The new city had not risen from the ruins of the old, when a third
calamity overtook it. Charles was at war with France and Holland.
The contest with the latter nation grew out of the rivalry of the
English and the Dutch to get the exclusive possession of foreign trade
(S459). Parliament granted the King large sums of money to build and
equip a navy, but the pleasure-loving monarch wasted it in
dissipation. The few ships he had were rotten old hulks, but half
provisioned, with crews ready to mutiny because they could not get
their pay.
A Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames. It was manned in part by English
sailors who had deserted in disgust because when they asked for cash
to support their families they got only worthless government tickets.
There was no force to oppose them. They burned some half-built
men-of-war, blockaded London for several weeks, and then made their
own terms of peace.
476. The "Cabal" (1667-1673); Treaty of Dover, 1670; the King robs the
Exchequer (1672).
Shortly after this humiliating event the enemies of Clarendon drove
him from office (S471). The fallen minister was accused of high
treason. He had been guilty of certain arbitrary acts, and, rather
than stand trial, he fled to France, and was banished for life. He
sent a humble petition to the Lords, but they promptly ordered the
hangman to burn it. Six years later the old man begged piteously that
he might "come back and die in his own coutnry and among his own
children." Charles refused to let him return, for Clarendon had
committed the unpardonable offense of daring to look "sourly" at the
vices of the King and his shameless companions flushed "with insolence
and wine." Charles now formed a new ministry or "Cabal,"[1]
consisting of five of his most intimate friends. Several of its
members were notorious for their depravity, and Macaulay calls it the
"most profligate administration ever known."[2] The chief object of
its leaders was to serve their own private interests by making the
King's power supreme. The "Cabal's" true spirit was not unlike that
of the council of the "infernal peers" which Milton portrays in
"Paradise Lost," first published at that time. There he shows us the
five princes of evil, Moloch, Belial, Mammon, Beelzebub, and Satan,
meeting in the palace of Pandemonium to plot the ruin of the world.[3]
he chief ambition of Charles was to rule without a Parliament; he did
not like to have that body inquire too closely how he spent the money
which the taxpayers granted him. But his lavish outlays on his
favorites made it more and more difficult for him to avoid summoning a
Parliament in order to get supplies of cash. At length he hit on a
plan for securing the funds he wanted without begging help from
Parliament.
[1] This word was originally used to designate the confidential
members of the King's private council, and meant perhaps no more than
the word "cabinet" does to-day. In 1667 it happened, however, by a
singular coincidence, that the initial letters of the five persons
comprising it, namely, (C)lifford, (A)shley-Cooper [Lord Shaftesbury],
(B)uckingham, (A)rlington, and (L)auderdale, formed the word "CABAL,"
which henceforth came to have the odious meaning of secret and
unscrupulous intrigue that it has ever since retained. It was to
Charles II's time what the political "ring" is to our own.
[2] Macaulay's "Essay on Sir William Temple."
[3] Milton's "Paradise Lost," Book II. The first edition was
published in 1667, the year the "Cabal" came into power, though its
members had long been favorites with the King. It has been supposed
by some that the great Puritan poet had them in his mind when he
represented the Pandemonic debate. Shaftesbury and Buckingham are
also two of the most prominent characters in Dryden's noted political
satire of "Absalom and Achitophel," published in 1681; and compare
Butler's "Hudibras."
Louis XIV of France, then the most powerful monarch in Europe, wished
to conquer Holland, with the double object of extending his own
kingdom and the power of Catholicism. He saw in Charles the tool he
wanted to gain this end. With the aid of two members of the "Cabal,"
Charles negotiated the secret Treaty of Dover, 1670. Thereby Louis
bribed the English King with a gift of 300,000 pounds to help him
carry out his scheme. Thus, without the knowledge of Parliament,
Charles deliberately sold himself to the French sovereign, who was
plotting to destroy the political liberty and Protestant faith of
Holland.
In addition to the above sum, it was furthermore agreed that Louis
should pay Charles a pension of 200,000 pounds a year from the date
when the latter should openly avow himself a Roman Catholic. Later
(1671), Charles made a sham treaty with Louis XIV in which the article
about his avowing himself a Catholic was omitted in order to deceive
Parliament.[1]
[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xix,
S21.
True to his infamous contract, Charles provoked a new war with the
Dutch, but found that he needed more money to prosecute it
successfully. Not knowing where to borrow, he determined to steal
it. Various London merchants, bankers, and also persons of moderate
means had lent to the government sums of money on promise of repayment
from the taxes.
A part of the national revenue amounting to about 1,300,000 pounds, a
sum equal to at least $10,000,000 now, had been deposited in the
exchequer, or government treasury, to meet the obligation. The King
seized this money,[2] partly for his needs, but chiefly to squander on
his vices, and to satisfy the insatiate demands of his favorites,--of
whom a single one, the Duchess of Portsmouth, had spent 136,000 pounds
within the space of a twelvemonth! The King's treacherous act caused a
financial panic which shook London to its foundatyions and ruined
great numbers of people.
[2] "`Rob me the Exchequer, Hal,' said the King to his favorite
minister in the `Cabal'; then `all went merry as a marriage
bell.'"--Evelyn's "Diary."