DOMESTIC DISSENSION AND FOREIGN COMPLICATIONS
The difficulties with which Clarendon had to deal in settling the affairs
of the Church were, in essence, inevitable. Each side was struggling for
very life. They had, to inspire them, not only profoundly hostile
convictions, but the memory of years of angry strife and alternate
persecution. But these difficulties were aggravated by the intrigues at
Court, by the shiftless vacillation of the King, and by the underlying
suspicion, which perhaps haunted Clarendon more than he admitted to
himself with respect to the King, that concession might pave the way for
indulgence to the Roman Catholics, to which the nation at large was
profoundly opposed. His position was complicated by the perpetual
bickerings of selfish factions, and by ignoble broils within the palace,
in which he was compelled to interfere.
It was in June, 1661, that the marriage treaty was signed. As might have
been expected, long delays supervened. Lord Sandwich was despatched with a
fleet to take over Tangier, and on his return voyage to escort the
Princess to England. But that was a matter which did not proceed without
interruption. There was a considerable body of opinion in Portugal which
regarded with profound dislike the abandonment of a position so important.
The Queen-Mother of Portugal was anxious to implement her agreement, but,
in order to do so, she had to dispatch a Governor who was pledged to carry
out the evacuation. Only a few days before Sandwich arrived, that Governor
suffered defeat at the hands of the Moors, and was placed in a position of
serious danger. The arrival of Sandwich was timely. He was able to secure
the place against the attacks of the Moors, and to escort the Portuguese
troops back to their own country, where they were the objects of popular
indignation. All this took time; and it was not till March, 1662, that
Sandwich arrived at Lisbon, to escort the Princess Catherine to England,
along with the stipulated dowry of £500,000. The Queen-Mother of Portugal
was anxious, in this respect also, to meet the terms of the treaty; but it
was not easy for her to do so. The Portuguese Court could raise only a
moiety of the dowry, and even that consisted in large part of merchandise
and jewels of doubtful value. There were difficulties in handing over
Bombay; and the further conditions--as to free rights of trading in the
East Indies and Brazil--could only slowly be made effectual. Those who had
intrigued against the marriage found in these delays just the opportunity
they desired. The reports which reached England were not all favourable to
the new Queen; and the alliance was by no means so popular as it had been
a year before. All this told against Clarendon, to whom was imputed a far
greater responsibility for the arrangement than was actually his, and who
had been forced to support it, in its later stages, largely in order to
counteract the intrigues of Bristol and the Spanish ambassador.
It was on May 20th, 1662, that the Princess arrived at Portsmouth, where
the King met her, and where the marriage ceremony took place. His first
impression seems to have been fairly good, if we are to believe that a
bridegroom would write full confidences to his Chancellor.
"If I have any skill in physiognomy, which I think I have," he writes to
Clarendon, "she must be as good a woman as ever was born." "I cannot
easily tell you," he writes again; "how happy I think myself; I must be
the worst man living (which I think I am not) if I be not a good husband."
"Never two humours," he adds, "were better fitted together than ours are."
Unfortunately Charles's experiences had scarcely made him a judge of a
good woman, and his superficial good humour was but a flimsy foundation
for married happiness.
The royal couple came to Hampton Court; with happy omen, on May 29th; the
King's birthday; and the anniversary of his Restoration. The Court of
England; however, was scarcely a scene likely to be congenial to one who
had lived a sequestered life, amidst strictly religious surroundings, and
in the formal routine of elaborate ceremonial; nor was Charles, by
character, or by the experiences through which he had passed, disposed to
arrange his life according to the tastes of the devout bride whom policy
had selected for him. But Clarendon was prepared to hope much from the
King's natural good nature and kindliness; and, tempestuous as his life
had hitherto been, the Chancellor strove to do his duty, with more of
frankness, perhaps, than of tact, by reminding his master "of the infinite
obligations he had to God, and that He expected another kind of return
from him, in purity of mind and integrity of life." Charles listened to
these admonitions with a patience that was not altogether assumed, and
seems to have been not unwilling to find merits in his bride. But a
bridegroom that has to be schooled to his duty is hardly a promising
husband. Unfortunately the lesson of his Chancellor was soon forgotten.
There were not wanting those who found it to their advantage to
countermine Clarendon's efforts. At first things looked not unpromising
for the newly married pair. The Queen had "beauty and wit enough to make
herself very agreeable to him"--such are Clarendon's, perhaps too roseate,
words. The King's resolutions were good, and he seems to have promised
himself, if not a union of ardent affection, at least the satisfaction of
an innocent and fairly happy married life.
But selfish designs and untoward circumstances soon dispelled such slender
hopes as Clarendon persuaded himself to form. The licentiousness of the
Court had already gone too far. The King's boon companions were men who
founded their own hopes on breaking down any good resolutions that their
prince might form, and in bending his facile character to their own mould.
Religion was with them nothing else than an easy object of ribald jest and
ridicule; and virtue nothing but a fantastic restraint upon the natural
freedom of emancipated libertines. They could breathe only in the
atmosphere of degraded and corrupt vice; and it was by deliberately
flouting all the curbs of decency that they could best undermine the
Chancellor's power. The spur of ambition and the greed for gain both urged
them along the path towards which their craving for licentiousness also
pointed. A licentious Court would be that in which money would be most
freely squandered, and where sordid profits would be most plentiful. The
more the moral lessons of Clarendon were set aside, the more surely would
his authority be weakened, and his company become irksome to the King; the
more open would be the way for the baser crew to achieve influence and
wealth. Charles's mind was a soil on which such seeds could easily be
sown, and were like to yield an ample crop.
All this found powerful help from the lack of tact and perspicacity
amongst the numerous company whom the Queen had brought as her companions.
They were "the most improper," says Clarendon, "to promote that conformity
in the Queen that was necessary for her condition of future happiness."
"Conformity," on the Queen's part, is a word which, in all the
circumstances, has rather an ugly sound; and the art of tactful management
of the ladies of Court was not perhaps one in which Clarendon possessed
such mastery as qualified him for the office of critic. But at least he
saw the flagrant faults in these Portuguese duennas. The women were "old
and ugly and proud, incapable of any conversation with persons of quality
and a liberal education." It was their avowed object to perpetuate their
own influence with the Queen, and to prevent her from any conformity
either with the fashions or the language of England. They fancied that by
rigid adherence to the antique usages of their Court they would compel the
English aristocracy to adopt their manners. By their advice the Queen
would not even wear the English dresses which the King had provided for
his bride; and she received the ladies whom he placed in attendance on her
without grace or cordiality. This was precisely the conduct that made the
work of the profligates easy, that irritated the temper of the King, and
that undermined the work of Clarendon.
There was one figure at Court whose presence planted a deep seed of
resentment between Charles and his Queen. Lady Castlemaine had hitherto
been the prime favourite in the King's seraglio. She was none of the comic
actresses or flower girls from Covent Garden, whose lavishly distributed
favours had won the fancy of the King, or made him the complacent follower
of their former lovers. Barbara Villiers could rank high amongst the
ladies of the aristocracy, as the daughter of Lord Grandison, a Royalist
of unblemished reputation and lofty lineage, who had met his death in arms
for the King's father, and who had been one of Clarendon's most cherished
friends. Even the callous conscience of the King could not set aside the
wrong his passion had done to her and her husband, Mr. Palmer, who, to his
honour, felt the title of Lord Castlemaine, conferred upon him as the
price of infamy, to be an insult rather than a distinction, and, as long
as he could, declined to bear that name. It was an Irish earldom that was
granted as the price of his wife's degradation, that being chosen because
it was passed under the Irish Privy Seal, and so avoided the necessity of
consulting the English Chancellor. Charles felt--and perhaps rightly felt
--that to a mistress of that rank, and to her family, he must make some
amends; and he seems honestly to have intended--however we may guess that
his resolution would soon have yielded to his passion--to have secured for
her a dignified position at Court, while putting an end to his own guilty
intimacy with her. It was in this spirit that he presented "the Lady," as
she was generally called, to the Queen, whose lady-in-waiting he intended
that she should become. The Queen had already learned the story of the
intrigue, and had declared that she would never suffer the mistress's
presence at her Court: and as soon as she discovered the name of the newly
presented lady, she showed her sense of the indignity by bursting into
tears, and by retiring from the room. The racy scandal of a royal
disagreement was thus published to the Court, and Charles was speedily
confirmed in feeling that his own authority was concerned in dealing
firmly with an unseemly outburst of what he and his chosen companions
deemed to be unreasonable obstinacy. The usages of the French Court, and
the example of his own illustrious grandfather, Henry of Navarre, seemed
to justify his decision; and there were not wanting plenty of tongues
ready to suggest that he must be master in his own Court, and must
establish the principle that the title of King's mistress ought to be one
of honour and not of shame. Those who, like Clarendon, saw in that fashion
a degrading innovation in English manners, must be taught their error.
Bad blood was soon engendered between the English Court and the Portuguese
authorities. The Portuguese ambassador found himself involved in the
quarrel. The failure of Portugal, in various particulars, to carry out the
full stipulations of the treaty, however earnestly the Queen-Mother
laboured to do so, was now made matter of reproach. The King blamed the
unhappy envoy as responsible for the obstinacy of the consort whom his
Court had supplied; the Queen reproached him with his false reports of the
King's virtue and good nature, which she now discovered to be diplomatic
fancies. Between the two the poor man "thought it best to satisfy both by
dying": and a fever brought him to the brink of the grave, from which some
dawning hope of a reconciliation between the royal pair alone rescued him.
Diplomats and statesmen, whose plans were thwarted, and whose lives were
worried, by these connubial jars, might have been pardoned for lamenting
that the promiscuous amours of the King did not make him callous to
matrimonial bickerings.
Charles, for once moved to persevering efforts to attain his end, did not
abandon the hope of bringing the Queen to acquiesce in his decision by
gentle means. He laid aside the anger which her conduct had at first
aroused, and sought to cajole her into a better humour. He assured her
that his intimacy with "the Lady" had already ceased, and that the place
at Court which he proposed to assign to her would be the best guarantee
against its renewal. But all these attempts were in vain. The Queen
refused any compromise; and on his side the King, whose superficial good
humour was not incompatible with profound and pertinacious selfishness,
did not scruple to expose her to every insult at Court. He threw himself
with his usual cynicism into all the degraded pleasures of the libertine
crew of his choice companions; openly pursued his intimacy with Lady
Castlemaine, and taught his friends, as an easy means of access to his
favour, to flout the pretensions and the feelings of the Queen. "I wish,"
he wrote to Clarendon, "I may be unhappy in this world, and in the world
to come, if I fail in the least degree of what I have resolved, which is
of making my Lady Castlemaine of my wife's bed-chamber. I am resolved to
go through with this matter, let what will come of it: which again I
solemnly swear before Almighty God; therefore if you desire to have the
continuance of my friendship, meddle no more in this business, except it
be to bear down all false and scandalous reports, and to facilitate what,
I am sure, my honour is so much concerned in; and whosoever I find to be
my Lady Castlemaine's enemy in this matter, I do promise, upon my word, to
be his enemy as long as I live. You may show this letter to my Lord-
Lieutenant (Ormonde), and, if you have both a mind to oblige me, carry
yourselves like friends to me in this matter." [Footnote: Letters amongst
Lansdowne MSS. in British Museum. Printed by Lingard, and in Lister's
_Life of Clarendon_, iii. 202.]
Charles's easy humour cloaked an obstinacy as strong as that of any of his
race. Be the object perverse enough, it asserted itself, in his facile
character, with the pettishness to be found in a spoilt child. He knew
Clarendon's opinion of "the Lady," whose acquaintance the Chancellor
shunned, and to whom he had forbidden his wife to show any civilities. To
Clarendon's bitter annoyance, the King imposed on him of all men the
irksome duty of attempting an arrangement with the Queen. Clarendon had
already met the request, when first made, by sturdy remonstrance, and by a
powerful appeal to the King's sense of honour. It was only when no other
plan could be devised for composing the ugly business, that he felt it his
duty to remonstrate with the Queen. It was; he felt, "too delicate a
province for so plain-dealing a man." The caprice of fortune never laid
upon a man so proud as Clarendon, a task so irksome and so little to his
taste. Only the public interest involved forced him to breathe for a time
the stifling atmosphere, and mix himself in the nauseating topics, of the
royal matrimonial wranglings. Only the imperious need for suppressing a
scandal which might smother the new settlement, and the royal power, in
the mud of a sordid quarrel, bade him undertake a hateful duty. Honour
could not be saved; but disaster might perhaps be avoided.
Again and again he attempted to argue with the Queen. He assured her, with
such confidence as he might, of the King's promise to break the hated
connection. He held out hopes of a cordial agreement between them to be
gained by conceding what the King desired, at the expense of what
Clarendon admitted to be a natural repugnance. He explained to her the
authority which the King possessed, and hinted--we may guess with what
repugnance--at the usages of other Courts, where such scandals were
condoned. He was met, once and again, by passionate outbursts, to which
the Queen gave way, and which, he knew, would only provoke the resentment
of the King--the resentment of a nature, slow to be aroused, but once
aroused, relentless because of its very cynicism. At length the Chancellor
thought that he had prevailed, and the Queen professed her duty to her
husband. But with an ill-judged change of humour she chose this mistimed
moment for appearing unduly conciliatory to her rival, and thereby
diminished such respect as her resistance had gained, even from those whom
it provoked. Charles not unnaturally believed that the violence of an
indignation so quickly appeased had been due only to capricious obstinacy,
and to no strength of virtuous self-respect. His tyranny grew the greater
by her weakness. He dismissed all but one or two of her followers, and
left her friendless amidst an unfriendly Court. Clarendon worked in vain;
he had done what he could to save the situation, and now "made it his
humble suit to the King that he might be no more consulted with nor
employed in an affair in which he had been so unsuccessful." A semblance
of reconciliation, whatever that was worth, was somehow patched up. The
King no longer openly flouted his wife before the crowd of complaisant
courtiers. On her part she submitted to his will, and stooped to the
ignoble part assigned her in a profligate Court. She accepted, with
gratitude, such an occasional show of kindness, as from time to time made
the Court gossips surmise that a better understanding might come. For the
rest she sank into insignificance amidst such childish amusements as were
to fill up her life.
Praise and blame are alike out of place in regard to Clarendon's conduct
in the affair, and we may spare ourselves the tedious moralizings of his
critics. No one loathed more utterly than he the disgusting licentiousness
out of which the whole sordid story grew, and no one treated with more
contemptuous austerity the objects of the King's passion, and the pandars
to his vices. However high his own ideal of domestic virtue, Clarendon was
a man of the world, not blind to its vices, and not eager to pry into
scandals or pursue the secrets of private life. It was not only the vice
of Charles's courtiers, it was the sickening parade of debauchery in all
its nakedness, which seemed to him to make the Court unmanly and
contemptible. Feeling as he did, he had spoken words of bold remonstrance
to the King himself, although he was fully conscious how irksome his
moralizings were, and how easily they lent themselves to the gibes of
Charles's baser companions. Busy tongues carried to him tales of these
sneers--which were, indeed, scarcely concealed in his own presence, and
which were only too openly betrayed by the behaviour of the sycophantish
crew. He saw how fatal was the ruin caused by the flagitious obscenity of
the Court--sunk as it was far below the level of the free play of
licentious gallantry [Footnote: The more we become familiar with the
intimate records of the age, the more we recognize how little its
sickening degradation is described by any of the epithets usually applied
to the reign of the "merry monarch." Its filth was even more disgusting
than its vice, its obscenity than its licentiousness, and its unmanliness
than its profligacy. ]--and he knew well that this unseemly matrimonial
fracas proclaimed it to the world. He tried rebuke and remonstrance. When
these failed, he only did his duty in attempting--vainly, as it proved--a
compromise; and it was with disgust as well as weariness that he turned
away from the degrading and hopeless task of patching up the strife that
was undermining all his efforts at reconstruction. The Court which he
dreamed of restoring, chastened by adversity, enhanced in dignity, resting
upon a sound constitutional foundation, and fenced by a bulwark of stately
reverence, was now to be a byword amongst the people, as the home of
ignoble trifling, of bestial vice, of sordid intrigue, and of vulgarizing
domestic jars.
The little clique of his enemies comprised Bristol, that strange mixture
of contradictions--fantastic vanity and flightiness, tempered by subtle
wariness and vigorous intellectual strength; treachery and double-dealing,
redeemed by occasional gleams of romantic extravagance and enthusiastic
zeal; Buckingham, to whom all virtue was a natural object of antipathy,
and pre-eminence in profligacy his chief ambition; and Ashley, whose keen
intellect and cunning assumption of specious aims, were the instruments of
a boundless ambition, and were unchecked by any thought of principle, or
any scruple of consistency. They had as humbler tools, in their sordid
work, Sir Henry Bennet and Sir Charles Berkeley. All found in this sorry
affair, precisely the most favourable means of promoting the one aim which
held them together--the undermining of Clarendon's power. For this object
they were all alike prepared to support the pretensions, and flatter the
vanity, of the shameless and grasping courtesan, to ruin the happiness of
the wife, to degrade the honour, and send to slumber the scruples, of the
King, and to besmirch that Crown, which a flood of unselfish loyalty had
restored, only two years before, to the love and reverence of the nation.
But other matters, of larger public concern, had to be faced by Clarendon;
and in these, too, he was obstructed by the machinations of the same
unscrupulous clique.
We are apt to forget, in the engrossing incidents of our civil war, and
its sequel, the enormous changes that were in progress in the material
condition of the country, and the larger economic struggle that was being
waged between the Western European Powers in regard to the supremacy in
commercial undertakings, as developed by the colonial enterprise of the
time. Wars were to be carried on hereafter, not on the ground of dynastic
disputes or of religious differences, but in order to gain a firm footing
in the vastly increasing field of commercial operations. The sovereignty
of the seas was necessary to achieve that end, and it was this underlying
conviction that prompted the United Provinces to their struggle with the
English fleet--a struggle, the ultimate fate of which remained long
doubtful in view of the intense importance of the warring interests, and
the indomitable courage of the combatants on either side. Cromwell had
enormously developed the commercial supremacy of England by the Navigation
Act, which required that foreign goods should arrive in England only in
ships sailing under the English flag, or under the flag of the country in
which the commodities had their origin. This Act was renewed by the
Convention Parliament and confirmed by the Parliament of 1661, in its full
stringency of operation. It threatened the very foundation of the Dutch
naval and commercial supremacy, and planted a root of enmity between
England and the United Provinces, rendered permanent by the irreconcilable
opposition of material interests which grew up by the irresistible force
of circumstances. Other differences might be composed, but that resting on
the instinct of self-preservation could know no end. Statesmen had to
shape their policy--sometimes blindly enough--but always under the
pressure of this vigorous instinct of self-interest prevalent amongst the
trading classes of the country.
The wealth of France rendered her less susceptible to these feelings, and
her statesmen took less account of them; but to prove the unquestioned
power of her Crown, it became necessary for her to assert herself, like
her neighbours, at sea. Just before the Restoration, an insecure peace had
been patched up between France and Spain. But while France consented to
abandon her support of Portugal, she had no mind that Portugal should be
left at the mercy of Spain. It was her first business to contrive a
counterpoise to the power of Spain. But it was more difficult for France
to decide what should be her relation to England. She had cultivated an
alliance with Cromwell, and in order to consolidate that alliance, she had
treated the Royalist cause with contemptuous neglect. Neither on the part
of the people of England, nor on the part of its Court, was any close
connection with France desired. The old jealousies, bred of close
neighbourhood, could not be effaced. An alliance with Spain had seemed at
first more desirable.
But overtures from Charles for a Spanish marriage had been treated
somewhat cavalierly by the Spanish Court. This naturally prompted the
obvious alternative of a Portuguese marriage, and such a marriage offered
to France precisely the opportunity she desired. A marriage treaty between
England and Portugal seemed certain to secure for Portugal the support of
England in her struggle with Spain; and France welcomed the appearance of
an ally who might render to Portugal that help against Spain, which she
herself was precluded by treaty from openly offering. The King of England
had been encouraged to prosecute the treaty of marriage with Portugal by
assurance of French sympathy. Such sympathy would not, in itself, have
been a sufficient inducement. Other more powerful motives operated. "The
principal advantages we propose to ourself," wrote Charles to his envoy in
Portugal, "by this conjunction with Portugal, is the advancement of the
trade of this nation." These words were perfectly true, and the possession
of Tangier and Bombay, with equal trading rights in the East Indies and
Brazil, were real and substantial advantages to England. They were not
lessened by the fact that the alliance brought England and France, for a
time, to a better understanding.
But France had her own causes of jealousy, and it was necessary for
Clarendon to take all care that these should not drive her into the hands
of that chief enemy, with whom England must sooner or later come to deadly
grips-the Dutch Republic. Clarendon fully appreciated the great work of
Cromwell in making England feared in Europe, and he was anxious that she
should not, under the monarchy, suffer any abatement of the power which
Cromwell had so triumphantly established. But he knew also the inherent
weakness of the country at the moment, and her inability to sustain the
burden of a war. To Clarendon it was a matter of supreme and vital
importance that war should not come until her resources were consolidated.
Even at the cost of a crippling debt, her naval stores and arsenals were
equipped with careful industry. But Clarendon knew well that though
definite and detailed preparation of that kind might help her to meet a
sudden emergency, England was in no financial condition to maintain the
annual pressure of a long-continued war. France, alive to the
embarrassments of English Ministers, soon put forward new topics of
complaint, and pressed for redress as the price of her continued
friendliness. Disputes arose as to the respective rights of the fishing
fleets of each country, and acts of violence and privateering occurred on
both sides. France refused to comply with the custom that had prevailed
since it was conceded by Henry IV. to Elizabeth, which recognized
England's naval supremacy by prescribing that all other fleets should
salute the English flag. [Footnote: The following statement, which has
kindly been supplied to me, has high authority:--
"From the 14th to the 18th century the salute (at first by lowering the
topsail, and later by dipping the flag) was more or less jealously claimed
by English ships of war from all other ships, whether foreign men-of-war
or English or foreign merchantmen. While there was no nation strong enough
to resist the English claim (and this was especially the case while
England held possessions on both sides of the Channel) the salute was
pretty generally accorded, and it was not until the 17th century that any
serious resistance was made. During almost the whole of that century an
acute controversy raged about the meaning and the scope of the Sovereignty
of the Seas. The English case was bolstered up by doubtful documents, such
as an alleged Ordinance of King John, said to have been issued at Hastings
in 1200, but now acknowledged to be a forgery.
In 1635, Selden published his 'Mare Clausum' in support of the English
claim. Apparently he was moved to this by the publication by Grotius in
1633 of 'Mare Liberum,' though the latter was more directly aimed at the
monopoly claimed by the Portuguese in the East Indies. Probably
Selden wrote with his tongue in his cheek to please Charles I., for he is
said to have made ridicule of his own book in private conversation.
The English, however, were not content to enforce their claim by words,
but often during the 16th and 17th centuries enforced it by cannon shot.
The arrogant claim that any vessel (a yacht for instance) bearing the
Union flag must be saluted by foreign ships, and even by a foreign fleet
of men-of-war, was much resented by the Dutch after they had crushed
Spain, and was one of the causes that led to the outbreak of the First
Dutch War (1652-4) though commercial jealousy was the prime cause.
The first battle (Dover, May, 1652) was occasioned by Tromp flaunting his
flag in the face of Blake.
This war turned out, on the whole, sufficiently favourable to the English
to enable them to secure a clause in the Treaty of peace in 1654--
'That the ships and vessels of the United Provinces, as well those fitted
for war as others, meeting any Ship of War of the said Commonwealth in the
British Seas, shall strike their Flag, and lower their Topsail in such
manner as had been any time before practised under any Government.'
Similar clauses occur in the Treaty of Westminster, 1662, and that of
Breda (which ended the Second Dutch War), 1667. The Treaty closing the
Third Dutch War (Westminster, 1673) has a similar article, but the seas
are defined.
During the 18th century the claim does not seem to have been often
enforced, and by the time of the Peace of Amiens, 1803, when the ancient
claim to the Sovereignty of France was formally abandoned, the claim to
the salute had become extinct."] The traditional, but none the less
galling, assumption of the titular sovereignty and arms of France, by the
English King, was another cause of emphatic complaint. The French Court
knew enough of England's financial weakness, to judge the moment
propitious for pressing these subjects of dispute. Clarendon thought it
well, to begin, at least, by assuming an independent and combative tone.
He strove, under the compulsion to which many a diplomat has had to yield,
to cover his weakness by proud words, and he managed to provoke Louis XIV.
to angry remonstrances, and even to threats of war. It was to Clarendon
personally that the French King ascribed the supercilious tone of the
English demands, and it was his compliance that Louis and his Ministers
chiefly sought to gain. The Powers abroad knew what Clarendon's work for
the exiled Court had been. They could estimate the value of his
statesmanship, and dreaded him as England's most efficacious Minister. But
they attributed to him a power which, hampered as he was, was never truly
his. Clarendon was in truth attempting an impossible task, and he fought
with fettered hands. He could expect no support from the King, who was
already allured by the prospects of financial assistance, skilfully held
out by Louis. It was hard to maintain a proud defiance amidst the
perplexities of divided counsels, of selfish intrigues, and of a bankrupt
exchequer. He had to temporize as to the King's title, and to accept the
abrogation of the token of respect to England's supremacy upon the seas.
The imperious tone was one which no Minister of Charles II. could longer
safely assume.
Another far more substantial concession to French demands soon after came
up for discussion.
It was a striking tribute to Cromwell's influence abroad that the sea-port
of Dunkirk, when conquered by the allied Powers, had, according to treaty,
been handed over to the keeping of the English Commonwealth. It was not
the only important possession which the restored King of England owed to
the prowess of the rebels by whom he had been exiled, and to whose
conquests he was now the heir. As to its value there were doubts. Although
it had been a troublesome hive of privateers, the place was reckoned not
to be really of much strategical importance, and the naval experts had
already expressed doubts whether its value was equivalent to the expense
which it involved. The revenue of England was sorely crippled, and the
possession of Dunkirk not only involved heavy expenditure, but was a very
probable source of expensive warlike complications. It was from Lord
Southampton, who, as Treasurer, felt the financial burden most, that the
first suggestion of parting with it came. The exchequer was in ill state
to stand further drains, and Tangier and Bombay, however beneficial their
possession might ultimately become, were now nothing but sources of heavy
expense. Southampton imparted his misgivings to the King, and sought for
some device by which he might shift some part of the constantly growing
expenditure. Could Dunkirk not be handed over as a _damnosa hereditas?_
The naval experts were consulted, and were ready not only to acquiesce,
but to avow their opinion that Dunkirk offered no advantages equivalent to
its cost, which was reckoned at not less than a hundred and twenty
thousand a year. Southampton told the Chancellor of his difficulties, and
propounded to him the scheme for lightening them; but found Clarendon so
averse to a proposal for parting with any naval stronghold, that even the
entire confidence bred of their old friendship did not tempt the Treasurer
to reopen a subject so distasteful until some definite proposal could be
framed. The General (Albemarle) and he laid it before the King so
urgently, that Charles was attracted by a scheme which offered the
tempting bait of financial provision, and at length it was formally
brought before that secret and select Council which consulted upon all
matters of prime importance. It could no longer be kept from the
Chancellor; and Clarendon's illness made it necessary on this, as on many
other occasions, to summon the Council to his sickroom, where, besides the
King and the Duke of York, the Chancellor and the Treasurer, with
Albemarle, Sandwich, Sir George Carteret, and the two secretaries of
State, were present. Southampton knew the opposition he had to expect from
Clarendon, and playfully asked the King, when he entered the room, "to
take the Chancellor's staff from him, otherwise he would break his
Treasurer's head." Charles told Clarendon that the business to be debated
was one which he knew that Clarendon would oppose; but when he had heard
the arguments, he thought they would change his view. Steps had evidently
been taken with care to prepare the ground and marshall the arguments. The
naval and military experts explained the small strategical value of the
place, its ineffectiveness as a naval base, and the deficiencies of its
land defences. Against such arguments Clarendon was, of course, powerless;
and it was equally impossible for him to argue away the heavy burden on a
crippled treasury, of which the Treasurer begged to be relieved. To hold
the place longer was only too likely to involve a costly war with one or
both of the Powers of France and Spain, and it was a source of irritation
to the United Provinces as well. Not only were the arguments strong, but
the Chancellor was soon convinced that he had not been consulted until
those who desired to effect a profitable bargain had already gained the
determined adherence of the King. It was no part of Clarendon's practice
to argue in the face of impossibilities. Little remained for him or any
other Minister but to decide with which Power it was possible to strike
the best bargain, and which it was most expedient to conciliate.
There are some variations between the various accounts that have reached
us as to the first author of the suggestion. Sandwich, in a conversation
with Pepys, [Footnote: In February, 1666.] averred that he himself was the
first adviser, and this account is partially confirmed by what Sir Robert
Southwell told, in 1670, of a conversation between Sandwich and himself in
October, 1667. On the other hand, D'Estrades, the French envoy, asserts--
what would give the lie to what Clarendon avers in his Life with
convincing proof and elaborate circumstantiality--that Clarendon had told
him that he was himself the author of the proposal. As regards Pepys's
report, Sandwich, probably, after the common fashion of experts, assigned
too much importance to his own expert advice; while the French envoy might
easily have misunderstood the attitude assumed by Clarendon, who was
bound, of course, to submit to the French diplomat even proposals which he
disliked as if he entirely concurred in them. We need have no difficulty
in assuming Clarendon's own deliberate and written account to be
substantially correct. That he was brought unwillingly to concur in a
proposal which had virtually obtained the assent of the King, is confirmed
by the fact that in his speech to Parliament in May, 1662, he condemned
the murmurs against the cost of Dunkirk, on the ground that it was a
diadem of which the English Crown could only be deprived at the cost of
great danger. It was no part of Clarendon's character to decline a
responsibility which was his own; nor was it his inclination to part
lightly with anything that added to the dignity of the English Crown. That
the first suggestion did not come from him may be accepted on his own
solemn averment; but it is also strongly confirmed by inherent
probability.
It remained only to decide with which Power the bargain should be made.
Policy, it might have been held, should have some influence in determining
the choice, at a moment when international relations were so delicately
poised. But Clarendon tells us that, strangely enough, the only question
was, Who would give the highest price? Both Spain and France were eager to
have the sea-port. Of the two Spain was by far the most popular in
England; but she was not likely to be so good a purchaser. She claimed the
cession of Dunkirk as a right, and it is always improbable that one who
puts forward such a claim should be inclined either to pay heavy purchase-
money, or to owe a deep debt of gratitude, for what is claimed as a right.
Above all, the coffers of Spain were in no condition to meet a heavy
payment. At best, there would have been tedious delay, during which the
heavy expenditure on the maintenance of Dunkirk would have continued to
fall on the English Treasury. To part with the sea-port to the United
Provinces might have secured a better price than from either of the
Crowns; but it would have been a signal of war to both of these, and the
United Provinces themselves might have found it a costly and embarrassing
possession.
It was with France, therefore, that the haggling had to be done, and it
was prosecuted with all the eagerness of the auction mart. Such
transactions can never be very dignified. The cession of an important sea-
port must necessarily be galling to national pride, and an injury to
national _prestige_; and in this case was the more damaging from the
tenure of Dunkirk being the token of Cromwell's proud supremacy abroad.
The chaffering went on through all the usual stages of alternate bluff and
concession on both sides. The final settlement secured for Charles a
payment of some two hundred thousand pounds. In the reckoning of the day
that was held to be a considerable sum. It possessed the merit, no
inconsiderable one in the mind of the King, of being at least free from
any of the embarrassments of a Parliamentary grant. Apart from the actual
money paid, the Treasury was relieved of an expenditure of about one
hundred and twenty thousand pounds annually. Of all such vantage posts
abroad, Dunkirk was perhaps the least useful, and the most risky to hold.
Trifling as was the price obtained according to our reckoning, it was
nevertheless of importance in the actual state of the exchequer. But the
nation invariably shows itself sensitive to the loss of honour implied in
such a cession, and is glad to have a victim on which to wreak its
irritation. It was on Clarendon that its unreasoning vengeance fell, and
at a later day the blame for an arrangement which he did not initiate, and
which at first he earnestly opposed, aggravated his growing unpopularity.
Once more he had had to content himself, not with the policy he most
approved, but with that which suited best the exigencies of the time; and
he had to bear the blame for action to which he unwillingly consented. It
is the hardest lot for the statesman, because it is that which his enemies
impute as a crime, and for which his friends can only offer an apology.
Whatever the injury to national dignity, the transaction not only gave
substantial pecuniary relief, but it seemed to promise, for the time, a
secure foreign alliance. The irritation on the side of France was allayed,
and Louis abandoned that tone of offence against Clarendon, which he had
repeatedly used to his ambassador, and which showed that he regarded the
policy of the Chancellor as the most serious menace to his power. The
cordiality between England and France was perhaps insecure, but it was
cemented by their common interest in maintaining the independence of
Portugal, and that, again, offered good prospects to the trading interest
of England.
But, at home, Clarendon found his influence threatened by increasing
virulence of intrigue, and by new scandals and dissensions at Court. To
the world at large he was still the all-powerful Minister. Only a few
months before, Dryden had poured out a poetical tribute, from that mint of
flattery of which his expenditure was so lavish, and had told Clarendon
that he and the King bounded the horizon of the universe to their country,
and had compared his wise counsels to the rich perfumes of the East. Even
Louis XIV. did not think it below his dignity to solicit the Chancellor's
favour, and to be jealous of his power. But Clarendon was not blind to the
influences that were undermining that power. Hitherto he and Southampton
had managed Parliamentary affairs through a small knot of members of tried
fidelity and experience. Such management called for wary and cautious
treatment, if jealousy was not to be aroused amongst the Parliamentary
ranks. The idea of government by an organized party in Parliament was as
yet unknown to our political practice, and would not have met with any
favour from Clarendon. To him a Minister was the servant of the King, and
in no way the nominee of any Party. None the less the germs of the new
system, all undiscerned by himself or his contemporaries, were developing
during his Ministry. We have already seen the knot of courtiers who were
held together chiefly by a common--although not clearly avowed--jealousy
of the Chancellor. Ashley, Buckingham, Bristol, and Lauderdale, were the
chief members of that confederacy; and they soon found means to introduce
new instruments to help in working the Parliamentary machine. The most
notable of these were Sir William Coventry, the son of Clarendon's old
friend, Lord Chancellor Coventry, and Sir Henry Bennet, who is better
known to history by the name of the Earl of Arlington, which was the title
conferred upon him in 1672. [Footnote: He was created Baron Arlington in
1664.] The influence of these two in Parliament, as the accredited agents
of the Court, began with the session of 1663, which opened on February
18th, and closed on July 27th. For William Coventry, Clarendon had a deep-
rooted dislike, which was increased rather than lessened by Clarendon's
respect for his father, and his good-will to his brother, Henry Coventry.
[Footnote: Henry Coventry was the elder brother of Sir William. He had
more than once been useful in embassies to Sweden, where he seems to have
acquired some of the convivial habits of that country. Without his
brother's wit, dexterity, or eloquence, he seems to have joined more than
his frankness to a blustering manner.] William Coventry's was one of those
"unconversable" natures which moved Clarendon's aversion. A sullen temper,
a censorious habit, and a pride that led him to belittle all in which he
was not chief agent, were precisely the traits of character which
Clarendon distrusted and disliked. He admits Coventry's abilities, and
gives him credit for being exempt from the degrading coarseness which was
typical of the Court. His portrait is painted for us in a few sentences
with all the consummate skill of the historian of the Rebellion.
"He was a sullen, ill-natured, proud man, whose ambition had no limits,
nor could be contained within any. His parts were very good, if he had not
thought them better than any other man's; and he had diligence and
industry, which men of good parts are too often without.... He was without
those vices which were too much in request, and which make men most unfit
for business and the trust that cannot be separated from it."
Clarendon's genius for character-drawing never suffers him to paint even
the portraits of his enemies all in black. [Footnote: Clarendon's
prejudice against Coventry, however, in spite of the admission of his
ability, was abnormally strong, and we shall find reason later to doubt
whether Clarendon did not in this case allow personal resentment to blind
him to some of Coventry's merits.] Such was his conception of the man who
now became Secretary to the Duke of York, and an active centre of
intrigue.
Sir Henry Bennet was a foeman of another kind. It was during the period of
exile that he had managed to ingratiate himself with Charles, and their
subsequent intimacy was coloured by the scenes which they had once shared
together. Bennet was the natural product of an exiled Court, forced to
have recourse to shifts of no dignified kind, and breathing an atmosphere
of cynicism and distrust. He knew nothing of, and cared, if possible,
still less for, the Constitution or the laws of England. He was one of
those who cultivated the friendship of Spain, with whose leading statesmen
he had close relations, and who saw in that friendship a balance to the
Portuguese alliance and the policy which Clarendon was believed to pursue.
He had no Parliamentary talents, and entered Parliament for the first time
during the session of 1663, But he was a pledged and trusted member of the
little Court cabal, which was now determined to organize a party in
Parliament to oppose the Chancellor's power. It became a part of their
scheme to find a place for Bennet where he could exercise a distinct
influence upon administration. The preliminary arrangements for this were
made without the Chancellor's knowledge. That stout and faithful servant
of the King, and sure friend of the Chancellor, Sir Edward Nicholas, was
now feeling the weight of years. His ample experience and tried fidelity
weighed for nothing in the minds of the Court clique, who desired his
place for Bennet. The King was easily persuaded to adopt the view that the
Chancellor found, in two old and weak secretaries, conveniently
subservient tools. Tempting terms were proposed to Nicholas. Suggestions
were skilfully thrown out that he should quit his employment, receiving
the ample provision of £10,000 in lieu of it, and also some notable token
of the gratitude and respect of the King. It was only natural that the old
man--whose memories of public service carried him back to the days when he
had been amongst the followers of the Duke of Buckingham at the time of
his assassination, nearly forty years before--should accept the proposal
readily. How it seemed to Clarendon is best seen in his own words. "It
cost the King, in present money and land on lease, very little less than
twenty thousand pounds, to bring in a servant whom very few cared for, in
place of an old servant whom everybody loved." [Footnote: _Life_, ii.
228.] The little faction who were intent upon their selfish plans for
ousting the Chancellor recked very little of lavish expenditure. The same
move that made the secretaryship of Nicholas vacant for Bennet, left
Bennet's place of Privy Purse available for another of the new favourites
and conspirators--Sir Charles Berkeley. [Footnote: Soon after created Earl
of Falmouth.] Amongst the crowd of discredited and dishonest intriguers
none was more vile or contemptible than he. In earlier days his character
was too notorious to be tolerated even by Charles; but there were tricks
and services, to which Berkeley made no scruple of stooping, and which
served to secure, first the tolerance, and then the friendship, of the
King. These changes in the official world were all menaces to Clarendon's
power.
[Illustration: SIR EDWARD NICHOLAS. (_From the original by Sir Peter
Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery._)]
It was one of the ironies of fate that the baser influences, now gaining
new power at Court, created or stimulated discontent, the brunt of which
fell on Clarendon, against whose authority these influences were chiefly
directed. The moral sense of the nation was being gradually provoked. That
sense is regulated by no great judgment, and often moves under violent
prejudice; but it slowly yet surely shapes itself on sound foundations.
The reaction against Puritanism had carried the nation far in the
direction of tolerance even of lax morality; but the scandals of the Court
had already begun to outrage the nation's sense of decency; and when
outraged decency is combined with increased pressure of taxation and
decreasing prosperity, the united force becomes a menacing threat. It was
a comparative trifle that the King's alleged bastard [Footnote: He was
born in 1646, and the King's age at the time justified doubts, which the
lady's lavish favours did not diminish.] by the notorious Lucy Waters, was
now formally introduced at Court under the name of Crofts; was married to
the heiress of the Earl of Buccleuch, and was speedily created Duke of
Monmouth. Such relationships had before been tacitly recognized but not
explicitly avowed; now for the first time the patent of nobility declared
the youth to be the natural son of the King. Vice laid aside that homage
of hypocrisy which it had before paid to virtue. It was an innovation
which Clarendon firmly opposed. "It would have," he told the King quite
plainly, "an ill sound in England with all his people, who thought that
these unlawful acts ought to be concealed, and not published and
justified." [Footnote: _Life_, ii. 255.] Precedents from France and
Spain would not pass current in England; and even if these precedents were
admitted, they would hardly parallel the ennobling of the bastard of a
notorious courtezan, born when the King was scarcely sixteen years of age,
and whose parentage was, to say the least, doubtful.
By themselves such domestic scandals may perhaps count for little. But
when they are accompanied by growing discontent, resting upon solid
grounds, the aggregate of irritation becomes considerable. Our foreign
commerce was seriously crippled, and our manufactures found no outlet. The
home markets were interfered with by foreign goods imported during the
recent years of unsettlement in exaggerated quantities. The large advances
made by the bankers to meet taxes heavily in arrear produced a scarcity of
money, and this again led to a serious fall in rents. There was hardly a
class in the nation which was not suffering by the prevailing insecurity;
and these sufferings were aggravated by increasing taxation, by declining
national credit, and by the fears of insurrection, and of renewed civil
war, caused by the decaying reverence for the Crown. No one recognized
more clearly than Clarendon, or detested more cordially, the scandals that
tarnished the restored monarchy; to no one did they bring a fuller crop of
crushed hopes, and baffled efforts. Fortune's cynical injustice was never
more clearly shown.
To some of the clique of Clarendon's enemies it seemed as if the time had
come to strike a decisive blow. Stories of his impending fall were rife.
Pepys, repeating the gossip of the day, and the tittle-tattle of the back
stairs, tells us how "they have cast my Lord Chancellor on his back past
ever getting up again." [Footnote: Pepys, May 15th, 1663.] Bristol was the
first who determined to take overt action against the Chancellor. His
first effort was a singularly inept one, and involved one of the
confederates much more than Clarendon. Bristol had hopes, it would appear,
of arranging for himself a body of "undertakers" in the House of Commons,
who were to take upon themselves the management of measures desired by the
Crown. He had offered to Charles the services of Sir Richard Temple, who,
he asserted, would, if trusted, undertake that the King's business would
be effected, and revenue settled. Coventry, whose special functions were
thus threatened, reported the words, as those which had been used to the
King "by a person of quality," to the House, which thus saw its
independence flagrantly assailed; and on the petition of the House, the
King disclosed the name of the Earl of Bristol as his informant. Bristol
craved to be heard by the House in his own defence; and addressed them in
that tone of theatrical vanity and rhodomontade in which he was apt to
indulge. The whole transaction is a little obscure, and its objects seem
inconclusive. The world was already accustomed to these outbursts of
Bristol's self-advertising folly.
But his next step was more direct and more audacious. It was no less than
the impeachment of the Lord Chancellor. He consulted the King, who
endeavoured to dissuade him, but to whose dissuasions Bristol's insolent
reply was, that if he were not supported, "he would raise such disorders
that all England should feel them, and the King himself should not be
without a large share in them." [Footnote: _Burnet_, i. 339.] The
interview was evidently a stormy one, and Bristol did not scruple to
threaten his King in language for which he had afterwards to offer the
most abject apology.
The charges which Bristol, in spite of these warnings, formulated against
Clarendon in the House of Lords, were flimsy and fanciful even for his
contriving. Clarendon, it was alleged, had arrogated to himself a superior
direction in all his Majesty's affairs. He had abused the trust by
insinuating that the King was inclined to popery; [Footnote: These charges
from one who, on grounds of conscience that were more than suspected, had
joined the Roman Catholic Church, are worthy of Bristol's audacious
inconsistency.] he had alleged that the King had removed Nicholas, a
zealous Protestant, in order to bring in Bennet, a concealed Papist; he
had solicited from the Pope a Cardinal's hat for Lord Aubigny as the price
of suspension of the Penal Laws against Catholics; he had been responsible
for irregularities in the King's marriage; he had uttered scandals against
the King's course of life; he had given out that the King intended to
legitimize the Duke of Monmouth; had persuaded the King to withdraw the
garrisons from Scotland; had advised the sale of Dunkirk; had told the
King that the House of Lords was "weak and inconsiderable," and the House
of Commons "weak and heady;" and he had enriched himself and his followers
by illegitimate means.
It is difficult to understand how even the blind vanity and over-weening
self-importance of Bristol could have persuaded him that this string of
absurdities could injure the Chancellor, or obtain credence even from his
most prejudiced foes. There was not a single item that could involve a
charge of treason even if true, and some of the allegations imputed to
Clarendon opinions and aims to which he was notoriously opposed. It was
evident that Bristol had been inspired only by an insane desire to charge
against Clarendon anything which seemed likely to attach some unpopularity
to his name.
At Clarendon's desire the charges laid against him were referred to the
judges, who unanimously reported that the accusations had been irregularly
made, and that, even if they were admitted to be true, they involved no
treason. The King sent a message to the Lords, to inform them that some of
the facts alleged were, to his own certain knowledge, untrue. Never were
charges more recklessly brought, and never did a weapon, forged against an
enemy, towards whom Bristol nursed an almost insane jealousy, turn with
more deadly effect upon its contriver. A warrant was issued for Bristol's
arrest, and he escaped any more drastic punishment only by absconding. But
the episode closed for the time Bristol's career; and for a season it
seemed to confirm and re-establish the supremacy of Clarendon. One of his
foes at least had been worsted in the attempt to cast him on his back. But
harder troubles than those raised by Bristol's ill-aimed attack still
awaited him.