The reader must recal to his mind the state of parties during the last
years of Charles the Second’s reign, to which so many allusions have been
made in the notes upon “Absalom and Achitophel,” and “The Medal.” The
flight of Shaftesbury, and the discovery of the Rye-house conspiracy,
had been deep wounds to the credit of the Whigs. The wealthy part of
the nation dreaded a party, whose chief support was in the riotous mob
of London; and men of principle, while they felt the severity of a
government, which seemed approaching towards despotism, abhorred the
assassination which a part at least of the popular leaders had meditated
as a remedy. The king, meanwhile, was anxious to keep the advantage
he had gained, and to stigmatise his adversaries as leagued together
against him upon principles inimical to all kingly governments. For
this purpose, Dryden was employed to translate from the French of the
Jesuit Maimbourg, the “History of the League,” a work undertaken in
France under the auspices of Louis XIV. The evident intention of bringing
out this translation at the time when it appeared, was, to increase
the unpopularity of the Whigs, by ascribing to the association which
Shaftesbury had proposed, the same motives and principles which actuated
the members of the League, and plunged France into the long and bloody
civil war between their kings and the house of Guise. Dryden had already
drawn such a parallel in the play, called “The Duke of Guise,” which he
wrote in conjunction with Lee. The intended parallel between the faction
of the League in France, and that of the Solemn League and Covenant,
and afterwards of the Whigs in England, was avowed in the first lines
of the prologue,[10] and more largely in the vindication of the play,
which Dryden published shortly after its appearance.[11] Maimbourg, on
the other hand, from whose work the translation was made, was not only a
zealous royalist, but a professed enemy of the Huguenots, and had written
a history of their religion, calculated to place it in the most odious
point of view. There was, therefore, to be found in his “History of the
League,” not only an accurate and terrifying account of that famous
combination, but many hints towards completing the parallel to be deduced
betwixt the principles of the Guisards and those of the Calvinists. With
this intention, and under the immediate auspices of the king, the work
was translated and published.
The title page bears that the translation was made according to his
majesty’s command: and the frontispiece represents Charles enthroned in
state; Justice is seated upon one side, and upon the other is a view
of a harbour, with two light-houses, and a fleet in sail. A hand from
heaven is about to place on the king’s head an imperial crown, from which
glances a ray of light, bearing the motto, _Per me reges regnant_. In
front, are the lords temporal and spiritual, assembled before the throne,
in a dutiful posture, and at their feet a scroll, on which is written,
_Sibi et successoribus suis legitimis_, in allusion to the celebrated
Exclusion Bill.