; and he knew that their dis- closure would in the present state of feeling place the ruin of the Treasurer beyond doubt. Montagu had his private grievance against Danby, and he was needy. In concert with Shaftesbury and his party, he ap- proached Louis XIV. with an offer to produce these letters to the House of Commons for a sufficient con- sideration in money. Danby was warned by Reresby, Montagu's cousin, of the impending blow, and re- solved to strike first. He obtained a warrant to seize Montagu's papers, and Charles himself informed the Commons of the fact. A heated debate at once arose, to which Montagu listened without interruption until directly appealed to. He then very effectively struck his blow. " I believe," he said to the expectant House, " that the seizing my cabinet and papers was to get into their hands some letters of great consequence, that I have to produce, of the designs of a great Minister of State. That I have to produce." Danby had to deal with craft which more than matched his own. The letters of great consequence had been put safely away in another cabinet entrusted to Montagu's friends. Upon the clamorous demand of the House the cabinet was brought in. It was locked, and the key was in Danby's ofifice. A smith was hurriedly sent for and the lock was forced. Montagu took out some papers and handed them to the Speaker. Amid intense excite- 348 CHARLES II. ment Seymour read to the House two letters, the second of which was dated March 25, 1678, five days after a large supply had been voted to carry on the war. They bade Montagu demand from Louis ^6,000,000 livres yearly in case the French conditions of peace were accepted through Charles's efforts. He was not to " mention one syllable of the money to the Secretary ". They were both subscribed ' Danby ' ; and there was added to each — " This letter is writ by my order. C. R. " For Montagu's violation of the only understanding upon which ministerial government could be carried on there was no excuse, and Charles was deeply offended. None the less the scheme was completely successful. A passionate debate ended in a resolution to impeach the Treasurer. On December 21 the articles were voted ; and on the 23rd Danby made his defence before the Lords in a speech of striking ability. With regard to the main charge his plea was " that the letter was written by the King's command, upon the subject of peace and war, wherein his Majesty is at all times sole judge, and ought to be obeyed, not only by all ministers of state, but by all subjects ". The Secre- taries, he said, had in such a case nothing to do with the matter. As to being himself in the French interest, he declared in the King's presence, and declared truly, that he had always done his utmost to persuade him to refrain from any political connection with France. POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 349 Nothing could have more clearly defined the relations of ministers to the Crown. The heated debate which followed in the Lords upon this defence contained the comic element which we have learned to look for in the gravest crises. The Earl of Carnarvon, who had never before spoken in the House, came in drunk — through the kind offices of Buckingham — and under an engagement to speak upon any subject that offered itself " My Lords " — • he said — I understand but little of Latin, but a good deal of English and not a little of the English history, from which I have learnt the mischiefs of such kinds of prosecutions as these, and the ill fate of the prosecutors. I could bring many instances, and those very antient : but, my lords, I shall go no further back than the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, at which time the Earl of Essex was run down by Sir Walter Rawleigh, My lord Bacon he run down Sir Walter Rawleigh, and your lordships know what became of my lord Bacon. The Duke of Buckingham he ran down my lord Bacon, and your lordships know what happened to the Duke of Buckingham. Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, ran down the Duke of Buckingham, and you all know what became of him. Sir Harry Vane, he ran down the Earl of Strafford, and your lordships know what became of Sir Harry Vane. Chancellor Hyde, he ran down Sir Harry Vane, and your lordships know what became of the Chancellor. Sir Thomas Osborne, now Earl of Danby, ran down Chancellor Hyde ; but what will become of the Earl of Danby, your lordships best can tell. But let me see that man that dare run the Earl of Danby down, and we shall soon see what will become of him. " The man is inspired " — exclaimed Buckingham — '* and claret has done the business." In the end, the Lords, whether moved by this argumentum ad hominem 350 CHARLES II. or by gravef reasons, refused to accede to the Commons' demand for a committal until they had heard the grounds upon which it was based. The Commons girded themselves to battle with the greatest zest. But once more Charles fell back upon the constitu- tion. He did not intend to give up Danby yet. On December 26 he received the supply for disbanding ; on the 30th he prorogued ; and on January 24, 1679 — declaring that he would not be a mere Doge of Venice — he dissolved the Parliament which had now sat for eighteen years, and which for a long period had ceased to represent the constituencies in any direct way. The dissolution was a council of desperation. The new elections were fought amid intense excitement, under Shaftesbury's guidance ; there was a great circulation of exclusionist literature, and the cost of a seat mounted to a figure hitherto unknown. The result reflected the panic of the country. Charles did not appear to concern himself in the contest, and his friends were consequently " at a stand whether they should pretend or no " ; and thus it happened that while in the last House the Court had been able to reckon upon 150 steady votes, with an occasional majority, it could now depend upon no more than twenty or thirty. A large number of the new members were Presbyterians, and it was felt that once more the programme of Clarendon and of Danby was wiped out. One most important aspect of the change was that POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 351 from this time the distinction between the Shaftesbury opposition and the Country party disappeared. The term ' Whig ' henceforth includes them both. A trifling but suggestive instance of the temper of the country was the omission of " most gracious " before the Queen's name when prayers were read at Oxford. Before the assembling of the Houses, Charles took one or two measures which he hoped would dull the edge of the attack. An attempt was made pro forma to reconvert James, whose zeal for his creed burned more fiercely than ever under the influence of his con- fessor and of Mary of Modena, and who told the bishops employed " that he would neither be of their religion nor pretend to be of it ". On the eve of the opening of the session he was induced to leave the country : but not before he had received the written order from Charles which he demanded, and the King's declaration, rendered necessary by the growing pre- tensions of Monmouth, that he had never been married to any one but the Queen. Charles had for some while, as we learn from a manuscript Diary of Sir Edward Bering, had such a declaration ready. He had shown it to Heneage Finch, the Lord Chancellor, on January 12, and Finch asked Bering, who was dining with him on that day, to remember the fact, in case it might at any time be necessary to produce evidence of its existence. Considering the relations between the brothers, 352 CHARLES II. which varied on Charles's part from boon companion- ship to contemptuous dislike, the steadfastness of the King to the interests of James is strikingly significant of his purpose. " He hates him perfectly," said Shaftes- bury, " and he knows it. Yet he hath the ascendant over him, and by little acts and importunity doth much with him, and seems to govern all." BarillQn reported to Louis that Charles, ''when he talks freely in wine, shows much bitterness, and even aversion from his brother ". To make the ground still safer, the King began the promised disbandment of the troops, and allowed it to be understood that Danby would remain in office only until next quarter. That even now he either failed to understand the situation, or felt confident of his own strength, was shown by his promotion of the Treasurer to a marquisate. " His friends," wrote a careful ob- server, referring to Danby, '* doe much blame him for drawing by an empty title a greater envy on him." On March 6, 1679, Charles met his second Parlia- ment with a frank and able speech. He mentioned the various measures by which he had sought to remove any stumbling blocks ; and declared that he would de- fend the Protestant religion and the laws with his life. On their side he trusted to see a disposition to deal with the great concerns of the nation, and not to in- dulge their private animosities. He himself expected to be defended from calumny and danger. Meanwhile POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 353 supplies in no stinted form were absolutely necessary if the Protestant policy at home and abroad was to be maintained. He had, he added, with a careless ignoring of the anger aroused by the step, made Danby a Marquis. The conflict began with the first formalities of the session. The Commons re-elected Seymour to the chair ; Charles rejected him, as a personal foe to Danby. When they remonstrated, he replied, " Gentlemen, all this is but loss of time, and therefore I command you to go back to your House and do as I have commanded you ". Matters were equally unpropitious in the Lords. The Lord Chancellor had spoken of the King support- ing by his favour the ^creatures of his power,' and Shaftesbury dissected the phrase in Charles's presence. Shaftesbury then moved for an address on Danby's marquisate. Halifax ironically refused to believe in the fact ; Shaftesbury, he said, must be the victim of a *flamm ' report ; it was impossible that the King could ever be prevailed upon to do an act so ungrateful to his people ; but, if it were so, it was not to be borne. This he said looking straight at the King, who, as was his frequent habit, was in the House, standing by the fireplace : for he was wont to say that a debate in the Lords was as amusing as a play. Charles for once was moved beyond his customary placidity. "My God," he exclaimed, " how I am ill-treated, and I must bear it and keep silence." 23 354 CHARLES II. A few days later he summoned the Commons, and addressed them in words which left no room for doubt. For once he took all responsibility upon himself The incriminating letters had been written, he said, by his particular order. So far from Danby concealing the Plot, the Treasurer had known no more of it than he himself had chosen to tell him. He had given him a free pardon, and he would, if it were necessary, give it him again ten times over. Nevertheless he intended to relieve him of his office and to forbid him the Court. The manner in which the pardon was passed was Charles's own. Finch, the Lord Chancellor, related to the House how the King had arranged it so as to free him of all blame : " His Majesty declared he was resolved to pass it with all privacy ; and suddenly after commanded the Lord Chancellor to bring the seal from Whitehall ; and, being there, he laid it upon the table ; thereupon his Majesty commanded the seal to be taken out of the bag, which his Lordship was obliged to submit unto, it not being in his power to hinder it ; and the King wrote his name upon the top of the parchment, and then directed to have it sealed ; whereupon the person that usually carried the purse affixed the seal to it ". Finch himself did not consider that he had custody of the seal while this was done ; nor was the pardon entered in any office. Neither the uncompromising character of Charles's POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 355 speech, nor the recital of this State farce, served to turn the Commons from their course. On March 24 they demanded justice upon Danby from the Lords ; for they scouted the idea that a pardon could bar an impeachment. Charles was present in the House when the demand arrived. He wrote a hasty note to Danby, warning him to leave his lodgings at once, and sent it by his natural son the Earl of Plymouth, Danby's son-in-law. When the messengers arrived to arrest him, Danby was safe in Whitehall itself. The Lords thereupon passed a bill of banishment against him if he did not appear, but avoided naming the day ; the Commons threw it out as too moderate, and sent up a bill of attainder to the Lords, which they passed on April 14, to be effective should he not surrender him- self by the 21st. On the 17th Danby gave himgelf up, and was straightway committed to the Tower, where he remained for five years. "The King seemed not concerned at his parting thus with his brother and his Treasurer, nor what use the Parliament would make of it." Five years later, when Danby was released, Charles received him as though his appearance was an event calling for no special notice. As a matter of fact Danby had remained perfectly accessible to his friends throughout his imprisonment, and there are many in- 1 dications that Charles was in frequent communication with him as to his own course. The perfect coolness of the King during the six 23 * 356 CHARLES II. frenzied weeks which followed, weeks of what we may- call Parliamentary expletives in the shape of votes of excessive violence, extorts our admiration. Once more he bided his time ; only interposing now and again in the turmoil of passion. On April 30 he offered 'expedients' of a very drastic character, which would have secured the Protestant religion under a Popish successor, if that Popish successor had been willing to abide by them ; but these were at once re- jected as " a little gilding to cover a poisonous pill ". A fresh address for the removal of Lauderdale was met by the reply that *' he would consider of it and return an answer". This attitude served only to in- crease the hysterical violence of the Commons. On May 9 they declared that any commoner who main- tained the validity of Danby's pardon was a betrayer of the liberties of his country ; on the loth, they committed his brother-in-law, Charles Bertie, for un- satisfactory answers as to the expenditure of Secret Service money ; on the i ith — a Sunday — they resolved to bring in an exclusion bill ; and they passed a vote which offered an alarming prospect, that if the King should come by any violent death — at any one's hands — " they will revenge it to the utmost upon the Papists ". The bill for exclusion was read the first time on the iSth, and a second time on the 21st. Charles let it go on without further intervention ; and there is no doubt that Shaftesbury expected him to POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 357 give way completely to the pressure. He was soon undeceived. On May 23 Reresby was surprised to find the King *' so cheerful amongst so many troubles ; but it was not his nature to think much or to per- plex himself". He had thought more than Reresby imagined. On the 26th he joined the circle of courtiers in the Queen's room. "I have just," he said, "freed myself from the burden which weighed upon me. How they have deceived themselves if they imagined that want of money would force me to extremities. I shall find means to pay the fleet and manage economi- cally ; it will be difficult and uncomfortable for me, but I will submit to anything rather than endure the gentlemen of the Commons any longer." On that day he prorogued, and in July he dissolved, a Parliament which had not passed a single act except the Habeas Corpus Act. Even here the farcical element will obtrude itself. That Act — an Act of incalculable importance — passed its third reading in the Lords because the tellers, in joke, counted one very fat lord as ten. The disappearance of Danby, and the consequent dislocation of the executive, had led to an experiment of which Temple claimed the credit, though there were others who declared themselves its authors. This was the formation of a new Privy Council of such a char- acter that either it would work with Parliament, or 358 CHARLES II. by its great strength would enable the King to dis- pense with Parliament. It therefore included the chief leaders of the opposition ; and landed wealth — since authority followed land — was a principal qualification. So carefully was this attended to, that the new Council held property in land equal to three quarters of that of the whole House of Commons ; Halifax, Sunderland, and Essex possessed together more than the King. There was no longer to be a sole minister, like Danby ; no important step was to be taken by the King without the concurrence of the Council ; and, in especial — with obvious reference to Barillon — foreign ambassadors were to obtain the consent of the Council before seeking audience with the King. The new constitution was viewed with very various feelings. While bonfires of joy were lighted in the streets, while the stock of the East India Company rose rapidly, and the Dutch displayed increased con- fidence, Barillon did not conceal his annoyance. The Commons received the announcement with consider- able coolness and suspicion, regarding it as some new * juggle' of the King; and such of them as had not been included in the Council declared that " Court and Country livery could never be worn together ". Charles took the whole matter, and the engagements it implied, with the lightest possible heart. He accepted the list presented to him almost without reservation. His one expressed objection was, as usual, purely personal ; it POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT, 359 was only after great solicitation from Temple and others that he consented to the admission of Halifax, for he did not forget the insult in the Lords. But, once there, Halifax soon gained ground with the King, who had the same keen sense of humour as himself To emphasise his complacency, Charles himself sug- gested that Shaftesbury should be President. And, as usual, his real views were expressed in private. " God's fish ! " he said to Bruce, " they have put a set of men about me, but they shall know nothing, and this keep to yourself" And he noticed the omission of Bruce's father with the remark : " He was to be left out because I do love him ". All this did not promise a long life to the new experiment. From the formation of this Council to the end of the reign the stage is occupied by a number of actors, each of marked individuality, who change places with kaleidoscopic effect. There is Shaftesbury, whose sweeping victory at the polls illustrated anew the commanding influence he had secured in the country, and especially in London, as leader of the Whigs ; but who was so blinded by his hatred of Danby and James, by his love of party warfare, by his ambitions and by his immediate popularity, as to imagine that the English people might be brought to suffer a bastard to mount the ancient throne. There was Monmouth himself, with the same personal attractions as Bucking- ham, but with more than Buckingham's folly, posing as 36o CHARLES 11. the champion of Protestantism against his uncle James, whom he confronted with insolence and insult ; treated with a doting affection by his putative father ; and pre- paring the way for a direct assertion of heirship by removing the bar-sinister from the arms of his coach and by accepting the title of ' Royal Highness \ There was Halifax, " this great Lord — for indeed, considering all, he was the greatest in parts I ever knew" — sagacious, temperate, philosophic, and cynical, with rare powers of eloquence seldom exercised, who, as soon as he realised Shaftesbury's aim, took his line at once against Monmouth and exclusion ; and Essex, honest, able in government and finance, an earnest Protestant, too earnest to cultivate that bantering humour which so smoothed all paths with the King. Of the two last, '' no one " — it was said — '' can blame them for any one action in their whole lives, except about the Plot ". To them must be added the high- souled Russell, informed with an invincible belief in the Papist design ; Sunderland, son of a famous mother, a true child of the time, brilliant, unscrupulous, disso- lute, an inveterate gambler in politics as at the play- ing tables ; Lawrence Hyde, Clarendon's younger son, subtle and astute ; Temple, cultured and doctrinaire ; Godolphin, pliant and useful, " never in the way, and never out of it " ; Louise de Keroual, and Barillon. As each fresh question came up for solution, or each emergency had to be met, or each personal POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. ^361 quarrel to be fought out, all these persons joined or parted — unguided by the King — like birds wheeling in the air. Thus, Sunderland, Essex, Halifax, and Temple acted together to induce the King to dismiss Lauder- dale ; but when Shaftesbury was brought in. Temple ceased to attend, and at the same time quarrelled with Halifax on the genuineness of the Plot. Halifax and Shaftesbury, united over the Plot, were hopelessly at issue on the question of Monmouth and exclusion. Bickerings arose between Essex and Shaftesbury over the raising of a troop of guards under Monmouth's command. Halifax, Sunderland, Essex, and Temple advised dissolution, and were opposed by Shaftesbury, Russell, and the rest of the Council. Presently Halifax, Sunderland, and Essex held sway, while Shaftesbury and Temple remained away from their deliberations. Then Sunderland and James joined forces against Shaftesbury, who was dismissed, and who refused to come back, when appealed to by Sunderland himself, on any terms except the divorce of Charles and the exclusion of James. Halifax fell ill ; Essex resigned his First Commissionership of the Treasury ; Russell and several more of the Country party asked Charles's leave to resign. Then followed the reign of the * Chits * — Sunderland, Lawrence Hyde, and Godolphin ; but before long Sunderland and Louise de K^roual were seeking an alliance wite 362 CHARLES II. Shaftesbury against James and Hyde. Louise and Barillon supported Monmouth and his friends, and plotted for exclusion, while Charles maintained his brother's cause. Even Nelly Gwyn was brought into the turmoil, in strange association with the grave Essex. And the explanation is that, except upon personal points, and upon the sanctity of the succession, Charles did not care in the least how matters went among his servants. As for the future, his kingly philosophy led him no farther than it led Louis XV. : " If I can be well so long as I live, I care little what happens afterwards". His ministers and councillors might intrigue and quarrel as they pleased, but he would do what he wanted, provided it was also the easiest thing to do. Halifax and Reresby, and Danby in the Tower, complained of " the unsteadiness of the King's temper, that he hearkened to other counsels at a back door, which made him wavering and slow to resolve '' ; while in other eyes this back-door influence had its merits, since " it prevented him from being very long in ill hands ". The Duchess of Portsmouth " would often make the King break his engagements to others," and his ministers could not be safe under such un- certainties. He would now and then, with that self- deception which was becoming habitual, go out of his way to assure individuals of his constancy. " Do not trouble yourself" — he said to one — "I will stick by POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 363 you and my old friends ; for, if I do not, I shall have nobody to stick by me." And Francis North related to his brother how " While he was sitting upon the woolsack (as the King thought) pensive, His Majesty came and clapped himself down close by him, and * My Lord,' said he, ' be of good comfort ; I will never forsake my friends as my Father did ' ; and rose up and went away without saying a word more ". One matter he speedily made clear. The new Council might take itself as seriously as it would. But its members must give up the idea that his con- duct was to be shaped either by their wishes, or by his own promises. When Russell denounced Lauder- dale after the news of the Bothwell Brig rising, " Sit down, my Lord " — he said — '* this is no place for addresses". It was in opposition to almost the whole Council that he dissolved the Parliament on July 10. He had previously prorogued it without asking their advice. Shaftesbury broke out into passionate ex- clamations of anger, declaring that those who sug- gested the dissolution deserved to lose their heads and he was supported by Russell. " Gentlemen," said Charles coolly, " it is enough." This temper was re- flected in his daily habits. " Little was done all day,'' writes one of his suite at this very time, " but going a fishing* ^ At night the Duchess of Portsmouth came; in the morning I was with the King at Mrs. Nell's." Charles's management of the Popish fury was 364 CHARLES II. specially characteristic. He knew that it must spend its strength before long, and go out '' like the snuff of a candle"; that, as Burnet noted, '* every execution, like a new bleeding, abated the fever that the nation was in ". Men of all classes and professions had been done to death, and in not a single case had a con- fession been forthcoming to whet the appetite for slaughter. Sober men were growing frankly ashamed. " I much fear," wrote Prideaux at the end of July, 1679, " that this business at last will appear very foul, and render us odious and contemptible through all Europe." Charles waited quietly. He knew that the judges, especially Scroggs, the Lord Chief Justice were at his beck and call, and that acquittals would replace convictions whenever he chose to give the word. The moment had come, he thought, when Sir George Wakeman, the Queen's physician, was accused by Oates. Scroggs had the hint, and for the first time the indignant informer found his evidence sub- jected to judicial criticism. Wakeman was acquitted, and his acquittal was the beginning of the end of the madness. A remark of Lord Howard to Scroggs put the case in the fewest possible words : " If Oates and Bedloe be not to be beleeved in all they say, and if the Queen be not a trayter, our business is at an end". Among the dupes of the 'Terror' this action did indeed for the moment rouse the frenzy to a fiercer flame, which was brought to white heat by POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 365 the exposure of the Meal Tub Plot; but Charles allowed a heavy batch of priests to be hanged, and the mob settled down again. With Shaftesbury and his friends the indignation against Scroggs was ex- treme, especially when he was formally visited by the Portuguese ambassador, who thanked him for saving the Queen's servant ; but Charles made him full amends for the baiting he endured. He summoned him to Windsor, and was "very extraordinarily favourable " to him. " They have used me worse'* — said Charles — " and I am resolved we will stand and fall together.'' The King's treatment of the Lauderdale question illustrates his methods well. Lauderdale's misgovern- ment of Scotland had produced the revolt of the western Covenanters — which was looked upon at least with sympathy by the English Presbyterians ; and the evidence of this was shortly so complete as to make Henry Savile declare : " Surely these accidents will at last cure my Master of his infinite passion for his beautiful paramour of Lauderdale". But when Lauderdale was formally attacked before the Council by the Hamilton party from Scotland, Charles merely remarked that while *' many damned things " had been objected against Lauderdale, nothing had been advanced detrimental to his own service. In August, 1679, an event happened which showed that however coolly Charles might take matters, the 366 CHARLES II. prospect was menacing enough in the eyes of sober onlookers. He was suddenly attacked with an illness which for a few days appeared likely to be fatal. The very cause seems to bring him within touch. *' Last Wednesday his Majesty played at tennis, and after that he had been in bed and rubbed, he walked a long time by the water side." A chill and fever ensued. In a moment the possibilities of the future came forcibly before men's minds. The dread of the designs of Shaftesbury and Monmouth is seen in the almost hysterical exclamations which appear in the private letters of the time. Temple felt that anything which should happen to the King was " the end of the world ". Algernon Sidney declared that there was *'no extremity of disorder to be imagined that the Nation might not probably have fallen into ". " Good God," wrote Henry Savile to his brother Halifax, " what a change would such an accident make ! The very thought of it frights me out of my wits. God bless you, and deliver us all from such a damnable curse." That all this was not without good ground is shown by Sir Robert Peyton's confession to the Privy Council, that, if the King had died at Windsor, the Monmouth party were prepared for a coup d'tttat ; they had arranged to seize the Tower, Dover Castle, and Portsmouth, and to arrest any who should offer to proclaim James. Under the stress of such anxieties Halifax and POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 367 Essex, with Charles's assent, secretly summoned James from Brussels. He reached Windsor on September 2, and was received by the King with the greatest delight and with the most admirably feigned astonishment. But scarcely had he arrived when Charles rallied so far that it was thought well to quiet popular feeling by sending the Duke out of the country again without delay. This time however he was allowed to go to Scotland instead of to Brussels, and even this modified exile was sweetened by the dismissal of Monmouth also. At the same time Mon- mouth was removed from the Captain-Generalship conferred upon him when he went in Lauderdale's place to suppress the Whigs at Bothwell Brig. James asked for a comprehensive pardon ; but Charles re- membered the uproar raised in the case of Danby, and refused it. In spite of all forebodings, and of the loyalty of his subjects, which was so great that it required the united physical efforts of the Privy Council and the gentlemen of the bedchamber to keep back the crowds who pressed into the room, Charles was soon on his feet again. By September 2 he had " ex- changed water gruels and potions for mutton and partridges, on which he feeds frequently and heartily '' ; and on the 28th he scouted the opinion of his phy- sician, and declared himself able to go to the " sweet ayre " of Newmarket. He resumed indeed all his old 368 CHARLES II. habits, for in a month or two he added a fresh mistress to his suite. But he does not seem to have recovered his full health or spirits. In December one of the Verney family wrote : " The girls tells mee the King looks so very ill as it greeved them to see him, and came twice in, but spoke to none but my lord Fevar- some who came in with him, they never saw man have more discontent and disorder in the looks than the King had ". The new elections had not altered the complexion of the Parliament. It should have met in October ; but Charles felt himself strong enough to adjourn it until January, 1680, and meanwhile to remove Shaftes- bury from the presidentship of the Council. Farther, when Monmouth, the darling of the mob, returned from Holland without leave, Charles refused to see him, dismissed him from his captaincy of the guard and all his remaining posts, and insisted on his leav- ing London at once. Monmouth, who in addition to other differences had a sordid quarrel with his uncle "over a woman," now openly espoused exclusion; and the situation was more full of dangerous possi- bilities than ever. To the ordinary onlooker it was " a crazy time everywhere ". The immediate question was whether Charles would permit the Houses to meet in January. The Whig peers made a mistake in tactics when, headed by Rupert and Shaftesbury, they presented a petition POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT, 369 to this effect. The King replied that he would take it into consideration, and that he wished every one was as careful for the peace of the nation as himself. A day or two later he prorogued to November, and issued a proclamation denouncing petitions as illegal. He was thereupon bombarded with petitions from all over the country, which had been prepared in accord- ance with instructions from Shaftesbury's London office. Charles showed himself perfectly equal to the occasion. His answers were much more effective than his proclamation. " I look on myself" — he said to the petitioners from London and Westminster — *' as the head of the government, and mean to do what I think best for myself and my people.'' "You would not take it well I should meddle with your affairs, and I desire you will not meddle with mine," was all that the Wiltshire deputation had to carry away ; while to the Berkshire gentlemen he said, with that peculiar bo7ihoinie which was his most powerful defence, " We will argue the matter over a cup of ale when we meet at Windsor, though I wonder my neighbours should meddle with my business ". It was quite clear that it was of no use to try to bully Charles. It was equally clear that the petitioners were not the country. From every side came a flood of counter-addresses declaring confidence in the King's wisdom, and abhorrence of the petitioners. The nation was divided between 'Petitioners' and 'Abhorrers'. 24 370 CHARLES II, The calculations of the Whig leaders were com- pletely upset by the decision shown by Charles, who now felt it safe to call back James to his side. Russell and three other principal Whigs on the Council here- upon asked the King's leave to retire. " With all my heart" was the cool reply. He had become recon- ciled to Monmouth ; but in April he deprived him of all false hopes by publishing the declaration already mentioned, in which he denied in the most solemn manner that he had ever been married to Lucy Walters or to any woman but the Queen. A month later Charles was again ill, with symptoms which looked like apoplexy. He had shown himself "sullen and intractable," and "lived very privately at this time ; there was little resort to him, and he passed his days in fishing or walking in the Park ; which indeed he loved more than to be in a crowd or in business". But "he will keep well if he can be kept from fishing when a dog would not be abroad ". Thomas Bruce draws a striking picture of the change which for the time had come over the Court, of its comparative melancholy and solitude. He was, he says, put in mind of some manuscript verses that were going about then : — Thus have I seen a King at chess, His rooks and knights withdrawn, His Queen and Bishops in distress, Shifting about, growing less and less, With here and there a pawn. POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT, 371 The Whig attack had not yet spent itself. On June 26, 1680, Shaftesbury and fourteen other leaders of the party ' presented ' James as a recusant at West- minster Hall. The Court of King's Bench, however, managed to secure the discharge of the jury before the case came on, and the move was a failure. Neither of the brothers seemed troubled. " His Highness smiles, dances, makes love, and hunts." Charles, who by this time had recovered his spirits, supported James, out of his genuine resolve to maintain the succession — or, as ill-natured people said, " because it is good to have a successor they like worse than himself". Un- doubtedly James was useful as a first line of defence. '' The King and Duke seem both in good humour, and, if they will be firm, I believe they are safe." Charles felt he ran no risk in refusing the Whig sheriffs elected by the City, in spite of the fact that " the Lord Mayor played the Devil," although in what manner we are unfortunately not told in detail. But he sought, as before, to disarm opposition before the approaching meeting of Parliament by inducing James and his wife to go to Scotland again, on the express assur- ance that he would give up neither the Duke's rights nor the control of the sword. He did this with one of his usual jests. Upon proposing it in Council he found that there were seven who supported and eleven who objected to the journey. " Since he has so many friends for him," said Charles, " I see he must go." 24 * 372 CHARLES II. At length the King met Pariiament on October 21, 1680. " He was in ill-humour, having ill things put into his head ; " possibly this was because Louise de K6roual had openly allied herself to Monmouth and Shaftesbury and declared for exclusion. Personal pique and the chance 'of farther enrichment had led her to this decision ; she had been slighted by James's wife, and had been offered a heavy bribe by the Whig leaders. Charles followed his former course. He bade the House pursue the Plot, at the very time that he was pressing its absurdity upon Reresby ; and with abom- inable cynicism he threw to them, as it were, the Catholic lords imprisoned in the Tower. But none the less he once more made it clear that he would permit no tampering with the succession. As the Commons had come together under Shaftesbury's im- pulse, and with the ground well prepared by Barillon, for exclusion, and nothing short of exclusion, the result was what might be imagined. A detailed account could alone give an adequate idea of the violence of the proceedings. The Commons took their tale of blood ; and after a fortnight of uncompromising votes, of rejection of " those very idle things called expedi- ents" — as being "like mountebanks' tricks in physic" — of expulsion of members who dared to stand in the way, of declarations in favour of petitioning, of hysteri- cal declamation, the Exclusion Bill passed the Com- POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 373 mons on November 11. On the isth, "with a mighty shout," the bill was taken to the Lords by Russell, followed by most of the Commons. It was significant that he, was accompanied by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Charles stayed in the House for the debate. He heard Shaftesbury's passionate attacks ; he heard Monmouth urge exclusion, for the King's sake — "a Judas's kiss," he bitterly said; and he listened while Halifax triumphed. Then the violence broke out with heat made fiercer by disappointment. Once more the torrent of ex- pletives burst forth. Addresses, attacks on minis- ters, impeachments, expulsions, resolutions against the Papists, against James, against the judges, against placemen and pensioners, against prorogations, against those who lent money to the Crown ; associations, votes that the penal laws should not be executed against the Protestants — the very dispensing power which Charles had claimed in vain ; these were flung out by the Commons day by day. They refused to discuss questions of foreign affairs, as 'Court tricks'. They " started many hares, but catcht but few ". Their violence was equalled by — was a measure indeed of — their impotence. Charles was quite careless of the fact that " everybody was unsatisfied with him ". He may, as Dorothy Sidney said, have acted as if he were mad. But he was completely master of the situation. When the Commons addressed him against 374 CHARLES II. Halifax, whom they now hated more than they had hated Danby, Charles told them in a reply which smothered them with blandness that " he doth not find the grounds in the Address of this House to be sufficient to induce him to remove the Earl of Halifax ''. He had resolved, as he said to Reresby, never to part with any officer at the request of either House. " My father," he declared, " lost his head by that compliance ; but as for me, I will die another way." He was in excellent humour throughout. On December 24 he "spent some time upon the subject of showing the cheat of such as pretended to be more holy and devout than others, and said they were generally the greatest knaves. . . . He was that night two hours putting off his clothes, and it was half past one before he went to bed. He seemed extremely free from trouble or care, though one would have thought he was under a great deal ; for everybody guessed that he must either dismiss the Parliament in a few days or give himself up to what they desired." All doubts were soon removed. It was apparently by Danby's advice that he prorogued Parliament on January 10, 168 1, very suddenly ; and, when the Lord Mayor and Aldermen petitioned that he would allow it not only to meet at the appointed day, but to continue sitting until it had secured religion and the safety of the King, he put an end to all doubts by a dissolution. POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 375 The honours of war were with Charles. Upon one matter only had the angry Commons had their way. The Earl of Stafford, despite his seventy years, was brought to trial before his peers. It would seem that he was deliberately chosen from among the five Catholic lords in the Tower because he was old and infirm, least capable of defending himself, and disliked even in his own family. And he had made his fate certain by bringing charges against Shaftesbury. The trial was a mockery of justice. The King listened throughout, while Louise de K6roual, "who may go where she will, now she is a favourite of the House of Commons," sat in the Hall, and confirmed her newly acquired popularity by distributing smiles and sweet- meats to the members of the opposition who crowded round her. Stafford disappointed his persecutors by his courage and by the ability of his defence, while " his perfect innocency appeared in all his actions and expressions " ; but his own relatives voted against him ; Lauderdale, as his last public act of shame declared him guilty ; Nottingham, who presided, strained the law to the utmost ; and " seemingly under the grossest error in common justice that ever was known" — such are the words of Francis North — the poor old man was sentenced to die. Even so the ferocity of his persecutors was unappeased. A savage protest was raised in the Commons, joined in, one regrets to say, by Russell, when Charles sanctioned 376 CHARLES II. the omission of the more revolting of the hideous rites which by law accompanied an execution for treason. Charles might well show this cheap leniency. " The King, that heard all the trial, seemed extremely con- cerned at his hard but undeserved fate." He " was very uneasy " — says another of his trusted courtiers — "when it came to sign the death warrant, and did it with the last reluctancy, and it was with the highest difficulty that it was obtained : but the timorous part of the King's council over-ruled the rest ". Faithful to his cynical policy of ' leaving all to the laws,' he re- fused once more to exercise the right of pardon. At the same time, after his fashion, he tried to throw responsibility on others. When Anglesey, one of the Lords who had declared Stafford guilty, expressed surprise before his face that he should have signed the warrant, " And why, my Lord "-—said Charles — " did you give your vote against him ? " Charles had for the time utterly routed the exclu- sionists, and had preserved the purity of the doctrine of hereditary right. So strong did he seem that it was said that "if the King would be advised, it is in his power to make all his opponents tremble ". But the aspect of affairs had been very threatening. Sober men had even anticipated civil war. Halifax had said to Reresby, ** If it come to a war, you and I must go together *' ; and Halifax generally measured his words. We know that James had spoken of the probability POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 377 of war to Barillon, and that the garrisons had been put in readiness. The Duke intended to fight the English Parhament from Scotland and Ireland, as of old ; he had claimed the help of France, and Louis had promised it when he should feel himself safe in Scotland. Charles could now show his feelings — though " this lasted not long, for it was not in his nature to do harsh things long ". He dismissed leading exclusionists from the Council ; among them was Sunderland, the Secre- tary, who was in close alliance with Louise de K^roual, Essex, and Temple. He indeed punished Sunderland with especial severity by not allowing him to receive from his successor any part of the sum which, accord- ing to custom, he had paid to Williamson for his office. Charles then announced that the next Parliament would be held at Oxford. The sagacity of this step, by which the session was removed from London, where Shaftesbury and the Whigs were supreme, was shown by their outspoken anger. Essex, Shaftesbury, and fourteen other peers sought an interview in which they urged their objections. Charles coldly replied that he regarded their petition "only as the opinion of so many men ". Indirectly the step helped the King in London itself Tradesmen have other things to think of than exclusion ; and '' the loss of custom in London turns many shopkeepers into courtiers ". 378 CHARLES II. There was no doubt that the coming session would be a stormy and a critical one. Shaftesbury had again issued special instructions for the constituencies. Ex- clusion, limitation of the royal power to prorogue or dissolve at will, the disbanding of the King's guards and all other standing forces, and the refusal of supplies without these safeguards ; these were to be the tests for candidates. Under this impulse a House was re- turned even more prepared to go to extreme lengths than the last. What Bruce says of Bedfordshire held good for the whole country : *' The Russell faction was like a spring tide at full moon ". The City was en- thusiastic in support of Shaftesbury and Monmouth, and Whitehall was beset by crowds of vapouring ex- clusionists. It looked indeed like the beginning of civil war when members came to Oxford armed, with large retinues of horsemen, and with blue bows and ribbons inscribed with * No Popery ! No Slavery ! ' in their hats. The King heard that there was an inten- tion to kidnap him in Oxford, carry him to London, and make terms with him there. He was not the man to lose his head in the danger ; but he was care- ful to post Lord Oxford's regiment in detachments along the Windsor Road to secure his retreat if it should prove necessary. Charles entered upon his last contest with Parlia- ment with a clearer determination and a lighter heart POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 379 than usual ; for he had taken measures of the old familiar kind which would enable him to slip from under their hand whenever he chose. Ever since the fall of Danby he had been in poverty which must al- most have recalled to him the days of exile — for "the officers of the Crown and household were clamorous for their salaries and wages ; there were no stores in the magazines, either for sea or land forces ; the garri- sons were out of repair, the platforms decayed, the cannon unmounted ". Parliament gave no supplies, and there was " scarce bread for the King's family ". In the autumn of 1679 he had nearly come to an agree- ment with Louis, whereby, for a pension for three years, he was to promise an intermission of Parliament for that period. This particular intrigue, however, came to nothing at the time, through mutual distrust and through the peculiarities of the situation in both countries. Charles thereupon threw himself heartily into the cause of the allies against Louis, and in June, 1680, concluded a treaty with Spain for resistance to France. Louis in his turn decided to support the Monmouth-Shaftesbury faction by profuse bribery, in which he included not only the Parliamentary op- position, but City merchants and the chief Presbyterian preachers. But it was once more made clear that nothing could permanently oppose the course of the national hatred against France ; and Louis recognised during the great session of 1680 that it was more 38o CHARLES 11. advisable to support Charles against the Parliament than Parliament against Charles. In November Bar- illon had opened the subject again with the King. Charles hung back until just before the dissolution ; he then expressed himself willing to listen to proposals. By the time of the Oxford meeting all had been arranged. Hyde had investigated the finances, and had reported that even with the strictest economy some help was necessary to make the King indepen- dent of Parliament. Louis was therefore asked, and consented, to conclude the compact which had fallen through in 1679 J ^e agreed to pay Charles a subsidy for the next three years which would enable him to live quietly, while Charles promised to disengage him- self gradually from the Spanish alliance and to take care that Parliament should not drive him to measures hostile to France. This agreement was unwritten. It was known to Hyde alone ; not even James, or Louise de K^roual — though she had now recovered favour — was allowed to share the secret. And it is a lively illustration of the difficulty of secrecy to read that on one occasion Charles found it necessary to discuss matters with Barillon, not in his own, but in the Queen's bedroom, dans la ruelle du lit — the narrow space between the bed and the wall, where at least there would be the width of the bed between them and listeners. As there were no documents there was of course nothing binding ; and it was understood that, POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 381 if Charles could come to terms with his Parliament, the agreement would lapse. On March 21, 1681, began a notable week in the history of Parliament. The Lords were in the Geometry School, the Commons in Convocation House. The King took up his residence at Christ Church. He opened the session with by far the best speech he had ever delivered, somewhat minatory, but clear, dignified, reasonable, and unmistakable. It had been carefully considered, and it was printed and published in London before it was in the hands of members at Oxford. He had parted, he said, with the last Parliament because " I, who will never use arbi- trary government myself, am resolved not to suffer it in others ". By his calling them together so soon, they could see that no irregularities in Parliament should make him " out of love with them ". He again recommended them to go on with the Plot, and with the trial of the Lords in the Tower. Then came the passage for which the Houses were waiting. Was Charles at last going to surrender? "What I have \ formerly, and so often declared, touching the succes- sion, I cannot depart from." The succession must be inviolate ; but " if means can be found that in the case of a Popish succession the administration of the government may remain in Protestant hands, I shall be ready to hearken to any such expedient". It was understood that Charles was willing that after his 382 CHARLES 11. death the Duke should be King only in name, the kingdom being governed by a Protector or the Privy Council ; the Prince of Orange, through his wife, would be the Protector. The temper of the Commons was shown in their first action ; declaring themselves " not inclinable to changes," they elected as Speaker William Williams, who had held the same position in the last House ; " a lawyer of competent learning, but of a fiery and vicious temper, and subservient to that party, and pliant to them as a spaniel dog". They probably thought and hoped that the King would raise pre- liminary difficulties on an appointment so aggressive ; but he shrewdly took it as a matter of course, and advised them to get on with business. On the 24th, before formal discussion was begun, Shaftesbury made a singularly ill-advised attempt to shake Charles's resolution. In a conversation in the House of Lords he pressed the King to declare Mon- mouth his successor. Charles replied that nothing should make him do a thing so contrary to law. Shaftesbury rejoined that if he would leave it to him- self and his friends, they would see to it that the law was on his side. Charles closed the conversation thus : " My Lord, let there be no self-delusion. I will never yield, and will not let myself be intimidated. . . . I have law and reason on my side. Good men will be with me. There is the Church (pointing to the POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 383 bishops) which will remain united with me. Believe me, my Lord, we shall not be divided." On Satur- day, March 26, the discussion took place upon Charles's expedient. It was purely academic ; for the Commons, as before, meant the exclusion of James and nothing less ; while it can scarcely be doubted that the expedient had been put forward by the King in order that its certain rejection might place him in a stronger position. "God be praised," wrote one of the Court, who dreaded expedients more than the bill, " God had blinded them in so great a measure that they would have all or nothing." The scheme received scant courtesy ; Birch, who had a taste for imagery, declared that it was absurd to hope that you could keep water cold in a hot pot ; while Harbord improved upon this by saying that expedients deserved the same treatment as cucumber — " dress it, and then throw it away ". A resolution was carried to exclude James. But there is little doubt that even more drastic designs had been formed among the Whig leaders, designs which justified the statement that " the ques- tion was not now whether the Duke should succeed or not, but whether it should be monarchy or a common- wealth". Charles learned that it was intended to revive a proposal of the previous Parliament, which would accomplish a complete transference of both the military and civil powers to persons whom the Whigs could trust, and would establish Parliament in con- 384 CHARLES II. tinuous session. The preservation of his own pre- rogative and the preservation of the succession now formed one cause. The crisis was undoubtedly serious. The manner in which Charles met it was not exactly Cromwellian, but it served. As so often was the case, genial trickery formed the basis of his method. On Sunday he busied himself in taking measures to meet the com- plaint of the Commons that their quarters were too narrow ; and that evening he expressed his satisfaction at having been able to arrange for their better comfort. A great show was made of putting the theatre in readiness for their occupation on the following Tues- day. But in the afternoon he had held a Cabinet Council at Merton, in the Lord Chancellor's lodgings, " where there was not one false or babbling member ". During the night his coaches were quietly sent a stage out of Oxford to await his coming, with a guard of horse. Early on Monday morning he went to the Lords, apparently now in the Hall of Christ Church ; a closed sedan-chair which followed contained his official riobes. Hastily putting them on, and prevent- ing a hint of his intention from reaching the Com- mons, by holding one of the peers, who evidently had his suspicions, in conversation to the last moment, he placed himself on the throne, and without giving the Lords time for their customary robing ordered the Lower House to be summoned. He was evidently POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 385 enjoying himself thoroughly while he sat waiting their arrival. Noticing Thomas Bruce come in by ; the door next the canopy, he gave him a smile of I peculiar graciousness ; and Bruce, who describes the i scene which follows, records that he never saw him ' look so cheerful. Presently the Commons arrived. The door was extremely narrow, and there were three steps from it down into the body of the Hall. This prolonged the entry for many minutes. At length all were in ; and there they stood crowded together in the greatest dis- comfort, while the Speaker forced his way to the bar with Russell and Cavendish, representatives of the two greatest Whig families, on his right and left re- spectively. The noise resulting from the uneasiness of the throng was such that it was not until the Serjeant-at-Arms had thrice commanded silence in the King's name that Charles could put the finishing touch to this carefully prepared comedy. He knew that they had come in the belief that under the pressure of his necessities he was about to announce his surrender. " Gentlemen," he said, " that all the ! world may see to what a point we are come, that we i are not likely to have a good end, when the divisions at I the beginning are such ; therefore, my Lord Chancellor, / do as I have commanded you." Finch hereupon de- clared the Parliament dissolved ; and Charles at once left the throne. As the baffled crowd crushed up the 25 386 CHARLES II. three steps and out at the narrow door, Bruce was witness of "their dreadful faces and loud sighs". He then joined the King in the disrobing chamber ; and Charles, with a face radiant with satisfaction, his pecu- liarly bright black eyes gleaming with amusement, touched him on the shoulder, with the remark that it was better to have one King than five hundred. To avoid suspicion, which might have caused inconvenient attentions, the King dined, or rather breakfasted, in public, and with music, as usual ; but he speedily rose from the table, left the room, and went privately down some backstairs — the matter would not be complete without these backstairs — to where Sir Edward Seymour's coach was standing ready. He at once drove off, unattended by any royal guards or foot- men, to the stage where his own coach was waiting, and reached Windsor that night. At last, then, Charles was free. He had won his final victory over Parliament, and he had saved the succession intact. But if he were free on one side, he was fettered as he never had yet been on the other. He was helpless for foreign action, for he could not live without the French grants. So completely was he bound to Louis, that William, who came over in July to secure the renewed support of England, was forbidden by Charles to attend the Lord Mayor's banquet, lest the opportunity should be taken for a POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIIJMPH OF COURT. 387 popular demonstration against France. Charles in- deed went through the form of remonstrating with his cousin upon his aggressions in Europe, and upon the persecution which was now beginning to fall upon the Huguenots ; but the first protest was but a form, while the second came with little force from the man who had allowed scores of Catholics to be done to death under the most shameless travesties of justice, and had thus become in no small degree the author of the very cruelties which he affected to deplore. That this is no exaggeration is shown by the order to Barillon to send to Louis a statement as to the treatment of Catholics in England, " that being the model designed for what treatment the English Protestants shall find here ". Louis gave way to Charles — from the policy of making his path easier — ^just as much as he felt dis- posed to give way, and no more. The most rigid economy barely sufficed to carry on the government. The old story went on of unpaid public servants, of fortifications and ships in decay, of pensions in arrear. No money could be found to pay the interest on a new loan. Even Louise de K^roual received no more than ^20,000 this year ; while the state of destitution to which poor Nelly Gwyn was reduced can be dimly imagined. There was another illustrious pensioner whose sufferings began at once. Now that Parliament had disappeared, Charles could give practical form to his opinion of the witnesses to 25 * 388 CHARLES 11. the Plot. Not only was Titus Oates degraded from *Dr. Oates' to 'Mr. Titus/ but his blood -money fell straightway from ;^io a week to £2, and after Sep- tember ceased altogether. The effect of Charles's coup de theatre upon home relations was more immediate and more drastic than he could have hoped. It was with the Whigs — as it has been well said — *'as if a gust of wind had suddenly scattered the leaves from a tree ". The basis of constitutional action was cut from the feet of the exclusionists ; and the reaction which had long been gaining force could now make itself felt. The ten- sion had been severe and prolonged. Moderate men had been alienated by the excessive violence of the Whigs ; the Popish Terror was practically extinct, and people stood ashamed at their own folly ; the well-to- do classes dreaded another civil war, and another commonwealth, with government by Major-Generals ; while the opposition to the idea of the Monmouth succession had grown day by day. Charles took the tide on the flood. His clever Declaration on April 8, in which he recounted the evil doings of the Parliament for many years, and his own manifold virtues, was however scarcely needed ; and the anonymous reply, ** A just and modest vindication of the Proceedings of the Two Last Parliaments," fell absolutely flat. An '* indecent courting and magnify- ing " of James began. Addresses couched in the most POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 389 slavish language, in which for once Cambridge out- stripped Oxford, poured in during the summer from end to end of the country. Cambridge assured the King that he reigned " by a fundamental hereditary right of succession, which no religion, no law, no fault, can alter or diminish " ; while the following effusion from the town of Wycombe may be quoted as a type of the country addresses. The addressers speak of the " late defeated Politicians, disappointed of their dark designments by Your Majestie's profound wisdom and divine prevision,*' and protest that — wee have alwayes detested and rejected them, together with their now exploded scanty and forsaken abettors. Wee have ever inserted our loyall selves amongst the resolute, grave and deliberate persons. And wee doe most highly applaud the stout fidelios, the strenuous, brisk, and valiant youth of this your much undeluded nation. We therefore, Your Majestie's most dutyful and most devoted subjects, entirely pro- fesse : That wee will, to the utmost stresse of our sinews, to the latest gaspe of our lives, and the last solitary mite in our coffers, adhere to your Majestic. Many have outstripped us on the wing, but none shall exceed us in theire wishes ; we envye much theire more earley apply, but none shall ever appeare more faithfull. God preserve Your Majestie from all rebellious Machinations. Amen. . . . Hyde put the matter with coarse incisiveness ; the petitioners, he said, spit in the King's face, the addressers in the Kings mouth. Probably Charles never enjoyed a Newmarket visit more than he did in that September. The Secretary, Lord Conway, who had succeeded Sunderland, was in attendance ; but unless he was much maligned, he was 390 CHARLES II. drunk during much of the time, and the King was not therefore troubled with business. Nelly Gwyn was there, brimming over with effrontery. Alder- man White of Oxford, a person of eminent respecta- bility, was much scandalised, while walking with Charles in the fields, at meeting that indiscreet lady, " and Nelly cald to the King, ' Charles, I hope I shall have your company at night, shall I not?'" We have already dealt with Charles's life at New- market in earlier days. It is evident from Reresby's account that his enjoyment did not diminish with years. " The King was so much pleased with the country, and so great a lover of the diversions which that place did afford, that he let himself down from Majesty to the very degree of a country gentleman. He mixed himself amongst the crowd, allowed every man to speak to him that pleased ; went a hawking in the mornings, to cock matches or foot-races in the afternoons (if there were no horse-races), and to plays in the evenings, acted in a barn, and by very ordinary Bartlemew fair comedians." Of his last Spring meet- ing, in 1684, we hear again : *' The diversions the King followed at Newmarket were these : Walking in the morning till ten o'clock ; then he went to the cockpit till dinner time ; about three he went to the horse- races ; at six to the cockpit for an hour ; then to the play, though the comedians were very indifferent ; so to supper; next to the Duchess of Portsmouth's till POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 391 bed-time ; and then to his own apartments to bed ". At all events Charles knew how to take a holiday. Nor was he careless of other people's comfort. We remember how he advised Courtin to wear Welsh flannel next his skin. On this occasion he sealed Reresby's loyalty by a word of princely solicitude. *' The weather was very unseasonable and dirty, so that walking the town with his Majesty he observed I had but thin shoes, and advised me to get a stronger pair, to prevent getting cold, which I here mention as an example of that prince's great goodness and care of those persons that came near him, however incon- siderable." After the fire which, as will be seen, saved him from the Rye House Plot, but which left him without lodgings, Charles in a measure deserted Newmarket for Winchester. He had taken a liking to the place, and had usually honoured Morley's house with his patronage. The burden of entertaining royalty proved severe, and it was remarked that the family would be glad if the King could distribute his favours : did he intend, they asked, to make the Bishop's house his inn ? Charles took the hint. But Morley died in 1684, and Mews was translated from Bath and Wells, apparently on the understanding that the King should be assured of a good lodging. Promotions to bishoprics were indeed made on various grounds. One in especial deserves mention. Charles had pur- 392 CHARLES II, posed to raise a palace at Winchester, designed by Wren on a magnificent scale, for which it was sup- posed that the ^90,000 found in his strong box after his death had been destined ; and with James and the Court, including of course Louise de K^roual and Nelly, he often came down to inspect progress. At such times the houses of the Dean and Prebendaries were used for their accommodation. On one occasion Charles met with a refusal of a sort to which he was not accustomed, at any rate from one of his own chaplains. The harbinger had selected Ken's pre- bendary house as suitable for Nelly Gwyn. But Ken thought otherwise. "A woman of ill repute,'' he replied, " ought not to be endured in the house of a clergyman, least of all in that of the King's chaplain." Nelly was duly provided for at the Deanery, and the purity of Ken's house was left intact. A year later, when the see of Bath and Wells was vacant by the translation of Mews, Charles had his successor ready. "God's fish!" he exclaimed, when a crowd of claim- ants presented themselves, " who shall have Bath and Wells but the little black fellow who would not give poor Nelly a night's lodging?" In spite of the reaction Charles saw reason to be careful. The City was intensely Whig, and, until means could be found for converting it, no liberties could be taken. At the Lord Mayor's banquet on October 7, " Every little fellow undertook to censure POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 393 the King and his proceedings at that time ". When Shaftesbury was prosecuted, the blow fell in the air, for the Middlesex jury threw out the bill. " It is a hard case,*' remarked Charles, " that I am the last man to have law and justice in the whole nation." Charles took the proper precautions. He gave up one more illustrious and innocent victim to the dying spirit of the ' Terror,' Plunket, Archbishop of Armagh ; and we fear that even Essex took part in the initial stages of this infamous affair. If it were so, and if, as is stated on good authority, he afterwards besought Charles to pardon Plunket, declaring from his own knowledge that the charges were false, he was well repaid when the King replied : " Then, my lord, be his blood on your own conscience. You might have saved him if you would. I cannot pardon him, because I dare not." He was no less careful to avoid a revival of the animosity against his brother. James had been continu- ally pressing for permission to come back from Scotland. He was now told that he might do so only if he would conform to the Church, or at least attend her services ; conditions which he unhesitatingly refused to accept. Charles was not without those who dealt faithfully with him. It was now that Burnet presented him with his " very plain letter," in which '* I set before him his past ill-life and the effects it had on the nation, with the judgments of God that lay on him ; and that was but a small part of the punishment that he might look 394 CHARLES II. for". The letter was a very long one, and the King read it through twice before he threw it into the fire. He was probably more affected by Monmouth's insult- ing behaviour in offering bail for Shaftesbury than by Burnet's letter ; for, if he could be hurt, it was by Monmouth. At a launch at Deptford immediately afterwards he was observed to be " very serious and more concerned than the greatest business did usually make him ". If Charles were to reap the full fruits of his triumph over the Whigs in Parliament it was, as has been said, obvious that their stronghold, the City of London, must no longer remain an imperium in imperio from which his enemies could safely defy him. And this was the more important because the contest which had hitherto been carried on with Parliament was now to be con- tinued in the Law Courts ; the management of the laws was the King's offensive arm. But to ensure Tory verdicts it was necessary to obtain Tory juries ; and a London jury then was as little to be depended on to find for the Crown against a Whig, as a Tipperary jury in later days for the Crown against a moonlighter. The first point therefore was to secure the election of Tory sheriffs, since the sheriffs pricked the juries. At midsummer, 1682, this was accomplished by trickery worthy of parish vestry-men who wish to annoy their vicar ; and at the end of October James could con- POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 395 gratulate himself upon " the choice of a good and loyal Mayor, as well as two sheriffs of the same stamp". The effect was instantaneous. From being the leader of a great political party, Shaftesbury fell in a moment to the condition of a hunted man. He knew that there was no chance of another ignoramus from a Grand Jur}^, or even of a fair trial. Broken in health, angry, disap- pointed, and overwrought ; his attempts at reconciliation with the Court scornfully rejected, and his credit lost with the less elastic section of the Whigs by those very attempts ; his schemes for insurrection and attack upon Whitehall discountenanced by Russell, Essex, and Monmouth ; he gave up the game, went into hiding in London, and then, under circumstances which almost suggest connivance on the part of the government, escaped in disguise to Holland, where he died on January 21, 1683. Shaftesbury must have felt that his life had been a failure. In pursuing objects in themselves fair matters of controversy, if not actually laudable, he had shown grave errors of judgment and had committed great crimes. That he should have striven for toleration of Protestant Dissent goes far by itself to redeem his memory ; that he should have used his whole political influence, his astuteness in party warfare, his industry and his eloquence, to ruin Danby and to exclude James, at least carries no condemnation with it. But by the secret understanding with Louis XIV. for which 396 CHARLES 11. he was responsible he betrayed at once his actual principles and the aspirations of those who trusted him ; while from the infamy of his ' management ' of the Popish Terror there is no escape. None the less, had he lived but a few years longer, he would have seen the triumph of whatever was worthy to triumph in his political principles. He would have seen the ex- clusion of James, the toleration of Dissent, and England — King and people together — lending her potent hand to the downfall of France. A scheme of far wider and more permanent character than the election of Tory sheriffs was now carried through. The apparently reasonable doctrine that a charter may be forfeited by abuse became an engine whereby in a short time the Crown made it- self absolute in every important city in the Kingdom. Court lawyers on their promotion and judges who held office at the will of the Crown would indeed have deserved disgrace if they had proved unequal to the demands upon their ingenuity. The Common Council had, it was declared, imposed an illegal tax at the time of rebuilding the City, and in 1680 had sent in a peti- tion against prorogation, containing expressions dis- respectful to the King. This was sufficient. In June, 1683, a judgment of the King's Bench declared the for- feiture of the charter ; and it was restored by Charles only on conditions which made the City absolutely POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 397 subservient to the Crown. At last he felt, in the words of Jeffreys, that " the King of England is like- wise King of London ". That which could be done in the capital could be more easily done in the country. In most cases voluntary surrenders were made ; when this was not the case the problem was easily soluble. The election of a Town Clerk at Oxford without the King's express approbation was held to be an offence grave enough to demand the penalty of forfeiture. On November 29 Charles asked Reresby whether he knew of any tangible ground against York. Reresby could produce none ; but it was at length discovered that " the Lord Mayor had refused a mountebank, that had the King's own recommendation, to erect his stage there" — and that was made to serve. Nothing can illustrate more forcibly the longing of the country for rest on any terms, or the fictitiousness of much of the agitation of the past years, than this quiet acquiescence in the loss of civil liberties. The new powers were put into action without delay. All magistrates of the Shaftesbury faction were turned out, and the penal laws against Dissent were once more vigorously executed. The prisons were filled ; even men like Richard Baxter were arrested and confined under the Five Mile Act of 1665. The crime of some, the honest impudence of others, and the basest treachery, afforded to the Court the opportunity for striking a final blow against the 398 CHARLES 11. discredited cause in the persons of its noblest advocates. While Russell and Essex, Hampden and Algernon Sidney, Monmouth, Grey, and Howard of Escrick, were discussing the establishment of an association to demand a free Parliament, and in other ways to bring constitutional pressure to bear upon the Government, certain old Fifth- Monarchy men, soldiers and lawyers, with whom Shaftesbury had been closely connected, had formed an entirely independent scheme of a very different kind. They had resolved to kidnap Charles — or to assassinate him — on his return from New- market in June, 1683 ; and he was saved only by the accident of the fire to which allusion has been made, which destroyed his palace there and thus caused him to go back to London a few days earlier than was expected. The trade of informer was not dead, and these latter conspirators were betrayed and arrested. But it was not believed possible that the scheme had been prepared without the connivance, if without the initiative, of more important people ; and the investi- gations which followed led to the arrest of Essex, Russell, Hampden, and Sidney. Grey escaped ; Mon- mouth was allowed to hide ; Howard, dragged from the chimney in which he had concealed himself, be- trayed all that he knew, and more than he knew, of the consultations and objects of his friends. In the examination of the prisoners before the Council Charles was always present, and, according to North, POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 39Q very lenient. But the verdict was certain, for the jury had been carefully packed by the Tory sheriffs ; and the King permitted Russell to die — as Russell had permitted Stafford to die— on the testimony of a single witness. Rendered implacable by his refusal to com- promise on matters of principle, by his reported de- claration that his trial was but a continuance of the Popish Plot, by his assertion that a nation might defend its liberties when attacked under semblance of law, and that killing by forms of law was the worst kind of murder, Charles refused all applications for Russeirs pardon — from the great house of Bedford, from his own courtiers, even from Louise de K^roual, who had been offered a large sum for successful interven- tion. Speaking to Legge, afterwards Earl of Dart- mouth, he said in reply to the reasons urged for leniency, ''All that is true, but it is as true that if I do not take his life, he will soon have mine". On July 21, 1683, Russell went calmly to his death. His last days had been embittered to him by the tragic fate of one of his fellow prisoners. Essex had not awaited trial and execution, but had died by his own hand in the Tower. That Charles had contrived his murder was of course suggested ; but it is not necessary to discuss a theory so absurd ; wickedness of that kind — even if it could have been serviceable — was utterly foreign to Charles's nature. Essex had always been of a sombre disposition ; he believed 400 CHARLES II. in the lawfulness of suicide ; and the melancholy of his wife's disposition added to his own. And there were considerations which appear to have acted with decisive force upon a temperament thus disposed : remorse for having introduced the traitor Howard among his friends ; the knowledge that, if he were condemned, his children would lose estate and rank ; and perhaps not least the fact that he was lodged in the room which had been that of his father, Lord Capel, before his execution. There was other evidence of the perfect triumph of the reaction. The day of Russell's execution saw the publication of ' The Judgment and Decree of the University of Oxford, passed in their Convocation, against certain pernicious books and damnable doc- trines, destructive to the sacred persons of princes, their state and government, and of all human society'. Oxford was resolved that on this occasion at least Cambridge should not be first in the field. That civil authority is originally derived from the people ; that there is any compact between the prince and his sub- jects, which, if broken by one party, may be broken by the other ; that misgovernment by the prince forfeits his right to govern ; these doctrines were utterly con- demned. The teaching of the Church of England was submission to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, submission "clear, absolute, and without ex- ception of any state or order of men ". That these POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 401 brave words were swallowed by their utterers five years later does not afifect their meaning or effect at the moment. They were but a prelude to the last legal wickedness of the reign. For one more illustrious victim was to fall. It was natural that Charles should feel peculiar annoy- ance at finding that Algernon Sidney had been acting with Russell and his friends, since the permission given him to return to England had been a con- ditional act of grace. But Sidney's execution, like that of Russell or Stafford, was a judicial murder. His treatise on Government was found in manuscript in his room, and it was decided by Jeffreys, now Lord Chief Justice, that this manuscript might rank as the second witness required. It was pointed out that it could not be criminal for a man to write down his thoughts. The prosecution answered — and we seem to have returned to the days of Thomas Cromwell— that even to think such things was high treason. Once more Charles "let the laws take their course,'' and Sidney died "with the same surliness wherewith he lived " ; or, in Burnet's words, " with an uncon- cernedness that became one who had set up Marcus Brutus for his pattern ". By the executions of Russell and Sidney the story of the running fight between Parliament and Pre- rogative was closed with dramatic emphasis. The victory of the Crown was notified in language which 26 402 CHARLES II. could not be mistaken, and it was not called in question for the rest of the reign. Had James pos- sessed a little of his brother's shrewdness and imagin- ation, his power to gauge the strength of the forces arrayed against him, and the pliability which results from the absence of any effective religious faith ; had he been able to interpret the lessons of the past, to regard his creed as on sufferance, and to avoid all appearance of aggression ; had he in fact even shown ordinary common-sense ; it is, we hold, certain that he would have retained his throne unchallenged for his lifetime. The Shaftesbury section of the Whig party had gone, and men of the schools of Danby and Halifax would probably have been willing to accept and to maintain the succession which they had supported when the exclusionist agitation was at its height, and to look past James to his Protestant children. But that the intense Protestantism with which the nation was in- formed, represented by the most anti-papal of all forces, the Anglican Church, would have cast away the verbiage of the Oxford manifesto, and refused to bear any longer with the anomaly of a Popish king — that, we believe, is as little to be doubted. For the remaining criminal there was of course different treatment. Monmouth was at least as open to prosecution as Russell or Sidney, though he had opposed any resort to force. He was allowed to remain in hiding while Russell's trial was proceeding POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 403 and when he offered to come forward and take his chance by his side, Russell sent word that it would not help him to have his friends die also. Through- out the summer Monmouth lurked in England. Then Halifax, in view of the political outlook, took up his cause ; and Charles, whose affection for Monmouth was becoming senile, readily pardoned him and re- stored him to full favour. But to prevent undue en- couragement being thus given to the Whig remnant, a statement was demanded from him before the Privy Council which should leave no doubt of the genuine- ness of the conspiracy. This he gave on condition that it should not be used against his friends ; and he then received a comprehensive pardon. Halifax farther pre- vailed upon him to write a letter to Charles includ- ing the statement he had already made. Scarcely was this done, when, stung by the reproaches of his friends, he demanded the paper back. Charles, in vehement anger, more vehement than Bruce had ever seen, returned it, telling Halifax to bid him go to Hell. Monmouth left the country, and henceforth remained as the guest of the Prince of Orange. But Charles's passion, as was ever the case, soon cooled down. During Monmouth's residence abroad he con- tinually sent him money and affectionate messages ; and there is no doubt that in November, 1684, Monmouth was in London, under the advice of Halifax, and that he had a secret interview with the King. In January, 26 * 404 CHARLES II. 1685, all was being arranged by Charles for his per- manent return, and for the dismissal of James once more to Scotland. On February 3, Monmouth wrote from abroad: "A letter from L (Halifax) that my business was almost as well as done, but must be so sudden as not to leave room for 39's (James's) party to counter-plot '\ ** How," he might have exclaimed, like Bolingbroke in later years, "how does Fortune banter us ! " Even before those words were written Charles was on his death-bed. There can be little doubt that had the King yielded to the advice of Halifax and Ormond to summon Parliament while the Rye House Plot was fresh in men's minds, he would have secured a House of Commons devoted for the time to the principles of the Oxford and Cambridge manifestoes. Sunderland, however, and James declared that the time was not yet ripe ; and, as Charles grew less disposed for busi- ness, James was every day becoming the actual reign- ing monarch. In the spring of 1684 Danby joined Halifax in urging a Parliament, which was now due under the Triennial Act. But Halifax added — and this is the last illustration of the prevailing doctrine of ministerial responsibility — that, if the King would not yield to this advice, he would himself find reasons for his breaking his promise. Ever since the Oxford dissolution Charles had looked on with apparent indifference while Louis, POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 405 without let or hindrance from England, was realising his ambitious projects. In June he captured Luxem- burg, the key to Germany and Holland, and Charles even went the length of congratulating him ; while to all remonstrances he replied that his own affairs were in too ill a posture to allow him to intervene. The return for this complaisance was scarcely what he ex- pected. Louis had been " long weary of being forced to court the King of England " ; and now, triumphant, he not only declined to give Charles any farther grants, but allowed the secret treaty to become known. There is no doubt that the policy of non-inter- vention and of non-Parliamentary rule which Charles had adopted, partly from his engagements with Louis and partly from the indolence which grew more pro- nounced as the days went on, was for the internal advantage of the country. Freed from all political strife, England was daily growing richer ; trade was never so flourishing. Upon the statue erected to the King in the Royal Exchange there is an inscription extolling him as the British Emperor, father of his country, conqueror in good and evil fortune, arbitrator of Europe, lord and protector of the sea : all of which, though in no particular true, testifies to the content- ment of the merchant class. And Ranke relates how the Elector of Brandenburg commended him as hav- ing, in a time of danger for all Christendom, raised his 4o6 CHARLES 11. kingdom to the highest pitch of prosperity and estab- lished tranquillity at home. From the Rye House Plot to the end of the reign Charles practically abdicated all kingly functions. Halifax, Sunderland, Hyde — now Earl of Rochester — Godolphin, Danby, North, and Jenkins — with James and Louise de K^roual — somehow carried on the Government. With their incessant strivings, their alliances, rivalries, enmities, and reconciliations, we have as little to do as Charles had himself. There is, however, in them one link with the past which for his sake we recall with satisfaction. From the early days of exile the gallant Ormond, through good and evil repute, had remained untouched in honour and secure of Charles's esteem. There is no unworthy word, no foul or selfish action, to stain his fair record. He had cared no more for temporary slights, for the moment- ary triumphs of despicable men like Buckingham, than for a breath of foul air. The affectionate respect which his character and his services had imposed upon Charles when he first joined him more than thirty years before, remained unimpaired in the closing days of the reign. During these last two years of Charles's decadence, amid all the jostlings of rival politicians for place and power, and throughout the phases of his feelings for Monmouth, which varied from passionate anger to doting fondness, one influence reigned supreme. The POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 407 empire of Louise de K^roual over his affections had been undisturbed since Colbert had brought about the famous reconcih'ation with the Duchess Mazarin. It was at any rate so firm that she was now able to im- pose upon the worn-out roui all the tortures of a belated jealousy. In 1683 Philip of Vendome, second son of the Duke of Vendome and of Laura, the sister of Duchess Mazarin, visited the Court. Louise showed an interest in this new guest so marked as to make Charles sulky and suspicious. But he had no power of revolt in him ; he dared not remonstrate with her. He sent Sunderland instead to Philip to forbid his visits ; for a few days he was obeyed, but for a few only. Charles then deputed Barillon to request his guest to take himself back to Paris ; Philip demanded an interview, at which the King merely repeated his wish. A few days later, finding that he was still flouted, Charles sent the Lieutenant of his guards to inform Philip that if he were not gone in two days he -would be placed on board the packet, if necessary, by force. After some farther delay Philip thought well to comply, leaving Louise a prey to the appre- hension that by showing her letters he might cause her serious annoyance. Louis XIV. came to her aid : he told Philip in unmistakable terms that any dis- closures to the disadvantage of Louise would bring down his resentment ; and the King's resentment in the days of the Bastille and of lettres de cachet was not 4o8 CHARLES II, to be treated lightly. It was not however until June, 1684, that Philip obeyed the positive order of his master to return at once to Versailles, and that his possible indiscretions ceased to be an object of dread to Louise. Louise de Keroual could have wished for nothing more effective to bind still faster the chains which held Charles. " The King was observed to be more than ordinarily pensive, and his fondness to Lady Portsmouth increased much, and broke out in very indecent instances. . . . The King caressed and kissed her in the view of all people ; which he had never done on any occasion, or to any person formerly." Meantime she performed all the functions of Queen of England. In strict alliance with James and Rochester, she alone dealt with the secrets of State. She negotiated the marriage of George of Denmark with James's second daughter Anne, and received superb presents from the King of Denmark in recognition. The Moorish ambassadors had their audience in the apartments whose splendours so as- tonished Evelyn. It was she who led Charles to concur without murmuring in the capture of Luxem- burg by Louis ; she calmed the last stirrings of his pride when French fleets entered the Channel with- out due notice to England ; and, as the colleague of Barillon, she managed all French interests. Neither Charles II. nor Louis himself ever questioned her POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 409 wishes. In January, 1684, the King at her instance asked that Louis would make the Aubigny estates a Duchy with reversion to her son. Barillon addressed his master in indignation against such a pretension, but Louis merely replied that the thing would be done as soon as possible. In November, 1684, she was ill ; her condition was the only thing spoken of, and Charles passed his days in the sick - room. Louis displayed a lively anxiety that her illness should but increase her credit ; and to secure her son in case of her death, caused letters of naturalisation to be made out in order that he might be able to inherit the estates. Such was the real Queen of England. And what of the nominal Queen ? Merely this incident. *' This day, the Queen being at dinner, the Duchess of Ports- mouth, as a lady of the bedchamber, came to wait on her, which was not usual, and put the Queen into that disorder that tears came into her eyes, whilst the other laughed and turned it into jest." The pity of it, that even now, after more than twenty years of neglect, relieved by short intervals of comparative affection, this poor woman should retain a sense of insult ; that, ignorant, insignificant as she might be, she could yet be driven to tears, the tears of the wronged wife in the presence of the triumphant concubine. It was not until death came into the pageant that she had at length her rightful place. 4in CHARLES II. We propose to say but little upon the death-bed of Charles. The dramatic incidents of a scene as charac- teristic of his peculiarities as any act of his life have given full scope to the genius of the great master of descriptive writing in our language ; and the sketch which he has drawn, so firm and vivid of outline, so wonderfully true to character, is not to be retouched or tampered with lightly. But the eye-witnesses whose accounts are quoted by Lord Macaulay do not include one whose invaluable memoirs have but re- cently seen the light, and from whose rugged narrative, every word of which bears the stamp of truth, we are able to picture with fidelity otherwise unattainable the first hours of the final scene. Thomas Bruce, from whose recollections we have already freely quoted, entered upon his last week of waiting on Monday, January 26. During that week Charles was for the first time in his life prevented from taking active walking exercise by a small sore on one heel. On the Sunday night, February i, he nevertheless displayed his usual robust appetite, and ate " a goose egg if not two, a thing very hard of digestion ". After his supper he went according to his custom to the rooms of Louise de Keroual, to amuse himself with her guests, and Bruce took special notice of his good humour that night. It was Bruce's function to light him to his bedroom. When the King had passed him into the room, he handed the POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 411 candle to the page of the backstairs. As he did so, the candle was suddenly extinguished, " although a very large wax candle, and without any wind". The days of omens were not over, and Bruce and the page exchanged glances of dismay and shakings of the head. Charles, who had not noticed the incident, undressed and went to bed in the best of tempers. Then followed another incident which recurred vividly to Bruce's mind a few days later. The conversation turned upon Charles's chief interest of the last two years, the progress of the palace which he was build- ing at Winchester. He must, he said, show " the place I so delight in " to Bruce the very next time that he went down ; and — he added — " I shall be so happy this week as to have my house covered with lead ". " And God knows "—Bruce adds—" the Satur- day following he was put into his coffin." The omens were to be soon fulfilled. Nothing can add to the effect of Bruce's own description of what followed, and we therefore give it as it stands : — The King always lying in his own bedchamber, we had a bed placed each night to be near him, and when the page of the back stairs lighted us from the room where we undressed, on his retiring we shut up the door on the inside with a brass knob, and so went to bed. Several circumstances made the lodging very uneasy — the great grate being filled with Scotch coal that burnt all night, a dozen dogs that came to our bed, and several pendulums that struck at the half, quarter, and all not going alike, it was a continual chiming. The King being constantly used to it, it was habitual. I sleeping but indifferently, perceived that the King turned himself sometimes, 412 CHARLES II. not usual for him ; he always called in the morning of himself; I heard his voice, but discovered not any imperfection. We had the liberty to go to his bedside in the morning before anybody came in, and might entertain him with discourse at pleasure, and ask of him anything. Unfortunately a certain modesty possessed me, and besides we had his ear whenever we pleased. So I rose and turned back the brass knob, and the under ones came in to make the fire, and I retired to dress myself in our room. Passing by in the next room^ to the bedchamber, I . iound there the physicians and chirur- geons that attended to visit his heel. Mr. Robert Howard, a Groom of the bedchamber, came to me and asked me how the King had slept, and if quietly. I told him that he had turned sometimes. " Lord ! " said he, '* that is an ill mark, and contrary to his custom ; " and then told me that at rising he could not, or would not, say one word, that he was as pale as ashes, and gone to his private closet. On which I came away presently and sent in Mr. Chiffins, the first page of the back stairs and keeper of his Closet, for to beg of him to come to his chamber, for a more bitter morning I never felt, and he only in his nightgown. Mr. Chiffins telling me he minded not what he said, I sent him in again (for no other had that liberty), on which he came out pale and wan, and had not the liberty of his tongue, for the Earl of Craven, Colonel of the foot Guards, being there to take the word, he showed him the paper where the days of the month were set down with the word ; and others spoke to him, but he answered nothing. It being shaving day, his barber told him all was ready. He always sat with his knees against the window, and the barber having fixed the linen on one side, went behind the chair to do the same on the other, and I, standing close to the chair, he fell into my arms in the most violent fit of apoplexy. Doctor King, that had been a chirurgeon, happened to be in the room of his own accord — the rest having retired before. I asked him if he had any lancets, and he replying he had, I ordered him to bleed the King v/ithout delay, which he did ; and, perceiving the blood, I went to fetch the Duke of York, who came so on the instant that he had one shoe and one slipper. At my return with the Duke the King was in bed, and in a pretty good state, and going on the contrary side where the Duke was, he perceiving me, took me fast by the hand, saying, POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT, 413 " I see you love me dying 51s well as living," and thanked me heartily for the orders I gave Doctor King (who was knighted for that service) to bleed him, as also for sending Mr. Chiffins to persuade him to come out of his closet ; and then told me that he found himself not well, and that he went to take some of his drops commonly called then the * King's Drops,' and that he walked about hoping to be better, but on my solicitations he came down, for there were three or four steps coming out of the closet, and he said that coming down his head turned round, and he was in danger of falling. Incidentally Bruce here refutes — and in a private letter repeats the refutation with exceeding indig- nation — the statement of Burnet, adopted by Lord Macaulay, that the Duchess of Portsmouth came now to the King's bedside, " taking care of him as a wife of a husband ". Bruce was there, and saw. When he and James entered the room they found, not the mistress, but the Queen ; " and the impostor says it was the Duchess of Portsmouth ". Bruce then describes the visit, on the Thursday, of Sancroft and the Bishops, and how Ken, because his voice "was like to a nightingale for the sweetness of it,*' was desired to be their spokesman. And now the confirmed habit of a lifetime asserted itself San- croft and Ken besought him to accept the last rites of their Church. Almost with his dying breath Charles resorted to that habit of polite evasion which had served him so often in life. " The King thanked them very much, and told them it was time enough, or somewhat to that purpose, and modestly waived them, which was in my hearing." 414 CHARLES II. And then followed that most dramatic episode when, for the last time, the nation was tricked that a soul might be saved. The drear presence of death, and the far past with all its glow of adventure and leaping life, were suddenly linked together by the ap- pearance of a priest with the sacred elements. The priest was Huddlestone, who had given Charles the works of Catholic devotion at Mosely Hall during the escape after Worcester, and who had remained under his special protection as one of the priests of the Queen's household throughout the reign. " As soon as the King saw the father come in, he cried out : ' You that saved my body is now come to save my sour. This is literally true on a Christian. I have my opinions to myself, but I hate a lie and to impose. The King made a general confession with a most true, hearty, and sincere repentance, weeping and bewailing his sins, and he received what is styled all the rites of the church, and like a true and hearty penitent ; and just at high water and full moon at noon " — victim of his own vices — '' he expired." An endeavour has been made in these pages to trace, in necessarily rough and broken outline, the growth and development of the character of Charles II. ; to illustrate his way of looking at life in many phases ; to emphasise the demoralising training of his youth — which is his best plea at the bar of history^ POPISH TERROR AND THE TRIUMPH OF COURT. 415 no less than the lost opportunities of his manhood ; to show how far he conceived and how far he ful- filled the duties of kingship ; to measure the motives of his actions and the influences to which he bowed, the strength of the temptations which assailed him, and the depth of his fall ; setting down naught in malice which may turn aside judgment. We relinquish the task while across the fields there comes the muffled clang of bells which bears the news that another Sovereign of our race has passed from those whom she many times has called — in words which to Charles could have had no meaning — " my beloved people ". She, who always sought '' to have her people with her," passes from a mourning nation ; and from every land of all the wide earth that nation follows her to the grave in the knowledge that her work will endure in the Empire which she leaves proud of the memories called up by her name and governance. Charles died and was buried. " His funeral was very mean ; he did not lie in state ; no mournings were given." A mon- arch who has no " beloved people " will find at his death no mourning nation. He left his country in anxiety, not in grief. His people were not multitudes of men and women whose aspirations, whose views of right and wrong, whose whole modes of thought, might be ennobled by regal example ; his ministers were not taught that loyal service to their country and loyal service to their sovereign were all one ; his court was 4i6 CHARLES II. not a place to enter which virtue at least must be stamped upon the passport. His guide was not duty ; it was not even ambition : but his guide was self; it was ease, and amusement, and lust. The cup of plea- I sure was filled deep for him, and he grasped it with both hands. But pleasure is not happiness. There is no happiness for him who lives and dies without beliefs, without enthusiasms, and without love. THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED. 1 \{i