CHAPTER II.

THE history of England, during the seventeenth century, is the history

of the transformation of a limited monarchy, constituted after the

fashion of the middle ages, into a limited monarchy suited to that more

advanced state of society in which the public charges can no longer be

borne by the estates of the crown, and in which the public defence

can no longer be entrusted to a feudal militia. We have seen that the

politicians who were at the head of the Long Parliament made, in 1642,

a great effort to accomplish this change by transferring, directly

and formally, to the estates of the realm the choice of ministers, the

command of the army, and the superintendence of the whole executive

administration. This scheme was, perhaps, the best that could then be

contrived: but it was completely disconcerted by the course which the

civil war took. The Houses triumphed, it is true; but not till after

such a struggle as made it necessary for them to call into existence

a power which they could not control, and which soon began to domineer

over all orders and all parties: During a few years, the evils

inseparable from military government were, in some degree, mitigated

by the wisdom and magnanimity of the great man who held the supreme

command. But, when the sword, which he had wielded, with energy indeed,

but with energy always guided by good sense and generally tempered by

good nature, had passed to captains who possessed neither his abilities

nor his virtues. It seemed too probable that order and liberty would

perish in one ignominious ruin.

That ruin was happily averted. It has been too much the practice of

writers zealous for freedom to represent the Restoration as a disastrous

event, and to condemn the folly or baseness of that Convention, which

recalled the royal family without exacting new securities against

maladministration. Those who hold this language do not comprehend the

real nature of the crisis which followed the deposition of Richard

Cromwell. England was in imminent danger of falling under the tyranny of

a succession of small men raised up and pulled down by military caprice.

To deliver the country from the domination of the soldiers was the first

object of every enlightened patriot: but it was an object which, while

the soldiers were united, the most sanguine could scarcely expect to

attain. On a sudden a gleam of hope appeared. General was opposed to

general, army to army. On the use which might be made of one auspicious

moment depended the future destiny of the nation. Our ancestors used

that moment well. They forgot old injuries, waved petty scruples,

adjourned to a more convenient season all dispute about the reforms

which our institutions needed, and stood together, Cavaliers and

Roundheads, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, in firm union, for the

old laws of the land against military despotism. The exact partition of

power among King, Lords, and Commons might well be postponed till it

had been decided whether England should be governed by King, Lords,

and Commons, or by cuirassiers and pikemen. Had the statesmen of the

Convention taken a different course, had they held long debates on the

principles of government, had they drawn up a new constitution and sent

it to Charles, had conferences been opened, had couriers been passing

and repassing during some weeks between Westminster and the Netherlands,

with projects and counterprojects, replies by Hyde and rejoinders by

Prynne, the coalition on which the public safety depended would have

been dissolved: the Presbyterians and Royalists would certainly have

quarrelled: the military factions might possibly have been reconciled;

and the misjudging friends of liberty might long have regretted, under

a rule worse than that of the worst Stuart, the golden opportunity which

had been suffered to escape.

The old civil polity was, therefore, by the general consent of both the

great parties, reestablished. It was again exactly what it had been when

Charles the First, eighteen years before, withdrew from his capital. All

those acts of the Long Parliament which had received the royal assent

were admitted to be still in full force. One fresh concession, a

concession in which the Cavaliers were even more deeply interested than

the Roundheads, was easily obtained from the restored King. The military

tenure of land had been originally created as a means of national

defence. But in the course of ages whatever was useful in the

institution had disappeared; and nothing was left but ceremonies and

grievances. A landed proprietor who held an estate under the crown by

knight service,--and it was thus that most of the soil of England was

held,--had to pay a large fine on coming to his property. He could not

alienate one acre without purchasing a license. When he died, if his

domains descended to an infant, the sovereign was guardian, and was not

only entitled to great part of the rents during the minority, but could

require the ward, under heavy penalties, to marry any person of suitable

rank. The chief bait which attracted a needy sycophant to the court was

the hope of obtaining as the reward of servility and flattery, a royal

letter to an heiress. These abuses had perished with the monarchy. That

they should not revive with it was the wish of every landed gentleman in

the kingdom. They were, therefore, solemnly abolished by statute; and

no relic of the ancient tenures in chivalry was allowed to remain except

those honorary services which are still, at a coronation, rendered to

the person of the sovereign by some lords of manors.

The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men, accustomed to

the profession of arms, were at once thrown on the world: and experience

seemed to warrant the belief that this change would produce much misery

and crime, that the discharged veterans would be seen begging in every

street, or that they would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no such

result followed. In a few months there remained not a trace indicating

that the most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed into

the mass of the community. The Royalists themselves confessed that, in

every department of honest industry the discarded warriors prospered

beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery,

that none was heard to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a

waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all

probability one of Oliver's old soldiers.

The military tyranny had passed away; but it had left deep and enduring

traces in the public mind. The name of standing army was long held in

abhorrence: and it is remarkable that this feeling was even stronger

among the Cavaliers than among the Roundheads. It ought to be considered

as a most fortunate circumstance that, when our country was, for the

first and last time, ruled by the sword, the sword was in the hands,

not of legitimate princes, but of those rebels who slew the King and

demolished the Church. Had a prince with a title as good as that of

Charles, commanded an army as good as that of Cromwell, there would

have been little hope indeed for the liberties of England. Happily that

instrument by which alone the monarchy could be made absolute became an

object of peculiar horror and disgust to the monarchical party, and long

continued to be inseparably associated in the imagination of Royalists

and Prelatists with regicide and field preaching. A century after the

death of Cromwell, the Tories still continued to clamour against every

augmentation of the regular soldiery, and to sound the praise of a

national militia. So late as the year 1786, a minister who enjoyed no

common measure of their confidence found it impossible to overcome their

aversion to his scheme of fortifying the coast: nor did they ever look

with entire complacency on the standing army, till the French Revolution

gave a new direction to their apprehensions.

The coalition which had restored the King terminated with the danger

from which it had sprung; and two hostile parties again appeared

ready for conflict. Both, indeed, were agreed as to the propriety of

inflicting punishment on some unhappy men who were, at that moment,

objects of almost universal hatred. Cromwell was no more; and those who

had fled before him were forced to content themselves with the miserable

satisfaction of digging up, hanging, quartering, and burning the remains

of the greatest prince that has ever ruled England.

Other objects of vengeance, few indeed, yet too many, were found among

the republican chiefs. Soon, however, the conquerors, glutted with the

blood of the regicides, turned against each other. The Roundheads,

while admitting the virtues of the late King, and while condemning the

sentence passed upon him by an illegal tribunal, yet maintained that his

administration had been, in many things, unconstitutional, and that

the Houses had taken arms against him from good motives and on strong

grounds. The monarchy, these politicians conceived, had no worse enemy

than the flatterer who exalted prerogative above the law, who condemned

all opposition to regal encroachments, and who reviled, not only

Cromwell and Harrison, but Pym and Hampden, as traitors. If the King

wished for a quiet and prosperous reign, he must confide in those who,

though they had drawn the sword in defence of the invaded privileges of

Parliament, had yet exposed themselves to the rage of the soldiers in

order to save his father, and had taken the chief part in bringing back

the royal family.

The feeling of the Cavaliers was widely different. During eighteen years

they had, through all vicissitudes, been faithful to the Crown. Having

shared the distress of their prince, were they not to share his triumph?

Was no distinction to be made between them and the disloyal subject who

had fought against his rightful sovereign, who had adhered to Richard

Cromwell, and who had never concurred in the restoration of the Stuarts,

till it appeared that nothing else could save the nation from the

tyranny of the army? Grant that such a man had, by his recent services,

fairly earned his pardon. Yet were his services, rendered at the

eleventh hour, to be put in comparison with the toils and sufferings of

those who had borne the burden and heat of the day? Was he to be ranked

with men who had no need of the royal clemency, with men who had, in

every part of their lives, merited the royal gratitude? Above all, was

he to be suffered to retain a fortune raised out of the substance of the

ruined defenders of the throne? Was it not enough that his head and his

patrimonial estate, a hundred times forfeited to justice, were secure,

and that he shared, with the rest of the nation, in the blessings of

that mild government of which he had long been the foe? Was it necessary

that he should be rewarded for his treason at the expense of men whose

only crime was the fidelity with which they had observed their oath of

allegiance. And what interest had the King in gorging his old enemies

with prey torn from his old friends? What confidence could be placed in

men who had opposed their sovereign, made war on him, imprisoned him,

and who, even now, instead of hanging down their heads in shame and

contrition, vindicated all that they had done, and seemed to think that

they had given an illustrious proof of loyalty by just stopping short of

regicide? It was true they had lately assisted to set up the throne: but

it was not less true that they had previously pulled it down, and that

they still avowed principles which might impel them to pull it down

again. Undoubtedly it might be fit that marks of royal approbation

should be bestowed on some converts who had been eminently useful: but

policy, as well as justice and gratitude, enjoined the King to give the

highest place in his regard to those who, from first to last, through

good and evil, had stood by his house. On these grounds the Cavaliers

very naturally demanded indemnity for all that they had suffered, and

preference in the distribution of the favours of the Crown. Some violent

members of the party went further, and clamoured for large categories of

proscription.

The political feud was, as usual, exasperated by a religious feud.

The King found the Church in a singular state. A short time before the

commencement of the civil war, his father had given a reluctant assent

to a bill, strongly supported by Falkland, which deprived the Bishops

of their seats in the House of Lords: but Episcopacy and the Liturgy had

never been abolished by law. The Long Parliament, however, had passed

ordinances which had made a complete revolution in Church government

and in public worship. The new system was, in principle, scarcely less

Erastian than that which it displaced. The Houses, guided chiefly by

the counsels of the accomplished Selden, had determined to keep the

spiritual power strictly subordinate to the temporal power. They had

refused to declare that any form of ecclesiastical polity was of divine

origin; and they had provided that, from all the Church courts, an

appeal should lie in the last resort to Parliament. With this highly

important reservation, it had been resolved to set up in England a

hierarchy closely resembling that which now exists in Scotland. The

authority of councils, rising one above another in regular gradation,

was substituted for the authority of Bishops and Archbishops. The

Liturgy gave place to the Presbyterian Directory. But scarcely had

the new regulations been framed, when the Independents rose to supreme

influence in the state. The Independents had no disposition to enforce

the ordinances touching classical, provincial, and national synods.

Those ordinances, therefore, were never carried into full execution. The

Presbyterian system was fully established nowhere but in Middlesex and

Lancashire. In the other fifty counties almost every parish seems to

have been unconnected with the neighbouring parishes. In some districts,

indeed, the ministers formed themselves into voluntary associations, for

the purpose of mutual help and counsel; but these associations had no

coercive power. The patrons of livings, being now checked by neither

Bishop nor Presbytery, would have been at liberty to confide the cure

of souls to the most scandalous of mankind, but for the arbitrary

intervention of Oliver. He established, by his own authority, a board

of commissioners, called Triers. Most of these persons were Independent

divines; but a few Presbyterian ministers and a few laymen had seats.

The certificate of the Triers stood in the place both of institution

and of induction; and without such a certificate no person could hold a

benefice. This was undoubtedly one of the most despotic acts ever done

by any English ruler. Yet, as it was generally felt that, without some

such precaution, the country would be overrun by ignorant and drunken

reprobates, bearing the name and receiving the pay of ministers,

some highly respectable persons, who were not in general friendly

to Cromwell, allowed that, on this occasion, he had been a public

benefactor. The presentees whom the Triers had approved took possession

of the rectories, cultivated the glebe lands, collected the tithes,

prayed without book or surplice, and administered the Eucharist to

communicants seated at long tables.

Thus the ecclesiastical polity of the realm was in inextricable

confusion. Episcopacy was the form of government prescribed by the old

law which was still unrepealed. The form of government prescribed by

parliamentary ordinance was Presbyterian. But neither the old law

nor the parliamentary ordinance was practically in force. The Church

actually established may be described as an irregular body made up of a

few Presbyteries and many Independent congregations, which were all held

down and held together by the authority of the government.

Of those who had been active in bringing back the King, many were

zealous for Synods and for the Directory, and many were desirous to

terminate by a compromise the religious dissensions which had long

agitated England. Between the bigoted followers of Laud and the bigoted

followers of Knox there could be neither peace nor truce: but it did

not seem impossible to effect an accommodation between the moderate

Episcopalians of the school of Usher and the moderate Presbyterians

of the school of Baxter. The moderate Episcopalians would admit that

a Bishop might lawfully be assisted by a council. The moderate

Presbyterians would not deny that each provincial assembly might

lawfully have a permanent president, and that this president might

lawfully be called a Bishop. There might be a revised Liturgy which

should not exclude extemporaneous prayer, a baptismal service in

which the sign of the cross might be used or omitted at discretion, a

communion service at which the faithful might sit if their conscience

forbade them to kneel. But to no such plan could the great bodies of the

Cavaliers listen with patience. The religious members of that party were

conscientiously attached to the whole system of their Church. She had

been dear to their murdered King. She had consoled them in defeat and

penury. Her service, so often whispered in an inner chamber during the

season of trial, had such a charm for them that they were unwilling to

part with a single response. Other Royalists, who made little presence

to piety, yet loved the episcopal church because she was the foe of

their foes. They valued a prayer or a ceremony, not on account of the

comfort which it conveyed to themselves, but on account of the vexation

which it gave to the Roundheads, and were so far from being disposed to

purchase union by concession that they objected to concession chiefly

because it tended to produce union.

Such feelings, though blamable, were natural, and not wholly

inexcusable. The Puritans had undoubtedly, in the day of their power,

given cruel provocation. They ought to have learned, if from nothing

else, yet from their own discontents, from their own struggles, from

their own victory, from the fall of that proud hierarchy by which they

had been so heavily oppressed, that, in England, and in the seventeenth

century, it was not in the power of the civil magistrate to drill the

minds of men into conformity with his own system of theology. They

proved, however, as intolerant and as meddling as ever Laud had been.

They interdicted under heavy penalties the use of the Book of Common

Prayer, not only in churches, but even in private houses. It was a

crime in a child to read by the bedside of a sick parent one of those

beautiful collects which had soothed the griefs of forty generations

of Christians. Severe punishments were denounced against such as

should presume to blame the Calvinistic mode of worship. Clergymen of

respectable character were not only ejected from their benefices by

thousands, but were frequently exposed to the outrages of a fanatical

rabble. Churches and sepulchres, fine works of art and curious remains

of antiquity, were brutally defaced. The Parliament resolved that all

pictures in the royal collection which contained representations of

Jesus or of the Virgin Mother should be burned. Sculpture fared as

ill as painting. Nymphs and Graces, the work of Ionian chisels, were

delivered over to Puritan stonemasons to be made decent. Against the

lighter vices the ruling faction waged war with a zeal little tempered

by humanity or by common sense. Sharp laws were passed against betting.

It was enacted that adultery should be punished with death. The illicit

intercourse of the sexes, even where neither violence nor seduction was

imputed, where no public scandal was given, where no conjugal right was

violated, was made a misdemeanour. Public amusements, from the masques

which were exhibited at the mansions of the great down to the wrestling

matches and grinning matches on village greens, were vigorously

attacked. One ordinance directed that all the Maypoles in England should

forthwith be hewn down. Another proscribed all theatrical diversions.

The playhouses were to be dismantled, the spectators fined, the

actors whipped at the cart's tail. Rope-dancing, puppet-shows, bowls,

horse-racing, were regarded with no friendly eye. But bearbaiting, then

a favourite diversion of high and low, was the abomination which

most strongly stirred the wrath of the austere sectaries. It is to be

remarked that their antipathy to this sport had nothing in common with

the feeling which has, in our own time, induced the legislature to

interfere for the purpose of protecting beasts against the wanton

cruelty of men. The Puritan hated bearbaiting, not because it gave pain

to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Indeed,

he generally contrived to enjoy the double pleasure of tormenting both

spectators and bear. [16]

Perhaps no single circumstance more strongly illustrates the temper of

the precisians than their conduct respecting Christmas day. Christmas

had been, from time immemorial, the season of joy and domestic

affection, the season when families assembled, when children came home

from school, when quarrels were made up, when carols were heard in every

street, when every house was decorated with evergreens, and every

table was loaded with good cheer. At that season all hearts not utterly

destitute of kindness were enlarged and softened. At that season the

poor were admitted to partake largely of the overflowings of the wealth

of the rich, whose bounty was peculiarly acceptable on account of

the shortness of the days and of the severity of the weather. At that

season, the interval between landlord and tenant, master and servant,

was less marked than through the rest of the year. Where there is much

enjoyment there will be some excess: yet, on the whole, the spirit in

which the holiday was kept was not unworthy of a Christian festival. The

long Parliament gave orders, in 1644, that the twenty-fifth of December

should be strictly observed as a fast, and that all men should pass it

in humbly bemoaning the great national sin which they and their fathers

had so often committed on that day by romping under the mistletoe,

eating boar's head, and drinking ale flavored with roasted apples. No

public act of that time seems to have irritated the common people more.

On the next anniversary of the festival formidable riots broke out in

many places. The constables were resisted, the magistrates insulted, the

houses of noted zealots attacked, and the prescribed service of the day

openly read in the churches.

Such was the spirit of the extreme Puritans, both Presbyterian and

Independent. Oliver, indeed, was little disposed to be either

a persecutor or a meddler. But Oliver, the head of a party, and

consequently, to a great extent, the slave of a party, could not

govern altogether according to his own inclinations. Even under his

administration many magistrates, within their own jurisdiction, made

themselves as odious as Sir Hudibras, interfered with all the pleasures

of the neighbourhood, dispersed festive meetings, and put fiddlers in

the stocks. Still more formidable was the zeal of the soldiers. In every

village where they appeared there was an end of dancing, bellringing,

and hockey. In London they several times interrupted theatrical

performances at which the Protector had the judgment and good nature to

connive.

With the fear and hatred inspired by such a tyranny contempt was largely

mingled. The peculiarities of the Puritan, his look, his dress,

his dialect, his strange scruples, had been, ever since the time of

Elizabeth, favourite subjects with mockers. But these peculiarities

appeared far more grotesque in a faction which ruled a great empire

than in obscure and persecuted congregations. The cant, which had moved

laughter when it was heard on the stage from Tribulation Wholesome and

Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, was still more laughable when it proceeded from

the lips of Generals and Councillors of State. It is also to be noticed

that during the civil troubles several sects had sprung into existence,

whose eccentricities surpassed anything that had before been seen in

England. A mad tailor, named Lodowick Muggleton, wandered from pothouse

to pothouse, tippling ale, and denouncing eternal torments against those

who refused to believe, on his testimony, that the Supreme Being was

only six feet high, and that the sun was just four miles from the earth.

[17] George Fox had raised a tempest of derision by proclaiming that it

was a violation of Christian sincerity to designate a single person by a

plural pronoun, and that it was an idolatrous homage to Janus and Woden

to talk about January and Wednesday. His doctrine, a few years later,

was embraced by some eminent men, and rose greatly in the public

estimation. But at the time of the Restoration the Quakers were

popularly regarded as the most despicable of fanatics. By the Puritans

they were treated with severity here, and were persecuted to the

death in New England. Nevertheless the public, which seldom makes nice

distinctions, often confounded the Puritan with the Quaker. Both were

schismatics. Both hated episcopacy and the Liturgy. Both had what seemed

extravagant whimsies about dress, diversions and postures. Widely as the

two differed in opinion, they were popularly classed together as canting

schismatics; and whatever was ridiculous or odious in either increased

the scorn and aversion which the multitude felt for both.

Before the civil wars, even those who most disliked the opinions and

manners of the Puritan were forced to admit that his moral conduct was

generally, in essentials, blameless; but this praise was now no longer

bestowed, and, unfortunately, was no longer deserved. The general fate

of sects is to obtain a high reputation for sanctity while they are

oppressed, and to lose it as soon as they become powerful: and the

reason is obvious. It is seldom that a man enrolls himself in a

proscribed body from any but conscientious motives. Such a body,

therefore, is composed, with scarcely an exception, of sincere persons.

The most rigid discipline that can be enforced within a religious

society is a very feeble instrument of purification, when compared with

a little sharp persecution from without. We may be certain that very few

persons, not seriously impressed by religious convictions, applied for

baptism while Diocletian was vexing the Church, or joined themselves

to Protestant congregations at the risk of being burned by Bonner. But,

when a sect becomes powerful, when its favour is the road to riches and

dignities, worldly and ambitious men crowd into it, talk its language,

conform strictly to its ritual, mimic its peculiarities, and frequently

go beyond its honest members in all the outward indications of zeal. No

discernment, no watchfulness, on the part of ecclesiastical rulers, can

prevent the intrusion of such false brethren. The tares and wheat must

grow together. Soon the world begins to find out that the godly are

not better than other men, and argues, with some justice, that, if not

better, they must be much worse. In no long time all those signs which

were formerly regarded as characteristic of a saint are regarded as

characteristic of a knave.

Thus it was with the English Nonconformists. They had been oppressed;

and oppression had kept them a pure body. They then became supreme in

the state. No man could hope to rise to eminence and command but by

their favour. Their favour was to be gained only by exchanging with

them the signs and passwords of spiritual fraternity. One of the

first resolutions adopted by Barebone's Parliament, the most intensely

Puritanical of all our political assemblies, was that no person should

be admitted into the public service till the House should be satisfied

of his real godliness. What were then considered as the signs of real

godliness, the sadcoloured dress, the sour look, the straight hair,

the nasal whine, the speech interspersed with quaint texts, the Sunday,

gloomy as a Pharisaical Sabbath, were easily imitated by men to whom all

religions were the same. The sincere Puritans soon found themselves lost

in a multitude, not merely of men of the world, but of the very worst

sort of men of the world. For the most notorious libertine who had

fought under the royal standard might justly be thought virtuous

when compared with some of those who, while they talked about sweet

experiences and comfortable scriptures, lived in the constant practice

of fraud, rapacity, and secret debauchery. The people, with a rashness

which we may justly lament, but at which we cannot wonder, formed their

estimate of the whole body from these hypocrites. The theology, the

manners, the dialect of the Puritan were thus associated in the public

mind with the darkest and meanest vices. As soon as the Restoration

had made it safe to avow enmity to the party which had so long been

predominant, a general outcry against Puritanism rose from every corner

of the kingdom, and was often swollen by the voices of those very

dissemblers whose villany had brought disgrace on the Puritan name.

Thus the two great parties, which, after a long contest, had for a

moment concurred in restoring monarchy, were, both in politics and in

religion, again opposed to each other. The great body of the nation

leaned to the Royalists. The crimes of Strafford and Laud, the excesses

of the Star Chamber and of the High Commission, the great services

which the Long Parliament had, during the first year of its existence,

rendered to the state, had faded from the minds of men. The execution of

Charles the First, the sullen tyranny of the Rump, the violence of the

army, were remembered with loathing; and the multitude was inclined to

hold all who had withstood the late King responsible for his death and

for the subsequent disasters.

The House of Commons, having been elected while the Presbyterians were

dominant, by no means represented the general sense of the people. Most

of the members, while execrating Cromwell and Bradshaw, reverenced the

memory of Essex and of Pym. One sturdy Cavalier, who ventured to declare

that all who had drawn the sword against Charles the First were as much

traitors as those who kind cut off his head, was called to order, placed

at the bar, and reprimanded by the Speaker. The general wish of the

House undoubtedly was to settle the ecclesiastical disputes in a manner

satisfactory to the moderate Puritans. But to such a settlement both the

court and the nation were averse.

The restored King was at this time more loved by the people than any of

his predecessors had ever been. The calamities of his house, the heroic

death of his father, his own long sufferings and romantic adventures,

made him an object of tender interest. His return had delivered the

country from an intolerable bondage. Recalled by the voice of both the

contending factions, he was in a position which enabled him to arbitrate

between them; and in some respects he was well qualified for the task.

He had received from nature excellent parts and a happy temper. His

education had been such as might have been expected to develope his

understanding, and to form him to the practice of every public and

private virtue. He had passed through all varieties of fortune, and had

seen both sides of human nature. He had, while very young, been driven

forth from a palace to a life of exile. penury, and danger. He had, at

the age when the mind and body are in their highest perfection, and when

the first effervescence of boyish passions should have subsided, been

recalled from his wanderings to wear a crown. He had been taught by

bitter experience how much baseness, perfidy, and ingratitude may lie

hid under the obsequious demeanor of courtiers. He had found, on the

other hand, in the huts of the poorest, true nobility of soul. When

wealth was offered to any who would betray him, when death was denounced

against all who should shelter him, cottagers and serving men had kept

his secret truly, and had kissed his hand under his mean disguises with

as much reverence as if he had been seated on his ancestral throne. From

such a school it might have been expected that a young man who wanted

neither abilities nor amiable qualities would have come forth a great

and good King. Charles came forth from that school with social habits,

with polite and engaging manners, and with some talent for lively

conversation, addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond of

sauntering and of frivolous amusements, incapable of selfdenial and of

exertion, without faith in human virtue or in human attachment without

desire of renown, and without sensibility to reproach. According to him,

every person was to be bought: but some people haggled more about their

price than others; and when this haggling was very obstinate and very

skilful it was called by some fine name. The chief trick by which clever

men kept up the price of their abilities was called integrity. The chief

trick by which handsome women kept up the price of their beauty was

called modesty. The love of God, the love of country, the love of

family, the love of friends, were phrases of the same sort, delicate

and convenient synonymes for the love of self. Thinking thus of mankind,

Charles naturally cared very little what they thought of him. Honour and

shame were scarcely more to him than light and darkness to the blind.

His contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems, when

viewed in connection with the rest of his character, to deserve no

commendation. It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it.

One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value

real glory will not value its counterfeit.

It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought of his

species, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little in men but what

was hateful. Yet he did not hate them. Nay, he was so far humane that it

was highly disagreeable to him to see their sufferings or to hear their

complaints. This, however, is a sort of humanity which, though amiable

and laudable in a private man whose power to help or hurt is bounded by

a narrow circle, has in princes often been rather a vice than a virtue.

More than one well disposed ruler has given up whole provinces to rapine

and oppression, merely from a wish to see none but happy faces round his

own board and in his own walks. No man is fit to govern great societies

who hesitates about disobliging the few who have access to him, for the

sake of the many whom he will never see. The facility of Charles was

such as has perhaps never been found in any man of equal sense. He was a

slave without being a dupe. Worthless men and women, to the very bottom

of whose hearts he saw, and whom he knew to be destitute of affection

for him and undeserving of his confidence, could easily wheedle him out

of titles, places, domains, state secrets and pardons. He bestowed

much; yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired the fame of

beneficence. He never gave spontaneously; but it was painful to him to

refuse. The consequence was that his bounty generally went, not to those

who deserved it best, nor even to those whom he liked best, but to the

most shameless and importunate suitor who could obtain an audience.

The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles the Second

differed widely from those by which his predecessor and his successor

were actuated. He was not a man to be imposed upon by the patriarchal

theory of government and the doctrine of divine right. He was utterly

without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated

his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the

administration. Such was his aversion to toil, and such his ignorance of

affairs, that the very clerks who attended him when he sate in council

could not refrain from sneering at his frivolous remarks, and at his

childish impatience. Neither gratitude nor revenge had any share

in determining his course; for never was there a mind on which both

services and injuries left such faint and transitory impressions.

He wished merely to be a King such as Lewis the Fifteenth of France

afterwards was; a King who could draw without limit on the treasury for

the gratification of his private tastes, who could hire with wealth and

honours persons capable of assisting him to kill the time, and who,

even when the state was brought by maladministration to the depths of

humiliation and to the brink of ruin, could still exclude unwelcome

truth from the purlieus of his own seraglio, and refuse to see and hear

whatever might disturb his luxurious repose. For these ends, and for

these ends alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could

be obtained without risk or trouble. In the religious disputes

which divided his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at all

interested. For his opinions oscillated in contented suspense between

infidelity and Popery. But, though his conscience was neutral in the

quarrel between the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians, his taste was

by no means so. His favourite vices were precisely those to which the

Puritans were least indulgent. He could not get through one day without

the help of diversions which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As a man

eminently well bred, and keenly sensible of the ridiculous, he was moved

to contemptuous mirth by the Puritan oddities. He had indeed some reason

to dislike the rigid sect. He had, at the age when the passions are

most impetuous and when levity is most pardonable, spent some months in

Scotland, a King in name, but in fact a state prisoner in the hands

of austere Presbyterians. Not content with requiring him to conform to

their worship and to subscribe their Covenant, they had watched all

his motions, and lectured him on all his youthful follies. He had been

compelled to give reluctant attendance at endless prayers and sermons,

and might think himself fortunate when he was not insolently reminded

from the pulpit of his own frailties, of his father's tyranny, and of

his mother's idolatry. Indeed he had been so miserable during this part

of his life that the defeat which made him again a wanderer might be

regarded as a deliverance rather than as a calamity. Under the influence

of such feelings as these Charles was desirous to depress the party

which had resisted his father.

The King's brother, James Duke of York, took the same side. Though a

libertine, James was diligent, methodical, and fond of authority and

business. His understanding was singularly slow and narrow, and his

temper obstinate, harsh, and unforgiving. That such a prince should have

looked with no good will on the free institutions of England, and on the

party which was peculiarly zealous for those institutions, can excite

no surprise. As yet the Duke professed himself a member of the Anglican

Church but he had already shown inclinations which had seriously alarmed

good Protestants.

The person on whom devolved at this time the greatest part of the labour

of governing was Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the realm, who was soon

created Earl of Clarendon. The respect which we justly feel for

Clarendon as a writer must not blind us to the faults which he committed

as a statesman. Some of those faults, however, are explained and excused

by the unfortunate position in which he stood. He had, during the first

year of the Long Parliament, been honourably distinguished among the

senators who laboured to redress the grievances of the nation. One

of the most odious of those grievances, the Council of York, had been

removed in consequence chiefly of his exertions. When the great schism

took place, when the reforming party and the conservative party first

appeared marshalled against each other, he, with many wise and good men,

took the conservative side. He thenceforward followed the fortunes of

the court, enjoyed as large a share of the confidence of Charles the

First as the reserved nature and tortuous policy of that prince allowed

to any minister, and subsequently shared the exile and directed the

political conduct of Charles the Second. At the Restoration Hyde became

chief minister. In a few months it was announced that he was closely

related by affinity to the royal house. His daughter had become, by a

secret marriage, Duchess of York. His grandchildren might perhaps wear

the crown. He was raised by this illustrious connection over the heads

of the old nobility of the land, and was for a time supposed to be

allpowerful. In some respects he was well fitted for his great place. No

man wrote abler state papers. No man spoke with more weight and dignity

in Council and in Parliament. No man was better acquainted with general

maxims of statecraft. No man observed the varieties of character with a

more discriminating eye. It must be added that he had a strong sense of

moral and religious obligation, a sincere reverence for the laws of his

country, and a conscientious regard for the honour and interest of the

Crown. But his temper was sour, arrogant, and impatient of opposition.

Above all, he had been long an exile; and this circumstance alone would

have completely disqualified him for the supreme direction of affairs.

It is scarcely possible that a politician, who has been compelled by

civil troubles to go into banishment, and to pass many of the best years

of his life abroad, can be fit, on the day on which he returns to his

native land, to be at the head of the government. Clarendon was no

exception to this rule. He had left England with a mind heated by a

fierce conflict which had ended in the downfall of his party and of his

own fortunes. From 1646 to 1660 he had lived beyond sea, looking on all

that passed at home from a great distance, and through a false medium.

His notions of public affairs were necessarily derived from the

reports of plotters, many of whom were ruined and desperate men. Events

naturally seemed to him auspicious, not in proportion as they increased

the prosperity and glory of the nation, but in proportion as they tended

to hasten the hour of his own return. His wish, a wish which he has not

disguised, was that, till his countrymen brought back the old line, they

might never enjoy quiet or freedom. At length he returned; and, without

having a single week to look about him, to mix with society, to note

the changes which fourteen eventful years had produced in the national

character and feelings, he was at once set to rule the state. In such

circumstances, a minister of the greatest tact and docility would

probably have fallen into serious errors. But tact and docility made no

part of the character of Clarendon. To him England was still the

England of his youth; and he sternly frowned down every theory and every

practice which had sprung up during his own exile. Though he was far

from meditating any attack on the ancient and undoubted power of the

House of Commons, he saw with extreme uneasiness the growth of that

power. The royal prerogative, for which he had long suffered, and by

which he had at length been raised to wealth and dignity, was sacred

in his eyes. The Roundheads he regarded both with political and with

personal aversion. To the Anglican Church he had always been strongly

attached, and had repeatedly, where her interests were concerned,

separated himself with regret from his dearest friends. His zeal for

Episcopacy and for the Book of Common Prayer was now more ardent than

ever, and was mingled with a vindictive hatred of the Puritans, which

did him little honour either as a statesman or as a Christian.

While the House of Commons which had recalled the royal family was

sitting, it was impossible to effect the re-establishment of the

old ecclesiastical system. Not only were the intentions of the court

strictly concealed, but assurances which quieted the minds of the

moderate Presbyterians were given by the King in the most solemn manner.

He had promised, before his restoration, that he would grant liberty of

conscience to his subjects. He now repeated that promise, and added

a promise to use his best endeavours for the purpose of effecting a

compromise between the contending sects. He wished, he said, to see the

spiritual jurisdiction divided between bishops and synods. The Liturgy

should be revised by a body of learned divines, one-half of whom should

be Presbyterians. The questions respecting the surplice, the posture at

the Eucharist, and the sign of the cross in baptism, should be settled

in a way which would set tender consciences at ease. When the King

had thus laid asleep the vigilance of those whom he most feared, he

dissolved the Parliament. He had already given his assent to an act by

which an amnesty was granted, with few exceptions, to all who, during

the late troubles, had been guilty of political offences. He had also

obtained from the Commons a grant for life of taxes, the annual product

of which was estimated at twelve hundred thousand pounds. The actual

income, indeed, during some years, amounted to little more than a

million: but this sum, together with the hereditary revenue of the

crown, was then sufficient to defray the expenses of the government in

time of peace. Nothing was allowed for a standing army. The nation was

sick of the very name; and the least mention of such a force would have

incensed and alarmed all parties.

Early in 1661 took place a general election. The people were mad with

loyal enthusiasm. The capital was excited by preparations for the most

splendid coronation that had ever been known. The result was that a body

of representatives was returned, such as England had never yet seen. A

large proportion of the successful candidates were men who had fought

for the Crown and the Church, and whose minds had been exasperated by

many injuries and insults suffered at the hands of the Roundheads. When

the members met, the passions which animated each individually acquired

new strength from sympathy. The House of Commons was, during some years,

more zealous for royalty than the King, more zealous for episcopacy

than the Bishops. Charles and Clarendon were almost terrified at the

completeness of their own success. They found themselves in a situation

not unlike that in which Lewis the Eighteenth and the Duke of Richelieu

were placed while the Chamber of 1815 was sitting. Even if the King

had been desirous to fulfill the promises which he had made to the

Presbyterians, it would have been out of his power to do so. It was

indeed only by the strong exertion of his influence that he could

prevent the victorious Cavaliers from rescinding the act of indemnity,

and retaliating without mercy all that they had suffered.

The Commons began by resolving that every member should, on pain of

expulsion, take the sacrament according to the form prescribed by the

old Liturgy, and that the Covenant should be burned by the hangman in

Palace Yard. An act was passed, which not only acknowledged the power

of the sword to be solely in the King, but declared that in no extremity

whatever could the two Houses be justified in withstanding him by force.

Another act was passed which required every officer of a corporation to

receive the Eucharist according to the rites of the Church of England,

and to swear that he held resistance to the King's authority to be in

all cases unlawful. A few hotheaded men wished to bring in a bill, which

should at once annul all the statutes passed by the Long Parliament,

and should restore the Star Chamber and the High Commission; but the

reaction, violent as it was, did not proceed quite to this length. It

still continued to be the law that a Parliament should be held every

three years: but the stringent clauses which directed the returning

officers to proceed to election at the proper time, even without the

royal writ, were repealed. The Bishops were restored to their seats in

the Upper House. The old ecclesiastical polity and the old Liturgy were

revived without any modification which had any tendency to conciliate

even the most reasonable Presbyterians. Episcopal ordination was now,

for the first time, made an indispensable qualification for church

preferment. About two thousand ministers of religion, whose conscience

did not suffer them to conform, were driven from their benefices in one

day. The dominant party exultingly reminded the sufferers that the Long

Parliament, when at the height of power, had turned out a still greater

number of Royalist divines. The reproach was but too well founded: but

the Long Parliament had at least allowed to the divines whom it ejected

a provision sufficient to keep them from starving; and this example the

Cavaliers, intoxicated with animosity, had not the justice and humanity

to follow.

Then came penal statutes against Nonconformists, statutes for which

precedents might too easily be found in the Puritan legislation, but to

which the King could not give his assent without a breach of promises

publicly made, in the most important crisis of his life, to those on

whom his fate depended. The Presbyterians, in extreme distress and

terror, fled to the foot of the throne, and pleaded their recent

services and the royal faith solemnly and repeatedly plighted. The King

wavered. He could not deny his own hand and seal. He could not but be

conscious that he owed much to the petitioners. He was little in the

habit of resisting importunate solicitation. His temper was not that of

a persecutor. He disliked the Puritans indeed; but in him dislike was a

languid feeling, very little resembling the energetic hatred which had

burned in the heart of Laud. He was, moreover, partial to the Roman

Catholic religion; and he knew that it would be impossible to grant

liberty of worship to the professors of that religion without extending

the same indulgence to Protestant dissenters. He therefore made a feeble

attempt to restrain the intolerant zeal of the House of Commons; but

that House was under the influence of far deeper convictions and far

stronger passions than his own. After a faint struggle he yielded, and

passed, with the show of alacrity, a series of odious acts against

the separatists. It was made a crime to attend a dissenting place of

worship. A single justice of the peace might convict without a jury, and

might, for the third offence, pass sentence of transportation beyond sea

for seven years. With refined cruelty it was provided that the offender

should not be transported to New England, where he was likely to find

sympathising friends. If he returned to his own country before the

expiration of his term of exile, he was liable to capital punishment.

A new and most unreasonable test was imposed on divines who had been

deprived of their benefices for nonconformity; and all who refused to

take that test were prohibited from coming within five miles of any town

which was governed by a corporation, of any town which was represented

in Parliament, or of any town where they had themselves resided as

ministers. The magistrates, by whom these rigorous statutes were to

be enforced, were in general men inflamed by party spirit and by the

remembrance of wrongs suffered in the time of the commonwealth. The

gaols were therefore soon crowded with dissenters, and, among the

sufferers, were some of whose genius and virtue any Christian society

might well be proud.

The Church of England was not ungrateful for the protection which she

received from the government. From the first day of her existence, she

had been attached to monarchy. But, during the quarter of a century

which followed the Restoration, her zeal for royal authority and

hereditary right passed all bounds. She had suffered with the House of

Stuart. She had been restored with that House. She was connected with

it by common interests, friendships, and enmities. It seemed impossible

that a day could ever come when the ties which bound her to the children

of her august martyr would be sundered, and when the loyalty in which

she gloried would cease to be a pleasing and profitable duty. She

accordingly magnified in fulsome phrase that prerogative which was

constantly employed to defend and to aggrandise her, and reprobated,

much at her ease, the depravity of those whom oppression, from which

she was exempt, had goaded to rebellion. Her favourite theme was

the doctrine of non-resistance. That doctrine she taught without any

qualification, and followed out to all its extreme consequences. Her

disciples were never weary of repeating that in no conceivable case, not

even if England were cursed with a King resembling Busiris or Phalaris,

with a King who, in defiance of law, and without the presence of

justice, should daily doom hundreds of innocent victims to torture

and death, would all the Estates of the realm united be justified in

withstanding his tyranny by physical force. Happily the principles of

human nature afford abundant security that such theories will never be

more than theories. The day of trial came; and the very men who had most

loudly and most sincerely professed this extravagant loyalty were, in

every county of England arrayed in arms against the throne.

Property all over the kingdom was now again changing hands. The national

sales, not having been confirmed by Act of Parliament, were regarded by

the tribunals as nullities. The bishops, the deans, the chapters, the

Royalist nobility and gentry, reentered on their confiscated estates,

and ejected even purchasers who had given fair prices. The losses which

the Cavaliers had sustained during the ascendency of their opponents

were thus in part repaired; but in part only. All actions for mesne

profits were effectually barred by the general amnesty; and the

numerous Royalists, who, in order to discharge fines imposed by the Long

Parliament, or in order to purchase the favour of powerful Roundheads,

had sold lands for much less than the real value, were not relieved from

the legal consequences of their own acts.

While these changes were in progress, a change still more important took

place in the morals and manners of the community. Those passions

and tastes which, under the rule of the Puritans, had been sternly

repressed, and, if gratified at all, had been gratified by stealth,

broke forth with ungovernable violence as soon as the check was

withdrawn. Men flew to frivolous amusements and to criminal pleasures

with the greediness which long and enforced abstinence naturally

produces. Little restraint was imposed by public opinion. For the

nation, nauseated with cant, suspicious of all pretensions to sanctity

and still smarting from the recent tyranny of rulers austere in life and

powerful in prayer, looked for a time with complacency on the softer and

gayer vices. Still less restraint was imposed by the government.

Indeed there was no excess which was not encouraged by the ostentatious

profligacy of the King and of his favourite courtiers. A few counsellors

of Charles the First, who were now no longer young, retained the

decorous gravity which had been thirty years before in fashion at

Whitehall. Such were Clarendon himself, and his friends, Thomas

Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Lord Treasurer, and James Butler, Duke

of Ormond, who, having through many vicissitudes struggled gallantly

for the royal cause in Ireland, now governed that kingdom as Lord

Lieutenant. But neither the memory of the services of these men, nor

their great power in the state, could protect them from the sarcasms

which modish vice loves to dart at obsolete virtue. The praise of

politeness and vivacity could now scarcely be obtained except by some

violation of decorum. Talents great and various assisted to spread the

contagion. Ethical philosophy had recently taken a form well suited

to please a generation equally devoted to monarchy and to vice. Thomas

Hobbes had, in language more precise and luminous than has ever been

employed by any other metaphysical writer, maintained that the will of

the prince was the standard of right and wrong, and that every subject

ought to be ready to profess Popery, Mahometanism, or Paganism, at the

royal command. Thousands who were incompetent to appreciate what was

really valuable in his speculations, eagerly welcomed a theory which,

while it exalted the kingly office, relaxed the obligations of morality,

and degraded religion into a mere affair of state. Hobbism soon became

an almost essential part of the character of the fine gentleman. All

the lighter kinds of literature were deeply tainted by the prevailing

licentiousness. Poetry stooped to be the pandar of every low desire.

Ridicule, instead of putting guilt and error to the blush, turned her

formidable shafts against innocence and truth. The restored Church

contended indeed against the prevailing immorality, but contended

feebly, and with half a heart. It was necessary to the decorum of

her character that she should admonish her erring children: but her

admonitions were given in a somewhat perfunctory manner. Her attention

was elsewhere engaged. Her whole soul was in the work of crushing the

Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto Caesar the things

which were Caesar's. She had been pillaged and oppressed by the party

which preached an austere morality. She had been restored to opulence

and honour by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion were

disposed to shape their lives according to her precepts, they were yet

ready to fight knee deep in blood for her cathedrals and places, for

every line of her rubric and every thread of her vestments. If the

debauched Cavalier haunted brothels and gambling houses, he at least

avoided conventicles. If he never spoke without uttering ribaldry and

blasphemy, he made some amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howe

to gaol for preaching and praying. Thus the clergy, for a time, made war

on schism with so much vigour that they had little leisure to make war

on vice. The ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence and

under the special sanction of the head of the Church, publicly recited

by female lips in female ears, while the author of the Pilgrim's

Progress languished in a dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospel

to the poor. It is an unquestionable and a most instructive fact that

the years during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy was

in the zenith were precisely the years during which national virtue was

at the lowest point.

Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the prevailing

immorality; but those persons who made politics their business were

perhaps the most corrupt part of the corrupt society. For they were

exposed, not only to the same noxious influences which affected the

nation generally, but also to a taint of a peculiar and of a most

malignant kind. Their character had been formed amidst frequent and

violent revolutions and counterrevolutions. In the course of a few

years they had seen the ecclesiastical and civil polity of their country

repeatedly changed. They had seen an Episcopal Church persecuting

Puritans, a Puritan Church persecuting Episcopalians, and an Episcopal

Church persecuting Puritans again. They had seen hereditary monarchy

abolished and restored. They had seen the Long Parliament thrice supreme

in the state, and thrice dissolved amidst the curses and laughter of

millions. They had seen a new dynasty rapidly rising to the height of

power and glory, and then on a sudden hurled down from the chair of

state without a struggle. They had seen a new representative system

devised, tried and abandoned. They had seen a new House of Lords

created and scattered. They had seen great masses of property violently

transferred from Cavaliers to Roundheads, and from Roundheads back to

Cavaliers. During these events no man could be a stirring and thriving

politician who was not prepared to change with every change of fortune.

It was only in retirement that any person could long keep the character

either of a steady Royalist or of a steady Republican. One who, in

such an age, is determined to attain civil greatness must renounce all

thoughts of consistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midst

of endless mutation, he must be always on the watch for the indications

of a coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment for deserting

a falling cause. Having gone all lengths with a faction while it

was uppermost, he must suddenly extricate himself from it when its

difficulties begin, must assail it, must persecute it, must enter on a

new career of power and prosperity in company with new associates. His

situation naturally developes in him to the highest degree a peculiar

class of abilities and a peculiar class of vices. He becomes quick of

observation and fertile of resource. He catches without effort the tone

of any sect or party with which he chances to mingle. He discerns

the signs of the times with a sagacity which to the multitude appears

miraculous, with a sagacity resembling that with which a veteran police

officer pursues the faintest indications of crime, or with which a

Mohawk warrior follows a track through the woods. But we shell seldom

find, in a statesman so trained, integrity, constancy, any of the

virtues of the noble family of Truth. He has no faith in any doctrine,

no zeal for any cause. He has seen so many old institutions swept away,

that he has no reverence for prescription. He has seen so many

new institutions, from which much had been expected, produce mere

disappointment, that he has no hope of improvement. He sneers alike at

those who are anxious to preserve and at those who are eager to reform.

There is nothing in the state which he could not, without a scruple or

a blush, join in defending or in destroying. Fidelity to opinions and

to friends seems to him mere dulness and wrongheadedness. Politics

he regards, not as a science of which the object is the happiness of

mankind, but as an exciting game of mixed chance and skill, at which

a dexterous and lucky player may win an estate, a coronet, perhaps a

crown, and at which one rash move may lead to the loss of fortune and

of life. Ambition, which, in good times, and in good minds, is half a

virtue, now, disjoined from every elevated and philanthropic sentiment,

becomes a selfish cupidity scarcely less ignoble than avarice. Among

those politicians who, from the Restoration to the accession of the

House of Hanover, were at the head of the great parties in the state,

very few can be named whose reputation is not stained by what, in our

age, would be called gross perfidy and corruption. It is scarcely an

exaggeration to say that the most unprincipled public men who have taken

part in affairs within our memory would, if tried by the standard

which was in fashion during the latter part of the seventeenth century,

deserve to be regarded as scrupulous and disinterested.

While these political, religious, and moral changes were taking place in

England, the Royal authority had been without difficulty reestablished

in every other part of the British islands. In Scotland the restoration

of the Stuarts had been hailed with delight; for it was regarded as

the restoration of national independence. And true it was that the yoke

which Cromwell had imposed was, in appearance, taken away, that the

Scottish Estates again met in their old hall at Edinburgh, and that the

Senators of the College of Justice again administered the Scottish

law according to the old forms. Yet was the independence of the little

kingdom necessarily rather nominal than real; for, as long as the King

had England on his side, he had nothing to apprehend from disaffection

in his other dominions. He was now in such a situation that he could

renew the attempt which had proved destructive to his father without any

danger of his father's fate. Charles the First had tried to force his

own religion by his regal power on the Scots at a moment when both his

religion and his regal power were unpopular in England; and he had not

only failed, but had raised troubles which had ultimately cost him

his crown and his head. Times had now changed: England was zealous for

monarchy and prelacy; and therefore the scheme which had formerly been

in the highest degree imprudent might be resumed with little risk to

the throne. The government resolved to set up a prelatical church in

Scotland. The design was disapproved by every Scotchman whose judgment

was entitled to respect. Some Scottish statesmen who were zealous

for the King's prerogative had been bred Presbyterians. Though little

troubled with scruples, they retained a preference for the religion of

their childhood; and they well knew how strong a hold that religion had

on the hearts of their countrymen. They remonstrated strongly: but, when

they found that they remonstrated in vain, they had not virtue enough to

persist in an opposition which would have given offence to their

master; and several of them stooped to the wickedness and baseness of

persecuting what in their consciences they believed to be the purest

form of Christianity. The Scottish Parliament was so constituted that

it had scarcely ever offered any serious opposition even to Kings much

weaker than Charles then was. Episcopacy, therefore, was established

by law. As to the form of worship, a large discretion was left to the

clergy. In some churches the English Liturgy was used. In others, the

ministers selected from that Liturgy such prayers and thanksgivings

as were likely to be least offensive to the people. But in general the

doxology was sung at the close of public worship; and the Apostles'

Creed was recited when baptism was administered. By the great body of

the Scottish nation the new Church was detested both as superstitious

and as foreign; as tainted with the corruptions of Rome, and as a

mark of the predominance of England. There was, however, no general

insurrection. The country was not what it had been twenty-two years

before. Disastrous war and alien domination had tamed the spirit of the

people. The aristocracy, which was held in great honour by the middle

class and by the populace, had put itself at the head of the movement

against Charles the First, but proved obsequious to Charles the Second.

From the English Puritans no aid was now to be expected. They were a

feeble party, proscribed both by law and by public opinion. The bulk

of the Scottish nation, therefore, sullenly submitted, and, with many

misgivings of conscience, attended the ministrations of the Episcopal

clergy, or of Presbyterian divines who had consented to accept from the

government a half toleration, known by the name of the Indulgence.

But there were, particularly in the western lowlands, many fierce and

resolute men who held that the obligation to observe the Covenant was

paramount to the obligation to obey the magistrate. These people, in

defiance of the law, persisted in meeting to worship God after their own

fashion. The Indulgence they regarded, not as a partial reparation of

the wrongs inflicted by the State on the Church, but as a new wrong, the

more odious because it was disguised under the appearance of a benefit.

Persecution, they said, could only kill the body; but the black

Indulgence was deadly to the soul. Driven from the towns, they assembled

on heaths and mountains. Attacked by the civil power, they without

scruple repelled force by force. At every conventicle they mustered in

arms. They repeatedly broke out into open rebellion. They were easily

defeated, and mercilessly punished: but neither defeat nor punishment

could subdue their spirit. Hunted down like wild beasts, tortured till

their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by scores,

exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from England, abandoned

at another time to the mercy of troops of marauders from the Highlands,

they still stood at bay in a mood so savage that the boldest and

mightiest oppressor could not but dread the audacity of their despair.

Such was, during the reign of Charles the Second, the state of Scotland.

Ireland was not less distracted. In that island existed feuds, compared

with which the hottest animosities of English politicians were lukewarm.

The enmity between the Irish Cavaliers and the Irish Roundheads was

almost forgotten in the fiercer enmity which raged between the English

and the Celtic races. The interval between the Episcopalian and the

Presbyterian seemed to vanish, when compared with the interval which

separated both from the Papist. During the late civil troubles the

greater part of the Irish soil had been transferred from the vanquished

nation to the victors. To the favour of the Crown few either of the

old or of the new occupants had any pretensions. The despoilers and the

despoiled had, for the most part, been rebels alike. The government

was soon perplexed and wearied by the conflicting claims and mutual

accusations of the two incensed factions. Those colonists among

whom Cromwell had portioned out the conquered territory, and whose

descendants are still called Cromwellians, asserted that the aboriginal

inhabitants were deadly enemies of the English nation under every

dynasty, and of the Protestant religion in every form. They described

and exaggerated the atrocities which had disgraced the insurrection of

Ulster: they urged the King to follow up with resolution the policy of

the Protector; and they were not ashamed to hint that there would never

be peace in Ireland till the old Irish race should be extirpated.

The Roman Catholics extenuated their offense as they best might, and

expatiated in piteous language on the severity of their punishment,

which, in truth, had not been lenient. They implored Charles not to

confound the innocent with the guilty, and reminded him that many of the

guilty had atoned for their fault by returning to their allegiance, and

by defending his rights against the murderers of his father. The court,

sick of the importunities of two parties, neither of which it had any

reason to love, at length relieved itself from trouble by dictating

a compromise. That system, cruel, but most complete and energetic, by

which Oliver had proposed to make the island thoroughly English, was

abandoned. The Cromwellians were induced to relinquish a third part of

their acquisitions. The land thus surrendered was capriciously divided

among claimants whom the government chose to favour. But great numbers

who protested that they were innocent of all disloyalty, and some

persons who boasted that their loyalty had been signally displayed,

obtained neither restitution nor compensation, and filled France and

Spain with outcries against the injustice and ingratitude of the House

of Stuart.

Meantime the government had, even in England, ceased to be popular. The

Royalists had begun to quarrel with the court and with each other; and

the party which had been vanquished, trampled down, and, as it seemed,

annihilated, but which had still retained a strong principle of life,

again raised its head, and renewed the interminable war.

Had the administration been faultless, the enthusiasm with which the

return of the King and the termination of the military tyranny had been

hailed could not have been permanent. For it is the law of our nature

that such fits of excitement shall always be followed by remissions. The

manner in which the court abused its victory made the remission speedy

and complete. Every moderate man was shocked by the insolence, cruelty,

and perfidy with which the Nonconformists were treated. The penal laws

had effectually purged the oppressed party of those insincere members

whose vices had disgraced it, and had made it again an honest and

pious body of men. The Puritan, a conqueror, a ruler, a persecutor,

a sequestrator, had been detested. The Puritan, betrayed and evil

entreated, deserted by all the timeservers who, in his prosperity, had

claimed brotherhood with him, hunted from his home, forbidden under

severe penalties to pray or receive the sacrament according to his

conscience, yet still firm in his resolution to obey God rather than

man, was, in spite of some unpleasing recollections, an object of pity

and respect to well constituted minds. These feelings became stronger

when it was noised abroad that the court was not disposed to treat

Papists with the same rigour which had been shown to Presbyterians. A

vague suspicion that the King and the Duke were not sincere Protestants

sprang up and gathered strength. Many persons too who had been disgusted

by the austerity and hypocrisy of the Saints of the Commonwealth began

to be still more disgusted by the open profligacy of the court and of

the Cavaliers, and were disposed to doubt whether the sullen preciseness

of Praise God Barebone might not be preferable to the outrageous

profaneness and licentiousness of the Buckinghams and Sedleys. Even

immoral men, who were not utterly destitute of sense and public spirit,

complained that the government treated the most serious matters as

trifles, and made trifles its serious business. A King might be

pardoned for amusing his leisure with wine, wit, and beauty. But it was

intolerable that he should sink into a mere lounger and voluptuary, that

the gravest affairs of state should be neglected, and that the public

service should be starved and the finances deranged in order that

harlots and parasites might grow rich.

A large body of Royalists joined in these complaints, and added many

sharp reflections on the King's ingratitude. His whole revenue, indeed,

would not have sufficed to reward them all in proportion to their own

consciousness of desert. For to every distressed gentleman who

had fought under Rupert or Derby his own services seemed eminently

meritorious, and his own sufferings eminently severe. Every one had

flattered himself that, whatever became of the rest, he should be

largely recompensed for all that he had lost during the civil troubles,

and that the restoration of the monarchy would be followed by the

restoration of his own dilapidated fortunes. None of these expectants

could restrain his indignation, when he found that he was as poor under

the King as he had been under the Rump or the Protector. The negligence

and extravagance of the court excited the bitter indignation of these

loyal veterans. They justly said that one half of what His Majesty

squandered on concubines and buffoons would gladden the hearts of

hundreds of old Cavaliers who, after cutting down their oaks and melting

their plate to help his father, now wandered about in threadbare suits,

and did not know where to turn for a meal.

At the same time a sudden fall of rents took place. The income of every

landed proprietor was diminished by five shillings in the pound. The cry

of agricultural distress rose from every shire in the kingdom; and

for that distress the government was, as usual, held accountable. The

gentry, compelled to retrench their expenses for a period, saw with

indignation the increasing splendour and profusion of Whitehall, and

were immovably fixed in the belief that the money which ought to have

supported their households had, by some inexplicable process, gone to

the favourites of the King.

The minds of men were now in such a temper that every public act excited

discontent. Charles had taken to wife Catharine Princess of Portugal.

The marriage was generally disliked; and the murmurs became loud when it

appeared that the King was not likely to have any legitimate posterity.

Dunkirk, won by Oliver from Spain, was sold to Lewis the Fourteenth,

King of France. This bargain excited general indignation. Englishmen

were already beginning to observe with uneasiness the progress of the

French power, and to regard the House of Bourbon with the same feeling

with which their grandfathers had regarded the House of Austria. Was it

wise, men asked, at such a time, to make any addition to the strength of

a monarchy already too formidable? Dunkirk was, moreover, prized by

the people, not merely as a place of arms, and as a key to the Low

Countries, but also as a trophy of English valour. It was to the

subjects of Charles what Calais had been to an earlier generation, and

what the rock of Gibraltar, so manfully defended, through disastrous and

perilous years, against the fleets and armies of a mighty coalition, is

to ourselves. The plea of economy might have had some weight, if it had

been urged by an economical government. But it was notorious that the

charges of Dunkirk fell far short of the sums which were wasted at court

in vice and folly. It seemed insupportable that a sovereign, profuse

beyond example in all that regarded his own pleasures, should be

niggardly in all that regarded the safety and honour of the state.

The public discontent was heightened, when it was found that, while

Dunkirk was abandoned on the plea of economy, the fortress of Tangier,

which was part of the dower of Queen Catharine, was repaired and kept up

at an enormous charge. That place was associated with no recollections

gratifying to the national pride: it could in no way promote the

national interests: it involved us in inglorious, unprofitable, and

interminable wars with tribes of half savage Mussulmans and it was

situated in a climate singularly unfavourable to the health and vigour

of the English race.

But the murmurs excited by these errors were faint, when compared with

the clamours which soon broke forth. The government engaged in war with

the United Provinces. The House of Commons readily voted sums unexampled

in our history, sums exceeding those which had supported the fleets and

armies of Cromwell at the time when his power was the terror of all

the world. But such was the extravagance, dishonesty, and incapacity of

those who had succeeded to his authority, that this liberality proved

worse than useless. The sycophants of the court, ill qualified to

contend against the great men who then directed the arms of Holland,

against such a statesman as De Witt, and such a commander as De Ruyter,

made fortunes rapidly, while the sailors mutinied from very hunger,

while the dockyards were unguarded, while the ships were leaky and

without rigging. It was at length determined to abandon all schemes of

offensive war; and it soon appeared that even a defensive war was a task

too hard for that administration. The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames,

and burned the ships of war which lay at Chatham. It was said that, on

the very day of that great humiliation, the King feasted with the ladies

of his seraglio, and amused himself with hunting a moth about the supper

room. Then, at length, tardy justice was done to the memory of Oliver.

Everywhere men magnified his valour, genius, and patriotism. Everywhere

it was remembered how, when he ruled, all foreign powers had trembled

at the name of England, how the States General, now so haughty, had

crouched at his feet, and how, when it was known that he was no more,

Amsterdam was lighted up as for a great deliverance, and children

ran along the canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead. Even

Royalists exclaimed that the state could be saved only by calling the

old soldiers of the Commonwealth to arms. Soon the capital began to feel

the miseries of a blockade. Fuel was scarcely to be procured. Tilbury

Fort, the place where Elizabeth had, with manly spirit, hurled foul

scorn at Parma and Spain, was insulted by the invaders. The roar of

foreign guns was heard, for the first time, by the citizens of London.

In the Council it was seriously proposed that, if the enemy advanced,

the Tower should be abandoned. Great multitudes of people assembled in

the streets crying out that England was bought and sold. The houses and

carriages of the ministers were attacked by the populace; and it seemed

likely that the government would have to deal at once with an invasion

and with an insurrection. The extreme danger, it is true, soon passed

by. A treaty was concluded, very different from the treaties which

Oliver had been in the habit of signing; and the nation was once more

at peace, but was in a mood scarcely less fierce and sullen than in the

days of shipmoney.

The discontent engendered by maladministration was heightened by

calamities which the best administration could not have averted. While

the ignominious war with Holland was raging, London suffered two great

disasters, such as never, in so short a space of time, befel one city.

A pestilence, surpassing in horror any that during three centuries

had visited the island, swept away, in six mouths, more than a hundred

thousand human beings. And scarcely had the dead cart ceased to go its

rounds, when a fire, such as had not been known in Europe since the

conflagration of Rome under Nero, laid in ruins the whole city, from the

Tower to the Temple, and from the river to the purlieus of Smithfield.