MARRIAGE TREATY AND RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENT
The two preceding chapters have anticipated the strict order of time in
regard to Scotland and Ireland, where Clarendon's action was only
incidental to his position as English Minister. We have now to turn back
to the months that intervened between December, 1660, when the Convention
Parliament was dissolved, and May, 1661, when the more legally constituted
Parliament met for the first time. In the interval some events had
occurred which stimulated the flow of the Royalist tide in the nation, and
helped to imbue the general loyalty with something of arrogant
intolerance; but other incidents had weakened the position by giving new
stimulus to Court intrigues, and by quickening the animosity of rival
factions. Clarendon found the tide occasionally too strong to control, and
his difficulties encouraged those who were jealous of his power.
In January, London had been startled by the outbreak of a fanatical
insurrection, which gives sufficient proof of the strangely hysterical
state into which the nation had been driven by a series of bewilderingly
rapid transformations, political and religious. It was the natural result
of the sudden suppression of the strange freaks of religious fancy which
were symptomatic of the age, and alike in its origin and in its
consequences, it showed how prone public opinion was to perturbation. Its
leader, one Venner, a vintner of good credit in the City, evidently
believed himself inspired by Divine revelation. His motto was "The sword
of the Lord and of Gideon," and he called on all "to take arms to assist
the Lord Jesus Christ." The outbreak was nothing but a frenzied burst of
religious mania; but its effect showed how dangerous was the state of the
nation of which this was a symptom. All London was thrown into wild alarm.
Only those of strong nerves could make a stand against what was, with
ludicrous exaggeration, represented to be a popular movement on a vast
scale. The Lord Mayor won mighty renown for having the courage to summon a
great body of adherents, and advance personally against the rioters, who
were said to be murdering all whom they met. Wild rumours flew from the
City to Whitehall; the guards were called out; Whitehall was put in a
state of defence; and poor Pepys, whose combats were generally confined to
the chastisement of page-boys and kitchen-wenches, found himself--"with no
courage at all, but that I might not seem to be afraid"--obliged to carry
with him sword and pistol, and make his way to the Exchange, to learn the
extent of the rising, which was scarcely so terrible as had been reported.
Pepys returned safely to his home, and that no worse result arose from his
unwonted and warlike venturesomeness was no doubt due to the fact that he
had been wise enough to put no powder in his pistols.
After all the alarm, the Lord Mayor found only thirty men to oppose the
loyal bands whom he had summoned to his aid. But these thirty fought
valiantly and desperately enough, and every man of them was either slain,
or captured and reserved for speedy punishment. The little knot of fiery
zealots did their best to make up in their fanatical enthusiasm what they
lacked in numbers, and that the rising shook the confidence of the
Government and quickened the pulse of timid loyalty throughout the
country, only showed how sensitive were the nerves of the sorely galled
nation. None knew better than Hyde that there was much amiss in the temper
of the people, and that quiet and settlement were essential to soothe this
epidemic hysteria. Meantime--so intense had been the alarm--the disbanding
of the King's Guards was countermanded, and Monk's regiment of Coldstreams
was retained. It is curious to reflect that the occasion for the formation
of the nucleus of the British standing army was the brief outbreak of a
handful of frenzied men, stirred to momentary madness by a religious
fanatic, and ready to go to death for the avenging of the saints. Already
the seeming unanimity of loyalty was gone; those who were Royalists at
heart found that they had still enemies to meet; and it was proved that
the new Government could in no wise relax the vigilance of their defence
of order, or presume upon the support of an undivided nation.
Before the new Parliament met in May, the Coronation of the King took
place, on April 23rd, with all the splendour that copious expense could
achieve in an age saturated with a love of florid display, and with what
was doubtless a careful and politic anxiety to revive in their most
authentic form all the ancient observances and ceremonies which had in the
past attended the rite. Already the most prominent adherents of the King
had been advanced in the peerage, and on the day before the Coronation
ceremonies six Earls--amongst whom Clarendon was one--were invested with
their new dignity with the ancient and stately ceremonial so long in
abeyance. But even amid the rejoicings of the Coronation new seeds of
dissension were laid in a soil only too fertile for their propagation. The
Duke of York was deemed, by those who held to older fashions, to have
assumed too much of that precedence which was accorded to Monsieur the
brother of the King in the Court of France, but which had no warrant in
the usages of England; and the fact that he was allowed to appropriate a
place in the procession for his own "Master of the Horse," and that the
holder of the honoured place was a youthful member of the upstart family
of the Jermyns, was enough to stir up much heartburning amongst the older
Royalist nobility, and to engage the attention and compel the anxiety even
of Clarendon himself. The Chancellor had to steer his course amidst a very
hotbed of popular excitement, and of Court factions and intrigues, but
thinly covered by a veneer of seemingly whole-hearted loyalty.
Before Parliament met, another project had been fully discussed and
practically settled. This was the marriage of the King with the Portuguese
Princess, Catherine of Braganza. It was an alliance which involved many
dangers, and what were, at the best, but doubtful advantages. Clarendon
had, at a later date, to bear the blame of an arrangement which brought no
satisfaction either to the King or to the nation, and which eventually did
much to check the tide of loyalty. But he is careful to tell us that the
inception of the scheme did not come from him; that the first suggestion
was not even made to him, and that he interfered in it no further than his
relations to the King imperatively demanded. But he adds that had it been
otherwise, he would have felt no reason to disavow, or be ashamed of, his
action in promoting the marriage of the King to any suitable consort.
Such a project had, indeed, much to commend it, had Fate been kinder, and
had not the position of European affairs been so tangled. Clarendon had
long urged the propriety of the King's marriage. It was all the more his
duty to do so now, when any delay in the matter might seem to promise the
eventual succession to the Crown of the children of his own daughter, the
Duchess of York. Clarendon had no ambition for such elevation, and he knew
well how any suspicion of such a scheme would expose him to the
accusations of his enemies. He would best have liked that the King should
choose a Protestant consort, but the only one who could be suggested was
the daughter of the Dowager Princess of Orange, and to that match Charles
was invincibly opposed. The Portuguese alliance offered certain
advantages. It promised a counterpoise to the power of Spain (and, as
such, it would unquestionably secure the friendliness of France), and thus
seemed to offer help in maintaining a safe position in foreign relations,
and preventing the probability of foreign war. For the stable settlement
of affairs at home, no condition was more absolutely essential than the
maintenance of peace abroad; and for this, if for no other reason,
Clarendon was passionately determined to avoid any foreign complications.
If an alliance with a Catholic Princess were necessary, none could
apparently involve less danger than one which brought about a Portuguese
rather than a Spanish connection.
Clarendon had no mind to cultivate an alliance with Spain, which must be
purchased by such concessions as would have inflicted grave injury on
England. The Spanish Ambassador, Batteville, had, at his very first
audience, pressed for the surrender of Jamaica, which had been taken from
Spain by the King's rebellious subjects. He claimed also that Dunkirk and
Mardyke, which had been handed over to Cromwell in virtue of his treaty
with France, should be restored to their rightful sovereign. These demands
he made, seemingly as matters of form. They were points which need not be
pressed, if England were prepared to make a treaty which would be
advantageous to Spain, and if Portugal received no encouragement from
England. If Clarendon disliked the Spanish alliance he disliked quite as
much the methods of Court intrigue by which it was pressed. Batteville was
astute enough to take a correct measure of English courtiers. He conformed
himself to the slipshod methods and the rollicking humour of Charles and
his circle. He insinuated himself into the intimacy of the King's boon
companions: availed himself of the easy access to the King, which
Charles's nonchalance permitted, and knew how to suggest what might be
useful to him as a diplomat, in the careless intercourse of the table, and
amidst the jests of a carouse at Court. Bristol did his best to aid the
Spanish diplomat. Charles's facile temper made him forget Bristol's
double-dealing, and Bristol, having regained some of his favour, "had an
excellent talent in spreading that gold-leaf very thin, that it might look
much more than it was." [Footnote: _Life_, i. 505.] A whisper in the
King's ear might do much to foster Spanish designs, and with them
Bristol's influence. Clarendon knew well the dangers that success in that
direction might involve.
Nor were solid attractions wanting in the Portuguese alliance. For
national prosperity, there was no greater essential than an encouragement
to commerce, in an age when commerce throughout Western Europe was making
immense advances, in which England had already earned, and must secure,
her share. If this country were to balance the growing naval power of the
Dutch, and their increasing mercantile marine, she must strengthen her
hold upon the ever extending trade in the Eastern and Western seas.
Holland must always be more of a rival than an ally; and Spain was a power
with which no permanent or favourable alliance was probable or desirable,
except in so far as it might be a balance against the power of France.
Portugal commanded a wider range of colonial trade, both in the East
Indies and in Brazil, and it presently appeared, when definite proposals
were laid before the King and his Ministers by the Portuguese Ambassador,
that she was prepared to pay highly for the privilege of an English
alliance. A dowry of £500,000 was promised with the Portuguese Princess--
no ineffective bait for one whose coffers were so ill-supplied as those of
Charles. The port of Tangier, which could easily be made into an effective
harbour and seemed likely to offer a command of the Mediterranean trade,
was to be placed in the hands of England. Bombay was to be granted to her
in the East Indies; and perhaps most important of all--the privilege of
free trade to the Portuguese colonies in Brazil and the East Indies was to
be accorded to her. An abundant return was thus to be reaped both by the
Crown and by the nation, at once in an enhancement of naval supremacy and
in an extension of commercial opportunities. It was only necessary to
guard against the danger lest a Portuguese alliance might involve England
in a war with Spain,
Charles was attracted by the offers, and all the more so when he received
from Montague--now Earl of Sandwich--a favourable account of the value of
Tangier. Portugal had given more generous aid to the Royalist cause in its
extremity than either Prance or Spain, and it had incurred the vengeance
of Cromwell by giving shelter in the Tagus to Prince Rupert's fleet when
it was hard pressed by Cromwell's ships. Such an alliance seemed not
unlikely to be well received by the nation.
Clarendon encouraged, rather than checked, the proposal, and this is all
that can be said of his attitude. But after the preliminary steps had been
taken, and engagements had already proceeded far with Portugal, he found
that the whole project was threatened by a secret intrigue. Again that
restless and versatile contriver, Bristol, had set himself to overturn the
scheme. It is hard to decide what were his motives. In spite of his
adoption of Roman Catholicism, Bristol's religious convictions were hardly
of a kind to dominate his policy; but he had linked his lot with that of
the Catholics--he may perhaps have already suspected Charles's inclination
to their faith--and he may well have thought that a Spanish alliance would
confirm the influence which he hoped thus to acquire. It may be that he
was angry only because he had not been taken into confidence at an earlier
stage in the affair; such a motive is not to be set aside in the case of
one in whose character personal vanity predominated so largely, and who
could so little estimate the general tendency of national feeling. Be that
as it may, Clarendon found that Bristol's influence was countermining the
scheme, and that the King had been so far gained over as to contemplate
the breach of an engagement to which his honour was already pledged, and
which would have inflicted a galling wound on the pride of his expected
allies. Already, it appeared, tempting offers had been conveyed to Charles
of marriage with one or other of two Italian Princesses, whose dowry would
be provided by the Spanish Court, and the choice of one of whom would have
had its value enhanced by a close alliance with Spain. Even with one of
more controlled temperament than Charles possessed, the element of
personal qualifications might not unreasonably tell for a good deal in the
selection of a wife. Bristol was commissioned to visit and report upon the
ladies proposed for Charles's hand, and made no secret of the reason of
his voyage to Italy. The Spanish ambassador spoke openly in disparagement
of the person and the attractions of Catherine, and boasted that he had
effectually stopped the presumption of the upstart Court of Braganza in
attempting to bolster up its rebellion against the Spanish Crown by an
English alliance.
Clarendon took his usual method in dealing with such a mixture of intrigue
and arrogance. To the somewhat nauseous personal details which were
furnished in disparagement of the Portuguese Princess, he perhaps, as
politician, gave but scant attention. He permitted Bristol to depart on
his extraordinary mission, and addressed himself to the King with his
customary plainness of speech. He exposed to him the braggart boasts of
Bristol, whose vanity had not permitted him to keep even a secret of his
own contriving. He desired him to remember the extent of his own
engagement to Portugal, and how far his honour was involved. If arguments
were to be found for withdrawing from the project, it would be well to
consult on these with his Council. The choice of a consort was perhaps a
matter somewhat too delicate for discussion at a Council Board. But
Clarendon might, at least, suggest that the King of England could hardly
with dignity submit his marriage to the judgment of the Court of Spain.
The Chancellor knew his master well. It was by appeals to his vanity and
to his love of ease that Charles could best be moved. The plain reproaches
of his Minister were irksome, and in the long run became unbearable to
him, but they impressed his pliable spirit. He minimized the extent of the
charge given to Bristol, and then consented to his recall. He found, or
fancied that he found, that the portrait of Catherine belied the
unflattering accounts he had deceived. His temper was irritated by the
impudent threats of the Spanish ambassador, who was imperiously commanded
to quit the Kingdom, Above all, the Ministers of France took steps to
prevent that triumph to Spain which would have accrued from a breach of
the alliance. La Bastide was sent with full credentials to deal personally
with the Chancellor. The French King, he told him, was friendly to
Portugal, although for the present his alliance with Spain prevented any
overt assistance to the Braganza family. But he was ready to help the King
of England with financial aid, if Charles should himself, by private
understanding, undertake such assistance. Meanwhile he thought that the
King "could not bestow himself better in marriage than with the Infanta of
Portugal." Further, hints were given that an understanding might be
reached between the Crowns as to their relations to the States of Holland,
and as to the steps to be taken against the dangers which the Dutch naval
power threatened to both.
The matter proceeded no further than an interchange of friendly proposals;
but there was one incident connected with it, of which Clarendon has given
us a full account. Before the negotiations closed, La Bastide took the
opportunity of a confidential interview with the Chancellor to broach to
him a proposal which, to one of Hyde's character, was nothing but an
insult. He was commissioned, La Bastide said, by Fouquet, the Finance
Minister of France, to express his deep respect for Clarendon, and his
sense of the trust and power he now enjoyed. But he understood how easily
the Chancellor might, under present circumstances, be hard put to it to
maintain his high position from scantiness of means, and he had therefore
sent him a present, small indeed, but only as an earnest of as much, or
more, to be paid him every year. He would have need of it to secure, by
becoming generosity, the means of meeting the secret machinations of his
enemies at Court. La Bastide concluded by showing him bills for £10,000,
payable at sight.
However much such a proposal was in accordance with the political morality
of the day, Clarendon did not hesitate to show his indignation, and his
disgust that it should have been made to him. "If this correspondence must
lead him to such a reproach," he said, "he would unwillingly enter upon
it." La Bastide must let Monsieur Fouquet know "that the Chancellor of
England could receive wages only from his own master. "Such an excess of
scrupulosity could only appear, to one trained in the school to which La
Bastide was accustomed, as merely assumed. He still pressed the absolute
secrecy of the gift, until Clarendon broke off the interview in stern
anger.
The sequel was what we might expect. The King and the Duke of York came to
Clarendon before the angry fit was gone, and heard the story told with
Hyde's usual plainness of indignant speech. "They both laughed at him,
saying 'that the French did all their business that way;' and the King
told him 'he was a fool,' implying 'that he should take his money.'" The
Chancellor vainly sought to impress upon the King something of his own
feeling of pride, and besought him "not to appear to his servants so
unconcerned in things of that nature." Either the French King would
believe that he took the money without his master's knowledge, and so look
on him as a treacherous knave; or "that he received it with his Majesty's
approbation, which must needs lessen his esteem of him, that he should
permit his servants of the nearest trust to grow rich at the charge of
another prince, who might the next day become his enemy." [Footnote:
_Life_, i. 523.] The King could only smilingly reply "that few men
were so scrupulous." There is something almost comical in the effort on
the part of Clarendon to press upon the King that self-respect, which he
had long since cast aside, and the place of which was supplied by a mask
of cynicism. It was quite true that scruples such as those of Hyde were
rare in his day, and formed no part of the usages of the Court of France.
But Clarendon did not know that it would soon be unnecessary to go to
France for an example of shameless venality. The time was not far distant
when Charles, having got rid of his irksome Mentor, was himself to fill
his own coffers by accepting a bribe more infamous than that which he
vainly tried to persuade his prouder servant not to reject with scorn and
contempt.
For good or ill, the project of the Portuguese alliance weathered the
storm of intrigue directed against it at home and abroad. Without being
its proposer, or the chief guide in the negotiations, Hyde did not refuse
a joint responsibility for its arrangement. We shall afterwards see how
little it realized his hopes; in what sordid wrangles it involved him; how
unpopular it became; and how much it contributed to deepen the degradation
of Charles's Court. But for the time the prospect seemed promising enough.
The fact of the Princess's religion was, no doubt, a stumbling-block which
might well have caused greater anxiety to Clarendon, and which might have
fretted the prejudices of the English people. But here, as on many other
occasions, he seems to have forced himself, against what to a later day
must seem fairly strong evidence, to discredit any idea that action on the
part of Charles might be prompted by an inclination to the Church of Rome.
To that Church Clarendon was as invincibly opposed as was his first
master, Charles the First. He knew the earnestness of the injunctions laid
on his son, by that master whose memory he so deeply revered. It is
impossible to believe that doubts and anxieties were not repeatedly roused
in Clarendon's mind with regard to the relations of the present King to
that Church. But he seems sternly to have fought against and repressed any
such suspicions. Apparently, the realization of these suspicions would
have ruined his faith in the honesty and good feeling of his master, and
with almost exaggerated energy he repudiates any such belief. If he
suspected any danger of the kind from the Portuguese alliance, he put it
firmly aside. And it is certain that whatever ill accrued from that
marriage, it was not from that cause. Catherine of Braganza remained
throughout a negligible quantity in English politics. Neither at Court,
nor with any section of society, did she exercise any appreciable
influence, either in promoting or retarding the acceptance in her adopted
country of the tenets of her Church. Whatever the closeness of the King's
relations to that Church, and whatever his determination to strain his
prerogative in its favour, neither was influenced in the smallest degree
by the religion of his wife. It is true that at a later day, the religion
of the Queen, and the presence at Court of her Catholic attendants,
enhanced the fury of an unthinking storm of anti-Catholic feeling. But it
was only a small aggravation of an irrational outburst of religious
prejudice.
The marriage treaty was arranged in time to be notified to Parliament when
it met in May, 1661, and from that time the negotiations proceeded with
all the customary diplomatic deliberation. The announcement was received
with the same loyal acceptance as the other proposals of the Government,
in an assembly much more markedly Royalist in feeling than even the
Convention Parliament, which had carried out the first steps in the
Restoration settlement. Its zeal might even have been deemed embarrassing,
and Clarendon was chiefly urgent that a permanent settlement should be
provided for, by confirming the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, before the
Royalists devised new means of reaping fresh spoils of conquest. Another
Act which he pressed forward was that bringing back the bishops to the
House of Lords. It was, to his mind, a guarantee for the restoration of
the Church, which it had been the central aim of his late master, as it
was his own, to accomplish. Whatever compromise might be made as to
ceremonies and articles, Clarendon could not admit that his debt to the
Church had been paid until she had been re-established in her rightful
position in the State. The memory of those bitter days, when what he
recognized as the good work of the Long Parliament had been rudely marred
by the subsequent excesses of the zealots, and when the constitution had
been overturned by violence which posed as legislation, was too vividly
impressed upon his mind to suffer him to rest until the prelates of the
Church were placed on their former level with the temporal peers.
Here, again, he met with fractious opposition from Bristol. It is
difficult to find a consistent clue to all the windings of policy devised
by that mercurial brain, and to guess at the objects which inspired him.
The Bill was easily passed by the House of Commons, where some opposition
might have been expected. In the House of Lords its passage was less easy.
Those peers, who had in the old days assented to the exclusion, were only
too ready to have their former vote forgotten, and raised no voice against
the Bill. It was Bristol who, to secure the support of the Catholics, put
himself forward as its opponent, and contrived to impress the King with
the conviction that the restoration of the bishops to the House of Lords
would render impossible any Bill for modifying the penal laws against the
Roman Catholics. The progress of the Bill was slow, and it was only on
inquiring into the cause of this, that Clarendon found that Bristol had
succeeded in conveying the idea that the King did not wish it to pass.
With his usual blunt directness Clarendon asked the King for an
explanation, and then heard of Bristol's machinations. His reply was
prompt. He regretted that the King had been prevailed upon to obstruct a
Bill on which he knew his Majesty's heart was so much set. If the reason
for such obstruction were known, it would be fatal to all Roman Catholic
hopes, "to which his Majesty knew that Hyde was no enemy." These last
words were an intimation, as plain as could be given, that Hyde might
easily be converted into an enemy to their hopes, Charles took his lesson
submissively, and orders were given that the Bill should pass. Bristol
attempted to bluster, and threatened "that if the Bill were passed that
day he would speak against it," "To which," adds Hyde, "the Chancellor
gave him an answer that did not please him; and the Bill was passed that
day." Clarendon's methods could compel the consent of the King, and could
silence the arrogance or the persistency of fractious opponents. They were
scarcely fitted to conciliate either.
[Illustration: GEORGE DIGBY, SECOND EARL OF BRISTOL. (_From the original
by Sir Anthony Vandyke, in the collection of Earl Spencer._)]
Parliament had been compliant, and had passed at least two Acts which
Clarendon deemed imperatively urgent. It was prorogued, after a short
session, on July 30th, to meet again on November 20th. There remained
still to be dealt with what were perhaps the most difficult problems of
all, the questions of compromise as to the ceremonies and the doctrines of
the Church, of the relation between the Nonconformists and the orthodox
Churchmen, and of the degree of toleration that might be allowed to
divergent forms of belief. These were three absolutely distinct branches
of the religious controversy, and to confuse them leads only to prejudice
and error. Clarendon had seen enough of the temper of the Parliament to
perceive that time was necessary to ripen these questions for a
settlement, and that the process would go on more smoothly during a recess
than in the heated atmosphere of Parliamentary discussion. The discussions
at the Savoy, the negotiations between the leading Nonconformists and the
bishops, and the formulating of proposals on either side, had represented
one phase of the discussions, and had led to little result. The matter was
now one in which the Crown and its advisers must initiate a policy, and do
their best to smooth its passage during the next session of Parliament. It
could not be indefinitely delayed. Laxity, if too long tolerated, from
however good a motive, quickly passes into anarchy.
In this matter it was inevitable that the leading part in framing a policy
should fall to Clarendon. Of the old friends who would have been his chief
advisers and guides in this work, many had passed away. But amongst the
bishops three especially remained who were associated with old memories,
and linked to him by mutual sympathy and respect. These were Brian Duppa,
the former tutor of Charles II., lately Bishop of Salisbury, and now of
Winchester; George Morley, now Bishop of Worcester, and soon after,
successor of Duppa at Winchester; and Gilbert Sheldon, at first Bishop of
London, and subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury on the death of Juxon,
in 1663. Juxon's claims to the Primacy were pre-eminent; he had appeared
with the Martyr-King in that memorable scene on the scaffold at Whitehall,
and none other than he could fill the Archiepiscopal chair, which had been
vacant since Laud had preceded his master in his death upon Tower Hill.
But Juxon's tenure of the office was little more than nominal, and, even
during his lifetime, Sheldon was the foremost representative of the
Church.
Duppa, the Bishop of Winchester, had been the man closest in the
confidence of Laud, and had been the chief agent in carrying out his
reforms in the University of Oxford. This must of itself have been
sufficient to earn for him the warm sympathy of Clarendon, and his
subsequent career had confirmed those early ties. To Clarendon, he was not
only the trusted friend of his early patron, Laud, but the man to whom his
royal master had committed, in solemn words, the religious education of
his son; and that duty Duppa had carried out with an unswerving devotion,
with however small success. His own personal character, the gentleness of
his temper, and his saintly life, had strengthened the respect which was
felt for him by all loyal Churchmen, and during the short time that he
survived the Restoration, he had a deserved influence on the counsels that
directed the policy of the Church.
George Morley was another of the old fraternity that had gathered at Great
Tew, under the hospitable roof, and in the genial company, of Hyde's early
and most cherished friend, Lord Falkland. Morley's scholarship, his social
gifts, his ready wit, and his unfailing tact, had secured for him a
prominent place amongst that goodly fellowship. He followed a line of his
own in Church politics, and in early days was not pliable enough always to
win the approval and the confidence of Laud. His reply, when bored by an
inconvenient questioner as to what the Arminians "held,"--"that they held
all the best preferments in England,"--was pointed enough to spread
quickly, and the sarcasm it implied was not agreeable to Laud. But Morley
was none the less a loyal son of the Church, and gave abundant evidence of
his loyalty to the good cause. He had been one of the Chaplains of Charles
I., remained with him throughout the days of trouble and danger to the
end, and had been an exile from his master's death to the Restoration. In
Morley, Clarendon could place the trust due to an old friend, a loyal
Churchman, and a man of fearless character, and of ripe judgment. Against
his uprightness of life no insinuation could be made.
Gilbert Sheldon was a man of a different type from either of these two.
While a stout defender of the rights of the Church, he, like Morley, had
not always seen eye to eye with Laud. But he and Hyde were in closest
sympathy. They had lived together at All Souls when Hyde was present at
Oxford during the Civil War, and when the burden of directing the affairs
of the King had rested chiefly upon him. Sheldon, in later days, had
manfully resisted the encroachments of the Parliamentary Commissioners on
the University, and upon All Souls, of which he was Warden; and it was
only by military violence that he was expelled from his charge, under the
order of these Commissioners. He had then retired to the country, and
continued during the Commonwealth to lead a quiet life, in which he spent
his time and his own resources in assisting the loyal adherents of the
King. Just before the Restoration, the Warden appointed by the Protector
had died; and Sheldon was quietly restored to his former post, at the
moment when the political world was occupied with the still doubtful
struggle between the contending factions. A few months later he was called
to play a leading part, as Bishop of London, in the critical negotiations
for the settlement of the Church. Sheldon was a new type of the
ecclesiastical statesman.
He had thrown off the habits of the student for those of the
administrator, and one may add, of the politician. Sound and sincere
Churchman as he was, his religion was that of the man of the world,
suspicious of fanaticism, more earnest in inculcating an upright life than
in a show of enthusiastic fervour, regular in his religious duties, but
preferring a religion which displayed itself in the cheerful activity of a
regular life, rather than in any overstrained attention to devotional
routine. It was only natural that his enemies should charge him with being
worldly-minded, and should insinuate that with him religion was only an
instrument of government, and an element in policy. It need not lessen our
respect for him that his religious faith showed itself more in lavish
charity, and in a cheerful energy, than in the strict pursuit of the
conventional routine of religious exercises. He could be a stern moralist
when necessary, and he did not scruple to rebuke the King for his
licentious life, and even, as Swift tells us, refused to him the Sacrament
on that account. If such a man attracts to himself little of a halo of
sanctity, he perhaps compensates for this by the manliness of an upright
life and conduct. [Footnote: We need give no attention to the scandalous
and baseless gossip as to Sheldon's licentiousness which Pepys gathered
from the irresponsible tittle-tattle of the coffee-house, and entrusts to
the confidential pages of a diary which was never intended for
publication. If we enjoy and profit by the vivid pictures of the day which
his memoirs give us, we ought at the same time to feel ourselves bound to
discredit the occasional thoughtless gossip about characters which stand
too unassailable to be smudged by the mischievous sallies of Pepys's pen.]
In his balanced judgment, in his unswerving honesty, and in his absolute
uprightness of purpose, Hyde found just that help which was most useful at
this juncture; and that both he and Sheldon suffered from some testiness
of temper was no hindrance to their friendship.
When Parliament resumed in November, 1661, its first business was to pass
certain acts for restoring the power of the Crown. The Solemn League and
Covenant was pronounced illegal, and the Acts erecting the High Court of
Justice for the trial of the King, and for establishing the Commonwealth,
were contumeliously annulled. The power of Militia was declared to rest
solely in the King, and it was enacted that no legislative power resided
in Parliament without the King. These and like Acts were passed without
discussion, and amounted to little more than expressions of the dominant
loyalist feeling. The first step in restoring the power of the Church was
the Corporation Act, which enacted that every corporation official should
take an oath against the Covenant, and against the traitorous doctrine
that arms might, by the King's authority, be levied against his person,
and imposing upon every such official to be elected in future the
obligation to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of
England. The supremacy of the Church was vindicated. Whether wise or not
as a platform on which English politics should rest--and as to this doubts
are no doubt permissible--this Test Act was the expression of the
convinced resolution of the nation at the time. The more difficult
question remained for decision: how should the basis of the Church be
arranged, and to what extent was it to be made more comprehensive?
Since the end of the Savoy Conference, the strife between the adherents of
the Church and the Nonconformists had been growing in intensity. Both
sides were exasperated by the uncertainty, and both were furious against
what they believed to be the exaggerated claims of their opponents. The
King's pliant humour had permitted to the various Dissenters an easy
access to his person, and he was only too prone to give rise to
expectations which were bound to be disappointed, and to unwary boasts on
the part of the Nonconformists, which stimulated the Churchmen to an
unyielding temper. The Bishops had been engaged during the vacation in
revising the Book of Common Prayer, and sharp division of opinion had
arisen amongst them--a division in regard to which Clarendon held strong
views. Ought an attempt to be made to meet the views of the Nonconformists
by modification of the Liturgy--or was it best to put a peremptory stop to
agitation and discussion by restoring the ritual and the usages of the
Church unchanged, so that the historic weight of continuity should be
added to the authority of the law?
"Some of the bishops," says Clarendon, "who had greatest experience, and
were in truth wise men," adhered to the latter view." Others, equally
grave, of great learning and unblemished reputation, "pressed for
alterations and additions. [Footnote: _Life_, ii. 119.] He desired to
hold the balance even between these opposite opinions. But his own
judgment was decided.
"The truth is," he adds, "that what show of reason so ever and appearance
of charity the latter opinion seemed to carry with it, the former advice
was the more prudent, and would have prevented many inconveniences which
ensued." "It is," he proceeds, "an unhappy policy, and always unhappily
applied, to imagine that that classes of men can be recovered and
reconciled by partial concessions, or granting less than they demand. And
if all were granted they would have more to ask. Their faction is their
religion; nor are those combinations ever entered into upon real and
substantial motives of conscience, how erroneous so ever, but consist of
many glutinous materials, of will, and humour, and folly, and knavery, and
malice, and ambition, which make men cling inseparably together till they
have satisfaction in all their pretences, or till they are absolutely
broken and subdued, which may always be more easily done than the other."
[Footnote: _Ibid._, p. 121.]
Clarendon recognized, as clearly as did Swift a generation later, that
dissent was the essential motive of dissenters, and that all concessions
would be with them but an incitement to new divergences. He remembered the
case of the Scottish liturgy, in which changes were introduced in order to
meet the desire for a distinctive liturgy, and were afterwards resented as
departures from the established order, which might otherwise have been
peaceably accepted. Changes were now sought only that they might be the
starting-point for further change. Meanwhile the Nonconformists inveighed
with new bitterness against the old liturgy, and their angry invective
provoked the House of Commons to greater impatience at the delay in its
restoration. Clarendon recognized the old and ever-present fact that it
was easier to preserve an old form, with all its possible defects, than to
devise a new one with the view of reconciling irreconcilable divergences.
He had to remember also that besides the Presbyterians there was the
strong phalanx of the Independents, who would rather see episcopacy
flourish than that the Presbyterians should govern.
Clarendon was not unwilling that a calm and rational spirit of concession
should prevail, and that non-essential usages should be modified to meet
conscientious scruples. In the abstract this ought to have been possible;
but as things stood it was a hopeless ideal. He had to take account of the
angry exasperation of temper that prevailed; and for the general weal he
felt that some settlement, however peremptory, was essential. However
unwillingly, he was compelled to decide for the drastic exercise of
authority which might, once for all, compose the strife and produce a
settlement. Expedition was of the first importance in the business.
It was in this spirit that the speech of the King to Parliament was
framed. He had hoped, said the King, that the composing of differences in
regard to non-essentials might have already been obtained. He was grieved
at the delay. The Book of Common Prayer was now to be presented to him by
Convocation. It would thereafter be laid before the House of Lords; and
upon that foundation he trusted that an Act of Uniformity might be based.
As approved by Convocation, with certain alterations which rather
strengthened than diminished the force of the ecclesiastical authority,
the Book of Common Prayer was presented to the House of Lords. The Earl of
Northumberland, whose Presbyterian leanings were pronounced, suggested
that no change whatever should be made, and that the Act of Uniformity of
Elizabeth's reign should once more be the authority for its observance.
But the time for that was too late. Convocation had already done its work,
and that work could not be disregarded. The legal authority had given its
pronouncement; it remained only to say how that pronouncement should be
enforced. In this spirit the House of Lords entered upon the discussion of
the Bill of Uniformity.
The first question of importance was the imposition of episcopal
ordination as a necessary condition of the tenure of any ecclesiastical
office. That was decided in the affirmative; and the requisition of assent
as well as consent to all contained in the Book of Common Prayer was
carried against the resistance of those who, on behalf of the
Nonconformists, argued that "assent" implied a more complete approbation
than mere "consent." When the Bill had passed the House of Lords and was
sent to the Commons, it soon appeared that the Church party there was
determined to increase its severity. "Every man," says Clarendon,
"according to his passion, thought of adding something to it that might
make it more grievous to somebody whom he did not love." However earnest
was Clarendon's loyalty to the Church, these words give evidence enough of
the vexation of the Statesman at the unmeasured bitterness of
ecclesiastical partizanship.
A new and rigid subscription, abjuring the lawfulness of resistance and
the Solemn League and Covenant, was imposed upon every holder of a
benefice, or of an office in a University. This created bitter opposition
when the Bill was sent back to the Lords, and the discussion mainly turned
upon the express repudiation of the Covenant, to which many laymen had
already sworn. These, while they consented to its being laid aside for the
future, were by no means ready to repudiate all the principles which it
embodied. The Covenant still represented the charter of Presbyterianism,
and to inflict a needless insult upon tenets conscientiously held by many
who had given powerful aid towards the King's restoration, seemed a
needless perpetuation of bitter memories. But the Lords could not refuse
their assent, and this new instrument of exclusion was added to the Bill
substantially in the form desired by the ultra-Royalists of the House of
Commons.
In this form the Bill received the royal assent on the day when Parliament
was adjourned, May 19th. No long delay was to occur before the axe of
authority fell, and the penalty of any divergence from the uniform
discipline of the Church was to take effect forthwith. On August 24th, St.
Bartholomew's Day--of evil omen--all incumbents who declined to accept and
conform to the whole contents of the Book of Common Prayer were, _ipso
facto_, with no further legal process, to be deprived of their
benefices, and the patrons were to present others in their place.
Clarendon was too sober in his judgment, and had too much of the statesman
in his composition, to welcome the rigid terms which the triumphant
Churchmen were determined to exact. He was not one of those who thought a
victory was confirmed by an arrogant disregard of the claims of the
vanquished. Had he been able to shape the terms of the Act according to
his own ideas of policy and prudence, he would undoubtedly have imposed
checks upon the ambition of the fiery spirits of his party. But we must
remember his position and his sympathies. The double object of all his
long struggles had been to establish in all its dignity the constitutional
monarchy, and to restore the Church to its rights and privileges. It was
not for him to fight too hard against the full assertion of these rights.
We must remember, too, that his own inclination towards moderation came
from policy and prudence, and not from any sympathy with the vanquished,
or any conviction that the measure meted out to them was in any whit more
severe than that which they had exacted in their day of triumph, and would
readily have reinforced were it again in their power to do so. Above all,
Clarendon saw that in the hard task which lay before him in re-
establishing a settled Government, the first essential was the ending of
weary struggles, and the settling of doubtful contentions. Any settlement
was better than perpetual controversy. It was a smaller matter to adjust
the balance according to an ideal of just and politic moderation, than to
comply with the imperious maxim, "that it is for the advantage of the
State that there be an end of litigation."
That there should be an outburst of anger from those who believed
themselves to be martyrs was only to be expected. The Declaration of
Breda, it was said, had been flagrantly violated. The answer was perfectly
easy. The King had referred the religious settlement to Parliament, and
had promised that meanwhile there should be no interference with liberty
of conscience. It is noteworthy that Clarendon rests the case upon this
plea--that the Crown must act subject to a Parliamentary decision. So far
as it goes it is an adequate defence. But there remains the far stronger
argument that liberty of conscience was a very different thing from a
pledge that those who refused to accept the principles of the Church
should have a right to hold her benefices and dictate her policy. That
would have meant, not toleration of, but surrender to, the divergent
forces.
But the outburst of anger on the part of a defeated faction had serious
effects on the action of Charles II. Now, as often before, his Chancellor
had to lament that "he was too irresolute, and apt to be shaken in those
counsels which, with the greatest deliberation, he had concluded."
Concessions might be right or wrong; but once a policy was decided,
concessions wrung from the weakness of a vacillating and indolent nature
were fatal. Anything that love of ease did not accomplish, the flattery of
the defeated Nonconformists achieved. The King was their only hope; in his
mercy they looked for a recompense for that loyalty which was none the
less sincere because they shrank from straining their consciences by
compliance with minute points of order and of discipline. At least, let
three months pass before the blow fell that was to strip them of their
livelihood and separate them from their flocks. Such an act of mercy would
vindicate the royal prerogative. Whether the King "thought it would do
them no good," in other words, that he was giving a worthless concession,
or that he thought the delay "no prejudice to the Church," or, as was more
likely, that it would rid him of painful importunity, the desired promise
was given. That it proceeded from any inclination to the Roman Catholic
faith, and any hope that, by its means, easier terms might be obtained for
that faith, was a supposition that Clarendon would have deemed derogatory
to the King's honesty. Clarendon would gladly have seen terms more
merciful granted by the Act of Uniformity. But once the Bill was passed he
saw how fatal vacillation was, and would fain have persuaded his master
against it. But the promise had been given; and once again he had to
remind that master that it was for his honour that a promise given should
be redeemed. Such a position was no unusual experience to any one who
served Charles II. "It was no new thing to the Chancellor to be reproached
for opposing the resolving to do such or such a thing, and then to be
reproached again for pursuing the resolution."
A new conference was hastily summoned at Hampton Court. Archbishop Juxon,
Sheldon and Duppa were to represent the Church, while the Chancellor,
Monk, and Ormonde, with the Secretaries Nicholas and Morrice, were there
as lay politicians, and the Chief Justice Bridgeman, with the Attorney
General, were to advise as to the law. The Bishops did not conceal their
vexation, and resolutely demanded "to be excused for not conniving at any
breach of the law." Clarendon attempted to maintain the pledge given by
the King, as but a small matter, which could not harm the Church. But the
opinion of the lawyers was clear and decided. The King had no power to
suspend the law, nor to interfere with the rights of patrons. Once more
that vacillating temper yielded. The poor fragment of the royal honour
which Clarendon would fain have saved had to be abandoned. The Church had
to resent a threatened danger; the Nonconformists were embittered by the
overclouding of those hopes on which they had been taught to rely. The
only effect of Clarendon's enforced interference was to involve him in the
hatred of the dissenters, and in the suspicions of the Bishops and the
Churchmen.
The blow fell on St. Bartholomew's Day; and on August 24th the Church saw
her full triumph, when the nonconforming ministers, to the number, it was
said, of some two thousand, were ejected from their livings. [Footnote:
The number was variously reckoned; a more moderate computation was 1200.
Mr. Bates's careful calculations (_Declaration of Indulgence_, Appendix
II.) give 450 as the number of ministers ejected between May, 1660, and
August, 1662, and 1800 as ejected on the latter date.] The triumph was
bought at the price of establishing a solid, permanent, and increasing
body of irreconcilable foes. The Church was entrenched in a position
rendered impregnable by law, which secured her even against the power of
the Crown. But the forces of nonconformity were consolidated, and
gradually gathered to themselves a mass of political adherents, and
equipped themselves with a whole armoury of political weapons. The Act of
Uniformity did much more than settle the terms between the Church and
Nonconformity. It shaped the course of the two parties which, gradually
diverging farther and farther, were to divide the nation into two camps.
Charles still sought to secure his own ease by efforts after conciliation
--some of them more questionable in law, and more insidious in their
motives, even than his ill-considered promises to the Nonconformist
ministers. To what lengths his own Roman Catholic sympathies went it is
difficult to say. But there were many influences at Court which were
working for the abandonment of the penal laws against the Catholics.
Bristol was restless in this matter, to which personal ambition and his
growing jealousy of Clarendon stimulated him, much more than any religious
zeal. Concessions granted by royal prerogative would mean new force for
that prerogative; it would bring with it the increase of personal
influence at the expense of the law; it seemed to promise the conciliation
of new adherents; and it certainly involved the weakening of the orthodox
Churchman as well as the Nonconformist. Before the end of this year, 1662,
Charles issued a Declaration, purporting to dispense with the more severe
laws against the Roman Catholics. It was contrived by a little clique of
courtiers opposed to Clarendon, and of their gradual rise to influence we
shall presently see more. It was intended as a means of consolidating
their hold upon the King, and of increasing the number of their own
adherents. It soon became clear that the Declaration assumed a dispensing
power for the royal prerogative, which the nation would repudiate, and
which even the House of Commons, with all its effusive loyalty, would not
confirm. In that Declaration, published on December 6th, the King
expressly confirmed the Act of Uniformity and stated his own intention of
maintaining it. He defended himself against the charge that in that Act he
had violated the Declaration of Breda. It was intended to provide for the
discipline and government of the Church; but there still remained for
consideration what concessions should be made for tender consciences in
view of the severe penal laws; and he announced that he would ask the
concurrence of Parliament to an Act which would allow him "to exercise
with a more universal satisfaction that power of dispensing which he
conceived to be inherent in him." But the Declaration was careful to add
that no tightening of the most severe of the penal laws was to be
construed as an intention of permitting equal toleration to all religions.
Clarendon was laid aside by illness when this Declaration was concocted
and published, and although those who planned it endeavoured to make out
that he had been an assenting party, his own words give a direct denial to
this.
When, in the spring of 1663, Charles attempted to give legislative effect
to this Declaration by a Bill introduced by Lord Robartes and Lord Ashley
into the House of Lords, he very quickly found out that the temper of the
nation was in no compliant mood, and that there were marked limits to the
submissive loyalty of the Commons. That House was not patient enough to
wait for the Bill to be sent to it. A committee was at once appointed, and
pronounced in no measured terms against any such scheme. It was
inconsistent with the laws of England; it would endanger the peace of the
kingdom; it would expose the King to the restless importunity of every
sect; and it would "establish schism by law." The House of Lords acted in
the same temper. Clarendon was joined in his opposition by Southampton and
the Bishops, who thus fulfilled the part which Bristol had prophesied for
them, of stalwart opponents of Catholic concessions. The Chancellor would
not have been unwilling to see some sort of toleration. But his duty and
his policy in this matter were clear. To have proceeded with the Bill
would have strained to breaking point the loyalty of the Commons and of
the nation. Toleration, to have any good effect, must be the voluntary
work of Parliament, and not the contrivance of a Court clique. But
Clarendon was under no mistake as to the odium he incurred with that
clique, or as to the irritation which his conduct must arouse in the mind
of the King, his master.