CHARLES II.—1660 to 1685.
How Richard Cromwell was Protector for a short time; how the
people chose to have a king again; how General Monk brought home
Charles the Second; how there was again a war with the Dutch; how
the great Plague was stopped by the great Fire; how the King chose
evil counsellors; how the Scotch and Irish were treated with great
cruelty; how the King caused Lord Russell and many more to be put to
death.
After Cromwell’s death his friends wished his son, Richard Cromwell,
to be Protector of England. But Richard, who was a shy, quiet man,
did not like it, and after a very short trial went home to his house
in the country, and left the people to do as they pleased about a
Protector.
But the people were tired of being governed by the army, even under
such a wise and clever man as Cromwell, and they chose to have a king
and real parliament again.
Most men were glad to have bishops again, and to be allowed to
have their own prayer-books and their own music in church, instead
of being forced to listen for hours together to sermons from the
Puritans, who called all pleasant things sin, and grudged even little
children their play-hours.
But the really wise people of all kinds, the English Protestants, the
Puritans, and the Roman Catholics, had another reason for being glad
the king was come home. I will try to explain this reason. You have
read that whenever there was any dispute about who should be king,
there was always a war of some kind, and generally the worst of all,
a civil war. Now, if the people had to choose who should be their new
king every time an old one dies, so many men would wish to be king,
that there would be disputes, and then perhaps war; and while the war
was going on there would be nobody to see that the laws were obeyed,
and all the mischief would happen that comes in civil wars.
Now in England, it is settled that when a king dies his eldest son
shall be king next; or if he has no son, that his nearest relation
shall be king or queen. You remember that after Edward the Sixth,
his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, were queens, and then their cousin,
James Stuart, was king. This rule prevents all disputes, and keeps
the kingdom quiet.
After Oliver Cromwell died, the wisest people were afraid there would
be war before another protector could be chosen, so they agreed to
have Charles, the son of Charles the First for their king, and to get
him to promise not to break the laws, or to oppress the people; and
they thought they would watch him, to prevent his doing wrong to the
country, and they hoped he might have a son to be king quietly after
him.
General Monk, who had the care of all Scotland in Cromwell’s time,
was the person who contrived all the plans for bringing Charles the
Second to England. It was done very quietly. An English fleet went
to Scheveling, in Holland, where Charles got on board, and landed at
Dover: in a very short time he arrived in London, along with General
Monk, on his birth-day, the 29th of May, and England has never been
without a king or queen since.
Charles was a merry, cheerful man, and very good natured. He was fond
of balls, and plays, and masques, and nobody could have thought that
England was the same place, who had seen it in Cromwell’s time. Then,
people wore plain black or brown clothes, stiff starched cravats or
small collars, their hair combed straight down, and they all looked
as grave as if they were walking to a funeral.
But when Charles came, the ladies and gentlemen put on gay-coloured
silk and satin coats; they wore ribbons and feathers, and long curly
wigs, and danced and sang as if they were at a wedding.
However, while Charles and the young men were so gay, there were a
few old wise lawyers, and clergymen, and admirals, and generals, who
managed the laws and other business very well, although there were a
good many people who were sadly vexed to see a king again in England.
[Illustration: King Charles II. enters London at his Restoration.]
The king soon married the Princess Catherine of Portugal, and her
father gave her the island of Bombay, in the East Indies, as a
wedding gift. It was almost the first place the English had in India,
and now we have gained nearly all that large country, which is
larger than England, and France, and Portugal, all put together.
While Charles the Second was king, there was a war with Holland, and
another short one with France. Our battles with Holland were chiefly
fought at sea: one of our best admirals was James, Duke of York, the
king’s brother, who beat the Dutch admirals, Opdam, and the son of
the famous Tromp. In another great battle, which lasted four days,
General Monk, whom the king had made Duke of Albemarle, beat the
great Admiral de Ruyter, and other English officers took several good
towns which the Dutch had built in North America, especially New York.
Pleased with these victories, the king grew careless, and forgot to
have the Dutch fleets properly watched, so one of them sailed into
the river Medway, and burnt a number of English ships at Chatham, and
did more mischief by landing at different places, and burning ships
and houses, than had ever been done in the same way since the days of
the old Danes.
This was near the end of the war. The English, Dutch, and French were
equally glad to make peace.
The plague now broke out, first in Holland, then in England. Hundreds
of people died every day, and it seemed shocking to be killing more
men when so many were dying of that dreadful disorder.
Often when people did not know they had the plague they dropped down
dead in the streets. Sometimes a friend would be talking to another
and seem quite well and merry, and in a minute he would feel sick,
and die before he could get home. Sometimes everybody in a house
would die, and then the grave diggers had to go and get the dead
out of the house, and put them in a cart at night, and carry them to
a place near London, where a great grave was dug, so big that many
hundred people were buried there together. Sometimes a poor mother
would follow the dead-cart crying because all her children were in
it, and she had nobody left alive to love. And often little children
were found almost starved, because their fathers and mothers were
dead and there was nobody to feed them. There was one lady whose
name was North, who had a very little baby; that baby caught the
plague. The mother sent all her other children, and her servants, and
everybody else into the country, and stayed by herself with the baby
and nursed him, and would not fear the plague while she was watching
her sick child; and it pleased God to save her and the child too. I
have read what he says of his dear mother’s love to him, in a book he
wrote when he was an oldish man; and I think that the love he always
kept for his mother, and the remembrance of her kindness, made him a
good man all his life.
This sad plague was put an end to by a dreadful fire, which burnt
down a great part of London. It lasted for four days; and though
everybody tried to put an end to it, it still burned on, for there
was a strong wind, which blew the flames from one house to another.
At that time the streets were very narrow, and most of the houses
were built of wood, so no wonder they burned fiercely.
But good arose from this evil: when London was built again the
streets were made wider, and the houses were built of brick and
stone, so they were not so apt to burn, and they could be kept
cleaner; and as the plague seldom comes to clean places, it has
never been in London since the fire.
But now we must think about the king. Though he was a very merry man,
he was far from being a good one. In the first part of his reign
he listened to good advice, especially that given to him by Lord
Clarendon, who had stayed with him all the time he was unhappy and
poor, and while he was forced to live out of England. But it was not
long before he neglected all the good and old friends of his father
or of the people, and began to keep company with a number of gay men,
who were always laughing and making jokes when they were seen; but
they gave the king bad advice in secret, and when they were trusted
by him they behaved so ill to the people, that if it had not been for
fear of another civil war, they would have tried to send Charles out
of England again.
The Duke of Lauderdale, one of Charles’s greatest friends, was sent
to Scotland to govern it for Charles. Perhaps there never was so
cruel and wicked a governor anywhere before. He ordered everybody
to use the English prayer-book, and to leave off their own ways of
worshipping God, and to change their prayers. And when he found any
persons who did not, he had them shot or hanged at their own doors;
and what was worse, if anybody would not tell where the people he
wanted to shoot or to hang were to be found, he would put them in
prison, or torture them by putting their legs in wooden cases, and
then hammering them so tight that the bones were broken; and this he
did to children for saving their fathers and mothers, or to grown
people for saving their children, or brothers, or sisters. I am sorry
to say that another Scotchman, John Graham of Claverhouse, was his
helper in all this wickedness.
Scotland was therefore very miserable under Charles, and you will
read in larger histories that the Scotch rebelled, and fought against
the king.
Ireland was treated, if possible, worse; and as to England, several
parts were ready to rebel, especially when it came to be known that
Charles and his four chief friends were so mean as to take money from
the King of France to pay Charles for letting him conquer several
other countries that England ought to have saved from him.
The king’s brother, James, Duke of York, was known to approve of
all the king’s cruel and wicked actions; so that the English people
found, after all they had suffered in hopes of getting back their
freedom, that Charles the Second wished as much to take it away as
his father and grandfather did.
I do not wonder, therefore, that some wise, and good, and clever
men, who loved our dear England as they ought to do, met together
to talk about the best means of having proper parliaments again,
and preventing the cruel king from treating England, Scotland, and
Ireland, so harshly.
One of these good men was William Lord Russell; and another was
Algernon Sidney. The king and his wicked friends found out that they
were considering how to save the country from the bad government of
Charles and James. They took Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, and
put them in prison, and shortly after condemned them to have their
heads cut off.
Lord Russell’s wife was one of the best women I ever read about.
She went and knelt down at Charles’s feet to beg him to spare her
husband. She even tried to save him by offering a great deal of
money to the greedy king; but he would not save Lord Russell, and
when Lady Russell found her dear husband must die, she attended him
like a servant, she wrote for him like a clerk, she comforted him
as none but a good wife can comfort a great man in his misfortunes;
and after his death she brought up his children to know his goodness
and try to be like him. The man who attended most to Lord and Lady
Russell at that time was Bishop Burnet, who has written a true
history of those things. He tells us that after Lord Russell had
taken leave of his wife, he said, “The bitterness of death is past.”
Lord Cavendish, a friend of Lord Russell’s, offered to save him by
changing clothes with him, but Lord Russell refused, lest his friend
should be punished for saving him. He behaved as an Englishman ought
to do at his death, with courage, with gentleness to those people who
were with him, even to the man who was to cut off his head, and with
meekness and piety to God.
Algernon Sidney, who, though he wished for freedom, took money from
the King of France, was the next man put to death by King Charles,
and after him a great many who were either his friends or Lord
Russell’s.
These were almost the last crimes Charles had time to commit. He died
suddenly, disliked by most of his people, and that by his own fault.
As I told you, they were ready to love him when he first came to be
king; but his extravagance and harshness soon changed their love into
dislike.