CHAPTER VII.

CHARLES II.

Character of Charles II.--The King's First Privy Council--The

Convention Parliament--Submission of the Presbyterian

Leaders--The Plight of those who took Part in the late King's

Trial--Complaisance of the Commoners--Charles's Income--The Bill

of Sales--The Ministers Bill--Settlement of the Church--Trial

of the Regicides--Their Execution--Marriage of the Duke of

York--Mutilation of the Remains of Cromwell--The Presbyterians

Duped--The Revenue--Fifth-Monarchy Riot--Settlements of Ireland and

Scotland--Execution of Argyll--Re-establishment of Episcopacy--The

new Parliament violently Royalist--The King's Marriage--His

Brutal Behaviour to the Queen--State of the Court--Trial of Vane

and Lambert--Execution of Vane--Assassination of Regicides--Sale

of Dunkirk--The Uniformity Act--Religious Persecution--Strange

Case of the Marquis of Bristol--Repeal of the Triennial Act--The

Conventicle and Five Mile Acts--War with Holland--Appearance of the

Plague--Gross Licentiousness of the Court--Demoralisation of the

Navy--Monk's Fight with the Dutch--The Great Fire.

Charles II. did not want sense. He was naturally clever, witty, and

capable of a shrewd insight into the natures and purposes of men. He

gave proof of all these qualities in the observation which we have

recorded, at the close of the day when he was restored to his paternal

mansion, that everybody assured him that they had always ardently

desired his return, and that if they were to be believed, there was

nobody in fault for his not having come back sooner but himself. Yet,

with many qualities, which, if united to a fine moral nature, would

have made him a most popular monarch, he was utterly destitute of

this fine moral nature. He had had much, long, and varied experience

of mankind, and had alternately seen their base adulation of royalty

in power, and their baser treatment of princes in misfortune. But

Charles had not the nobility to benefit by this knowledge. He had

familiarised himself with every species of vice and dissipation. He was

become thoroughly heartless and degraded. His highest ambition was to

live, not for the good and glory of his kingdom, but for mere sensual

indulgence. He was habituated to a life of the lowest debauchery,

and surrounded by those who were essentially of the same debased and

worthless character. To such a man had the nation--after all its

glorious struggles and triumphs for the reduction of the lawless pride

of royalty, and after the decent and rigorous administration of the

Commonwealth--again surrendered its fate and fortunes, and surrendered

them without almost any guarantee. The declaration of Breda was the

only security which it had, and that was rendered perfectly nugatory

by the reservation of all decisions on those questions to a Parliament

which the Court could control and corrupt.

Monk presented to the king a paper containing a list of names of such

persons as he professed to consider to be the most eligible for the

royal service either in the Council or the Ministry. But Clarendon,

who was the king's great adviser, having adhered to him and his

interests ever since his escape to the Continent, perused the catalogue

with no little surprise. It consisted, he tells us, "of the principal

persons of the Presbyterian party, to which Monk was thought to be

most inclined, at least to satisfy the foolish and unruly inclinations

of his wife. There were likewise the names of some who were most

notorious in all the factions; and of some who, in respect of their

mean qualities and meaner qualifications, nobody could imagine how they

came to be named." They were, in fact, such as had been thrust on Monk

by the Parliamentary leaders, who were all striving to secure their

own interests; not even the Presbyterians foreseeing how severely they

were punishing themselves by the restoration of the monarchy. Monk,

on the Chancellor's remonstrance as to many of these names--amongst

which only those of the Marquis of Hertford and the Earl of Southampton

belonged to men who had at all adhered to the Royal cause--soon let him

into the secret, that they were such as had importuned him to do them

good offices with the king, and that he never intended to do more than

forward the paper, and leave the king to do as he pleased. Clarendon

soon, therefore, made out a very different list of names for the Privy

Council, though he found it politic to insert almost as many names

of Presbyterians as of Royalists, but with the purpose of gradually

changing them.

The first Privy Council of Charles, therefore, consisted of the king's

brothers, the Dukes of York and Gloucester, the Marquis of Ormond,

the Earls of Lindsay, Southampton, Manchester, St. Albans, Berkshire,

Norwich, Leicester, and Northumberland, the Marquises of Hertford

and Dorchester, Lords Saye and Sele, Seymour, Colepepper, Wentworth,

Roberts, and Berkeley, Sir Frederick Cornwallis, Sir George Carteret,

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Sir Edward Nicholas, General Monk, and

Morrice, his creature, who had assisted in the negotiations with the

king, Colonel Charles Howard, Arthur Annesley, Denzil Holles, and

Montague, general, or rather admiral, for as yet no distinctly naval

officer was known--military commanders fought both on sea and land.

Amongst these Clarendon was Lord Chancellor and Prime Minister, the

Duke of York was already appointed Lord High Admiral, to which was

now added the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports and other offices. Sir

Edward Nicholas and Morrice were joint Secretaries of State; the

Earl of Southampton was made Lord Treasurer, the Marquis of Ormond

Lord Steward, and the Earl of Manchester Lord Chamberlain. Monk was

appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the forces in the three kingdoms,

according to stipulation, and to this office was now added Master of

the Horse, and he was created Duke of Albemarle, in addition to several

inferior titles. His wife, who was originally a milliner, and after

that had been his mistress, now figured boldly and ambitiously amongst

the ladies of the Court.

The Parliament, both Lords and Commons, lost no time in seizing all

such of the late king's judges as survived or were within the kingdom.

The Parliament, which had no proper election--having been summoned by

no lawful authority, but at Monk's command, and had obtained the name

of Convention Parliament--passed an Act, which Charles authenticated,

to legalise themselves, notwithstanding which it was still called by

the old name of the Convention. Before the king could arrive, however,

they had seized Clement, one of the king's judges, and ordered the

seizure of the goods and estates of all the other regicides. On the

king's arrival Denzil Holles and the Presbyterians--whose resentment

against the Independents, who had so often put them out of Parliament,

was blinded by desire of vengeance to the fact that the Royalists would

not be long in turning on them who had done their best to dethrone

Charles I., though they had not joined in putting him to death--now

went in a body to Whitehall, and throwing themselves at Charles's feet,

confessed that they were guilty of the horrid crime of rebellion,

and implored the king's grace and pardon. Charles affected the most

magnanimous clemency, and advised them to pass a Bill of Indemnity,

which he had promised from Breda. But this apparent liberality was

only the necessary step to the completion of his vengeance, for the

declaration left to Parliament such exceptions as it thought proper;

and in the present complying mood of Parliament, these exceptions would

be just as numerous as the Court required. Monk had, in negotiating

with Charles and Clarendon, recommended that only four should be

excepted, but Clarendon and the king had long made up their minds that

few of the king's judges should escape; and in this they were boldly

urged on by the Royalists, who, says Clarendon, could not bear to

meet the men on the king's highways, now they were the king's again,

who rode on the very horses they had plundered them of, and had their

houses and estates in possession.

The Commons were as ready as the Court for vengeance against their

late successful rivals and masters; and though Monk again urged that

not more than seven should be excepted on a capital charge, they

decided that ten should be tried for their lives, namely, Scott,

Holland, Lisle, Barkstead, Harrison, Saye, Jones, Coke, the solicitor,

Broughton, clerk to the High Court of Justice, and Dendy, who had acted

as serjeant-at-arms during the trial. They then requested the king to

order by proclamation all those concerned in his late father's trial to

surrender themselves within fourteen days. About a score felt it much

the safest to escape across the sea, but nineteen surrendered--all,

but the ten doomed to death, imagining they should escape with some

minor punishment. But the thirst for vengeance became every day more

violent. The Commons named twenty more for exception, whose lives

were to be spared, but who were to suffer forfeiture of estate and

perpetual imprisonment. These were Vane, St. John, Haselrig, Ireton,

brother of the deceased major-general, Desborough, Lambert, Fleetwood,

Axtel, Sydenham, Lenthall, Burton, Keeble, Pack, Blackwell, Pyne,

Deane, Creed, Nye, Goodwin, and Cobbett. Moreover, all such as had not

surrendered to the late proclamation were excluded from the benefit of

the Bill of Indemnity.

This sanguinary list, however, did not satisfy the Lords when the

Bill was sent up to them. They had suffered such indignities from the

Independent leaders, that they could not bring themselves to forgive,

and they altered the Bill, voting that every man who had sat on the

king's trial, or signed the death-warrant, should be tried as a traitor

for his life. They went even further, and excepted six others, who

had neither sat nor voted--namely, Vane, Hacker, Lambert, Haselrig,

Axtel, and Peters; and, as if luxuriating in revenge, they allowed the

relatives of several of their own body who had been put to death under

the Commonwealth, amongst whom were the Earl of Derby and the Duke

of Hamilton, to sit as judges. The Commons accepted the Bill as thus

altered, and would have made it still more atrocious, but Charles, who

was extremely pressed for money, sent desiring them to come to an end

with this Bill, and hasten the money Bill.

The Commons voted the king seventy thousand pounds a month for present

necessities, and then proceeded to pass not only the Indemnity Bill,

but to vote the king a liberal permanent revenue. In striking contrast

to the early Parliaments of his father, they at once gave him the

tonnage and poundage for life. Although this was one of the chief

causes of the quarrel between Charles I. and his Parliament, and one

of the main causes of the war and of his decapitation, this Parliament

yielded the point at once. They, moreover, ordered that the army, of

which Charles was afraid, should be disbanded, and that the 29th of

May should be kept as a day of perpetual thanks giving to Providence,

for having restored his majesty to the nation. All these favours to

Charles they offered with the humility of men who were seeking favours

for themselves, and being urged by Charles to settle the amount of

his revenue altogether, they appointed a committee of inquiry on the

subject, which decided that, as the income of his father had been about

one million one hundred thousand pounds, his income should, considering

the different value of money, be fixed at the unexampled sum of one

million two hundred thousand pounds per annum. This income was to be

settled by a Bill in the next session.

The question of religion, and the question of forfeited property,

whether belonging to the Crown, the Church, or individuals, was next

brought on, and led to most stormy discussions. The result was that two

Bills were passed, called the Bill of Sales and the Ministers Bill.

By the Bill of Sales all the Crown lands were ordered to be restored

forthwith; but the Church lands were left in abeyance for the present;

the lands of individuals were also deferred to a future session. The

Ministers Bill was intended to expel from the pulpits of the Church all

such ministers as had been installed there since the Parliament came

into power. It did not, however, give satisfaction to the Church, for

it admitted all such as entered on livings legally vacant at the time

to retain them. A considerable number of Presbyterian clergymen thus

remained in possession, but the Independents were thoroughly excited by

a clause which provided that all ministers who had not been ordained by

an ecclesiastic, who had interfered in the matter of infant baptism, or

had been concerned in the trial of the king, or in its justification

from press or pulpit, should be excluded. Thus the Royalists were

incensed at the Bill of Sales, which they called an indemnity Bill for

the king's enemies, and of oblivion for his friends, and the clergy of

the Church were equally enraged to see a great number of livings still

left to the Presbyterians.

On the 13th of September Charles prorogued the Parliament till the 6th

of November, and promised during the recess to have what was called

the "healing question of religion," that is, the settlement of the

Church, discussed by competent parties, and to publish a declaration

on the subject. Accordingly the Presbyterians were very soon promised

a meeting with some of the Episcopalian clergy, and they were quite

willing, seeing that they could no longer have matters their own way in

the Church, to accept a platform of compromise laid down by Archbishop

Ussher before his death, in which scheme the Church was to be governed

by a union of suffragan bishops and synods or presbyteries, so as to

unite the two great sects. But the foremost prelates and clergy of the

Episcopalian Church, who were resolved to have the whole State Church

to themselves, would listen to nothing so liberal or unorthodox. They

refused to meet the Presbyterian clergy, and therefore Charles summoned

the leaders of this sect to meet some of his chief privy councillors

and ministers, as well as various bishops, at Whitehall, where Baxter

and Calamy again proposed Ussher's scheme, which was as zealously

rejected by the Episcopalians. The Presbyterians quoted the Eikon

Basilike, to show that Charles I. was favourable to Ussher's plan, but

Charles, who knew very well that the book was Dr. Gauden's, and not

his father's, drily remarked that all in that work was not gospel.

But what proved a complete damper to all parties, was a proposal read

by Clarendon as having the king's approbation, namely, that others,

besides the two parties in question, should have full liberty for

religious worship, and should not be disturbed by magistrate or peace

officer, provided they themselves did not disturb the peace. This

was at once felt to mean toleration to the Catholics as well as the

Nonconformists, and was received with silent repugnance.

On the 25th of October was issued the promised declaration for healing

the strife. It went to unite the Presbyterian form of government with

the Episcopal. There were to be presbyteries and synods, and no bishop

was to ordain ministers or exercise the censures of the Church without

the advice and assistance of the presbyteries. Presbyters were to be

elected deans and canons; a number of divines of each sect were to be

chosen by the king to revise the Liturgy, and all points of difference

should be left unsettled till this revision was made; and no person

should be molested on account of taking the Sacrament standing or

kneeling, for making or not making the sign of the cross in baptism,

for bowing or not bowing at the name of Jesus, for wearing or not

wearing the surplice. The Presbyterians were delighted at the prospect

thus afforded of free admission to good livings and dignities; but the

Episcopalians intended nothing less than that any such thing should

ever come to pass.

With more earnest intention the Government proceeded to judge the

Regicides, and soon stepped up to the knees in blood. On the 9th of

October the trials commenced at the Old Bailey, before thirty-four

Commissioners appointed for the purpose. True bills were found against

twenty-nine of the prisoners--namely, Sir Hardress Waller, Harrison,

Carew, Cook, Hugh Peters, Scott, Clement, Scrope, Jones, Hacker, Axtel,

Heveningham, Marten, Millington, Tichbourne, Row, Kilburn, Harvey,

Pennington, Smith, Downes, Potter, Garland, Fleetwood, Meyn, J. Temple,

P. Temple, Hewlet, and Waite.

The first man tried was Waller, who pleaded guilty, and had his life

spared; the second was Harrison, the late Major-General. Harrison was

a sincere and honest Fifth-Monarchy man. He said, "I humbly conceive

that what was done, was done in the name of the Parliament of England;

that what was done, was done by their power and authority; and I do

humbly conceive it is my duty to offer unto you in the beginning,

that this court, or any court below the High Court of Parliament,

hath no jurisdiction of their actions." But all argument was useless

addressed to such ears. Sir Orlando Bridgeman, Chief Baron of the

Exchequer, who had the management of the trials, told the grand jury

in his charge that no authority whatever, either of a single person

or of Parliament, had any coercive power over the king. This man had

received very different treatment under the Protectorate. He had

submitted to Cromwell, who had not only accepted his submission, but

had allowed him privately to practise the law, and in this capacity he

had acted as spy and agent for Cromwell. He continually interrupted

Scott, Carew, and others, when they justified their conduct on the

same ground of Parliamentary sanction. The people, notwithstanding

their late acclamations, could not help raising loud murmurs at these

arbitrary interruptions. The prisoners defended themselves with calm

intrepidity, and when Bridgeman retorted on Carew that the Parliament

that he talked of was the Commons alone, a thing without precedent,

Carew replied, "there never was such a war, or such a precedent;" and

he boldly upbraided Bridgeman with giving evidence as a witness whilst

sitting as a judge. All these were condemned to death. The clever and

facetious Harry Marten made a most ingenious and persevering defence,

and extremely puzzled the Commissioners. He took exception to the

indictment, declaring that he was not even mentioned in it. When he was

shown the name Henry Marten, he objected that that was not his name,

which was _Harry_ Marten. This was overruled, but he went on to plead

that the statute of Henry VIII. exempted from high treason any one

acting under a king _de facto_, though he should not be king _de jure_;

that the Parliament at that time was the supreme power, including the

functions of both king and Parliament; that it was, in fact, the only

authority there was in the country; and that it had from age to age

been contended and admitted that God indicated the rightful power by

giving it victory. Such was the authority that God at the time had set

over them, and under that they had acted. His arguments were thrown

away, and it was on this occasion that the absurd story--a typical

example of many other silly stories that continued to be circulated

for generations--was first given in evidence by a soldier, of him and

Cromwell, on the signing of the death-warrant of the king, wiping their

pens on each other's faces.

[Illustration: CHARLES II.]

After a trial in which every ingenious and valid plea was advanced

by the prisoners to deaf ears, all were condemned to death, but ten

only were at present executed--Harrison, Scott, Carew, Jones, Clement,

Scrope, Coke, Axtel, Hacker, and Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain.

Peters, by his enthusiasm and wild eloquence, had undoubtedly roused

the spirit of the Parliamentarians, and especially of the army, but

he had had no particular concern in the king's death, and had often

exerted himself to obtain mercy and kind treatment not only for the

king, but for suffering Royalists. He declared on the trial that he had

never been influenced by interest or malice in all that he had done;

that he never received a farthing from Cromwell for his services; and

that he had no hand in exciting the war, for he was abroad fourteen

years, and found the war in full action on his return. Peters, whose

character has been greatly maligned by the Cavaliers and their

historians, appears really to have been a sincere and upright patriot;

but his pleas were as useless as those of all the others.

Harrison was drawn first to Charing Cross on a hurdle. His conduct

was cheerful and even animated, as with triumph he declared that many

a time he had begged the Lord, if He had any hard, any reproachful,

or contemptible service to be done by His people, that he might be

employed in it; and that now his prayers were answered. Several times

he cried out as he was drawn along, that he suffered in the most

glorious cause in the world; and when a low wretch asked him, "Where's

your good old cause now?" he replied, "Here it is!" clapping his hand

on his heart, "and I am going to seal it with my blood." He was put

to death with all the horrors of the most barbarous times, cut down

alive, his bowels torn out whilst he was alive, and then his quivering

heart held up to the people. Charles witnessed this revolting scene

at a little distance, and yet that heartless man let the whole of the

condemned suffer the same bloody barbarities. They all went to their

hideous death with the same heroic spirit, and in order to daunt the

old preacher, Hugh Peters, he was taken to see the hanging, drawing,

and quartering of Coke, but it only seemed to animate him the more. The

effect of this and of the addresses of the undaunted Regicides from

the scaffold was such, that the people began to show evident disgust

of these cruelties; and when Scott's turn came, the executioners

endeavoured to drown his words, so that he said it must be a very bad

cause that could not hear the words of a dying man. But the words and

noble courage of these dying men, Bishop Burnet observes, "their show

of piety, their justifying all they had done, not without a seeming joy

for their suffering on that account, caused the king to be advised not

to proceed further, or at least not to have the scene so near the Court

as Charing Cross."

About a month before Harrison's execution, the Duke of Gloucester died

of small-pox; and scarcely were the royal shambles closed for awhile

when the Princess of Orange, who had come over to congratulate her

brother, the king, died of small-pox, too. "At Court," says Pepys,

"things are in very ill condition, there being so much emulation,

poverty, and the vices of drinking, swearing, and loose amours, that

I know not what will be the end of it but confusion; and the clergy

are so high that all people that I meet with do protest against their

practice." Sober people must have looked back with a strange feeling

to the earnest and manly times of the Protectorate. But death and

marriage merriments were oddly mingled in this bacchanalian Court. The

daughter of old Clarendon, Ann Hyde, was married to the Duke of York,

and was delivered of a son just six weeks afterwards. The queen-mother

(Henrietta Maria), the Princess of Orange, and the Princess Henrietta,

were violently opposed to so unroyal a marriage, but the old Chancellor

had the influence with Charles to carry it through, and, instead of a

disgrace, to convert it into a triumph. The wily politician pretended

himself to have been not only grossly deceived in the matter, but to

be intensely angry, and told Charles, according to his own account in

his autobiography, on hearing the news, that if the marriage had really

taken place, he would advise that "the king should immediately cause

the woman to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dungeon, under

so strict a guard, that no living person should be permitted to come to

her; and then that an Act of Parliament should be immediately passed

for cutting off her head, to which he would not only give his consent,

but would very willingly be the first to propose it." This picture of

the heroism of a savage, however, ill agrees with the accounts of the

Chancellor's real concern in the matter. Evelyn, in his diary, says,

"The queen would fain have undone it, but it seems that matters were

reconciled on great offers of the Chancellor's to befriend her, who was

so much in debt, and was now to have the settlement of her affairs go

through his hands." Accordingly, about six weeks after the arrival of

Henrietta Maria at Whitehall the marriage was publicly acknowledged.

Amid all these disgraceful transactions Parliament met on the 6th

of November, 1660. They proceeded to pass into a Bill the king's

"healing declaration" regarding religion. The Presbyterians were in

high spirits, but they were soon made to feel their folly in bringing

back the Episcopalian Church with its Episcopalian head. The clergy

were not so high for nothing. They knew very well what the king would

do when the matter was pressed to an issue, and accordingly the

expectant Presbyterians found the Court party not only voting, but

openly speaking against the Bill. Morrice, the creature of Monk, and

now Secretary of State, and Heneage Finch, the Solicitor-General,

strenuously opposed it, Finch not scrupling to avow that "it was not

the king's desire that the Bill should proceed." It was thrown out,

and the duped Presbyterians, instead of being persecutors, found

persecution let loose upon _them_. The Convention Parliament, having

satisfied the Court in this measure, on the 8th of December voted the

attainder of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, and, having got

this sanction, on the 30th of January, 1661, the Court, under cover

of the clergy's pious zeal, sent a rabble of constables to tear open

the graves of these great Regicides, to drag their decaying corpses

to Tyburn on hurdles, to hang them, to cut them down and behead them,

and then, throwing their putrid bodies into a hole under the gallows,

to stick their heads on poles on the top of Westminster Hall. They

proceeded to perpetrate the same revolting atrocities on the bodies

of innocent and virtuous women, and on some of the most illustrious

men of our annals. The remains of the brave old mother of Cromwell;

of his amiable daughter, Lady Claypole; of Dorislaus, the envoy of

the Parliament who had been murdered by the retainers of this Charles

II. at the Hague; of May, the historian of the Parliament, and the

excellent translator of Lucan's "Pharsalia;" of Pym, the great and

incorruptible champion of English liberty; and of Blake, the most

famous admiral that the country had yet produced, whose name alone gave

it a world-wide renown, were dragged forth out of their resting-places.

These, and every other body which had been buried in the Abbey whilst

the Commonwealth lasted, were flung into a pit in St. Margaret's

churchyard.

The settlement of the revenue by the Convention Parliament was more

successful than the legislation with regard to the Church. It was

determined at all events to get rid of the vexatious duties of feudal

tenure; for, though they had long ceased to have any real meaning,

fines were still executed on alienation of property, and reliefs

exacted on the accession to his property of each new Crown tenant.

Minors were still wards of the Crown, and were still liable to the

odious necessity of marrying at the will of their guardian. All these

claims of the Crown were now abolished. Their place was supplied,

not as might naturally be supposed by a land-tax, but by an excise

upon beer and other liquors, the landed interests thus finding means

to shift the burden upon the shoulders of the whole nation. The sum

at which the revenue was fixed was one million two hundred thousand

pounds a year.

This great bargain having been completed at the close of the year,

the Convention Parliament was dissolved. The year 1661 opened with a

Fifth-Monarchy riot. Though Harrison and some others of that faith

were put to death, and others, as Overton, Desborough, Day, and

Courtenay, were in the Tower, there were secret conventicles of these

fanatics in the City, and one of these in Coleman Street was headed

by a wine-cooper of the name of Venner, who, as we have already seen,

gave Cromwell trouble in his time. On the night of the 6th of January,

Venner, with fifty or sixty other enthusiasts, rushed from their

conventicle, where he had been counselling his followers not to preach,

but to act. They marched through the City towards St. Paul's, calling

on the people to come forth and declare themselves for King Jesus. They

drove some of the train-bands before them, broke the heads of opposing

watchmen, but were at length dispersed by the Lord Mayor, supported by

the citizens, and fled to Caen Wood, between Highgate and Hampstead.

On the 9th, however, they returned again, confident that no weapons

or bullets could harm them, and once more they put the train-bands

and the king's life-guards to the rout. At length, however, they were

surrounded, overpowered, and, after a considerable number were killed,

sixteen were taken prisoners, including Venner himself. He and eleven

others were hanged, the rest being acquitted for want of evidence.

Pepys says there were five hundred of the insurgents, and their cry

was, "The King Jesus, and their heads upon the gates!" that is, the

heads of their leaders who had been executed and stuck there.

Charles at the time was at Portsmouth with his mother, and Clarendon

made the most of the riot, representing it as an attempt to liberate

the Regicides in the Tower, and restore the Commonwealth. Fresh

troops were raised and officered with staunch Royalists, and a large

standing army of that stamp would soon have been formed, had not

strong remonstrances been made by the Earl of Southampton and others,

and equally strong obstacles being existent in the want of money. The

House of Commons, moreover, spoke out plainly before its dissolution,

as to the raising of a new army, saying, they were grown too wise to

be fooled into another army, for they had discovered that the man who

had the command of it could make a king of himself, though he was none

before. The known intention to put the Duke of York at the head of

it was another strong objection. So the design for the present was

abandoned.

[Illustration: ARREST OF ARGYLL. (_See p._ 201.)]

In England, Scotland, and Ireland the king was, of course, beset by the

claims of those who had stood by his father, or could set up any plea

of service. There were claims for restoration of estates, and claims

for rewards. Charles was not the man to trouble himself much about

such matters, except to get rid of them. In Ireland the Catholics and

Protestants equally advanced their claims. The Protestants declared

that they had been the first in Ireland to invite him back, and the

Catholics that they had been strongly on the late king's side, had

fought for him both in Scotland and England, and had suffered severely

from the late usurpers. The Protestants, however, were in possession

of the forfeited estates, and Charles dared not rouse a Protestant

opposition by doing justice to the Catholics, who, though the more

numerous, were far the weaker party. Besides, the different interests

of the claiming parties were so conflicting, that to satisfy all sides

was impossible. Some of the Protestants were Episcopalians, some

Presbyterians. The latter had been vehement for the Commonwealth,

but to ward off the royal vengeance they had, on the fall of Richard

Cromwell, been the first to tender their allegiance to Charles, and

propitiate him by an offer of a considerable sum of money. Then there

were Protestant loyalists, whose property under the Commonwealth had

been confiscated, and there were the Catholics, who had suffered from

both parties, even when ready to serve the king. There were officers

who had served in the Royal army before 1649, and had never received

the arrears of their pay; there were also the widows and orphans

of such. To decide these incompatible demands Charles appointed a

Commission. But little good could possibly accrue from this, for

though there were lands sufficient to have pacified all who had just

claims, these had been lavishly bestowed on Monk, the Duke of York,

Ormond, Kingston, and others. Every attempt to take back lands, however

unjustly held by Protestants, threatened to excite a Protestant cry

of a dangerous favouring of Catholics, and of a design to reinstate

the Papists, who, they averred, had massacred a hundred thousand

Protestants during the rebellion. Charles satisfied himself with

restoring the bishops and the property of the Episcopalian Church,

and left the Commission to settle the matter. But appeals from this

impassive tribunal were made to himself, and he at length published

his celebrated declaration for the settlement of Ireland, by which the

adventurers and soldiers who had been planted on the estates of the

Irish by the Commonwealth were to retain them, except they were the

estates of persons who had remained entirely neutral, in which case

adventurers and soldiers were to have an equivalent from the fund for

reprisals. But this settled nothing, for so many charges were advanced

against those who pleaded they were innocent, that few were allowed to

be so. The matter was next brought before the Irish Parliament, and

there again was division. The Commons, who had been appointed through

the influence of the soldiers and adventurers, voted that the king's

declaration should pass into law. The Lords, on the contrary, protested

that it would ruin all the old families, both Catholic and Protestant.

The contending parties once more appealed to the king, who, wearied

with the interminable strife, seized the opportunity of the discovery

of a paper formerly signed by Sir Nicholas Plunket, one of the agents

of the appellants, offering Ireland to the Pope or any Catholic power

who would defend them against the Parliament, to dismiss their appeal,

and the Bill, based on the Royal declaration, was passed. It was soon

found, however, that it was not easy to carry this law into execution.

Scotland was restored to its condition of an independent kingdom.

The survivors of the Committee of Estates, which had been left in

management on Charles's disastrous march into England, previous to the

battle of Worcester, were ordered to resume their functions. Middleton

was appointed Lord Commissioner; Glencairn Lord Chancellor; the Earl

of Lauderdale Secretary of State; Rothes President of the Council;

and Crawford Lord Treasurer. A Parliament was summoned to meet in

Edinburgh in January, 1661, and its first measure was to restore the

Episcopal hierarchy. To completely destroy every civil right of the

Presbyterian Kirk, Middleton procured the passing of an Act to annul

all the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament since the commencement

of the contest with the late king. Even the Lord Treasurer Crawford

opposed this measure, declaring that as the late king had been present

at one of these Parliaments, and the present one at another, therefore

to repeal the Acts of these Parliaments would be to rescind the Act of

Indemnity and the approval of the Engagement. Middleton carried his

point, and levelled every political right of the Kirk at a blow. The

ministers of the Kirk in astonishment met to consult and to protest;

they sent a deputation to the king with a remonstrance; but they

arrived at a time likely to inspire them with awe, and did not escape

without a painful evidence that they were no longer in the proud

position of their fathers. Charles had shed the blood of vengeance

plentifully in England, and there were those in Scotland whom he

looked on with a menacing eye. The chief of these was the Marquis of

Argyll. Argyll had been the head and leader of the Covenanters. He had

counselled with and encouraged the General Assembly in its resistance

to the late king's measures. He had been his most persevering enemy,

and, finally, he had encouraged the invasion of England by the Scots,

and had been the first to support Cromwell, even sitting in the

Parliament of his son Richard. Argyll was well aware that he was an

object of resentment, and kept himself secure in the Highlands. But his

son, Lord Lorne, had been a steady and zealous opponent of Cromwell and

the Commonwealth, and he was one of the first to congratulate Charles

on his restoration. To lay hold on Argyll in his mountains was no easy

matter, but if he could be beguiled from his fastnesses to Court, he

might be at once punished. No symptoms of the remembrance of the past,

therefore, escaped the king or his ministers, and Argyll deceived by

this, and by the friendly reception of his son, wrote proposing to

pay his respects to his sovereign in the capital. Charles returned

him a friendly answer, and the unwary victim was not long in making

his appearance in London. But he was not admitted to an audience at

Whitehall, but instantly arrested and committed to the Tower. He was

then sent down to Scotland to be tried by the king's ministers there,

some of them, as Lauderdale and Middleton, hideous to their own age and

to posterity for their sanguinary cruelty. Besides, they were eager to

possess themselves of Argyll's splendid patrimony, and they pursued

his impeachment with an unshrinking and unblushing ferocity which

astonished even the king.

Argyll pleaded that he had only acted as the whole nation had done, and

with the sanction of Parliament; that the late king had passed an Act

of Oblivion for all transactions prior to 1641, and the present king

had given an Act of Indemnity up to 1651; that, up to that period, he

could not, therefore, be called in question; that he had been out of

the country during the time that most of the barbarities alleged had

been committed; and that as to the Marquis of Montrose, he had been

the first to commence a system of burning and extermination, and that

they were compelled to treat him in the same manner. And finally, his

compliance with Cromwell was not a thing peculiar to himself. They had

all been coerced by that successful man; so much so, that his Majesty's

Lord Advocate, then his persecutor, had taken the Engagement to him.

This latter plea was the most unfortunate one that he could have used,

for nothing but augmented malice could be the result of it, and there

was enough of that already in the minds of his judges. Fletcher, the

Lord Advocate, was thrown into a fury by the remark, called the marquis

an impudent villain, and added an additional article to the charges

against him--that of having conspired the late king's death.

Lord Lorne procured a letter from Charles, ordering the Lord Advocate

to introduce no charge prior to 1651, and directing that on the

conclusion of the trial, the proceedings should be submitted to the

king before judgment was given. This would have defeated Argyll's foes

had the king been honest in the matter; but Middleton represented to

Charles that to stay judgment till the proceedings had been inspected

by the king would look like distrust of the Parliament, and might much

discourage that loyal body. Charles allowed matters, therefore, to take

their course; but Middleton was again disappointed by Gilmore, the

President of the Court of Sessions, declaring that all charges against

the marquis since 1651 were less valid for the purposes of an attainder

than those which had excited so much controversy in the cause of the

Earl of Strafford, and he carried the Parliament with him. Argyll and

his friends now calculated on his escape, but this was not intended.

A number of letters were hunted out, said to have been written to

Monk and other Commonwealth men whilst they were in power, expressing

his attachment to their cause, and his decided disapprobation of the

king's proceedings. These were decisive. Though the time was passed

when fresh evidence could legally be introduced, these letters were

read in Parliament, and the effect was that of a thunderbolt falling in

the midst of Argyll's friends. They at once disappeared, overwhelmed

with confusion, and sentence of death was passed on the marquis. That

no time might be allowed for an appeal to the king, who wished to be

excused refusing the favour of his life to his son, Argyll's execution

was ordered in two days. In vain the unfortunate nobleman pleaded for

ten days, in order that the king's pleasure might be ascertained; it

was denied him, and understanding from that the determination of the

king, he remarked, "I set the crown on his head at Scone, and this is

my reward." He employed the short space left him in earnest prayer,

and in the midst of his devotions, believing that he heard a voice

saying, "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee!" he was

wonderfully consoled and strengthened, and ascended the scaffold with a

calm intrepidity which astonished and disappointed his enemies. Before

laying his head on the block, he declared his ardent attachment to

the Covenanters in words which flew to every quarter of Scotland, and

raised him to the rank of a martyr in the estimation of the people. His

head was stuck on the same spike that had received that of Montrose.

Next to Argyll, the malice of the king and Cavaliers was fiercest

against Johnston of Warriston, and Swinton. Warriston was the uncle of

Bishop Burnet, a most eloquent and energetic man, who had certainly

done his utmost for the maintenance of the Covenant, and against the

tyranny of Charles I. He was now an old man, but he fled to France,

where, however, he was not long safe, for the French Government gave

him up, and he was sent back and hanged. Swinton, who had turned

Quaker, escaped, perhaps through Middleton's jealousy of Lauderdale,

who had obtained the gift of Swinton's estate, but more probably by a

substantial benefit from the estate to the Court.

The wrath of Charles next fell on the deputation of twelve eminent

ministers, who had dared to present a remonstrance against the

suppression of the privileges of the Kirk. They were thrown into

prison, but were ultimately dismissed except Guthrie, one of the

most daring and unbendable of them. He had formerly excommunicated

Middleton, and had been one of the authors of the tract, "The Causes of

God's Wrath." Since the Restoration he had called a public meeting to

remind the king of having taken the Covenant, and to warn him against

employing Malignants. Guthrie was hanged, and along with him a Captain

Govan, who had, whilst the king was in Scotland, deserted to Cromwell;

but why he was selected from among a host of such offenders no one

could tell. This closed the catalogue of Scottish political executions

for the present.

But in another form Charles and his brutal ministers were preparing

deluges of fresh blood in another direction. Middleton assured Charles

that the restoration of prelacy was now the earnest desire of the

nation, and a proclamation was issued announcing the king's intention.

Only one of the bishops of Laud's making was now alive, Sydserfe, a man

of no estimation, who was sent to the distant see of Orkney, though

he aspired to the archiepiscopal one of St. Andrews. That dignity

was reserved for a very different man, Sharp, a pretended zealot for

the Kirk, who, at the same time that he urged Middleton to restore

episcopacy, persuaded his clerical brethren to send him up to London to

defend the independence of the Kirk. He went, and to the astonishment

and indignation of the ministers and people, returned Archbishop of St.

Andrews. He endeavoured, in a letter to Middleton of May 28th, to prove

that he had served the Kirk faithfully till he saw that it was of no

avail, and that he took the post to keep out violent and dangerous men.

This, after such a change, could be only regarded as the poor excuse

of an unprincipled man. His incensed and abandoned friends heaped

on him execrations, and accused him of incontinency, infanticide,

and other heinous crimes. By this measure, and the co-operation of

Middleton and Lauderdale, all the old bitterness was revived, and the

horrors of a persecution which has scarcely an example in history,

were witnessed. By Sharp's advice three other bishops were appointed,

Fairfowl to the see of Glasgow, Hamilton to Galloway, and Dr. Robert

Leighton to Dunblane. Leighton was the son of that Dr. Leighton whom

Laud had so unmercifully treated and mutilated for his tract against

prelacy. And now his son embraced prelacy, but was a very different man

to Sharp--pious, liberal, learned, and a real ornament to the Church,

though entering it by such a change. The four bishops went up to London

to receive ordination, which was administered to them by Sheldon,

Bishop of London, at Westminster, with a splendour which greatly

offended the Puritan simplicity of Leighton. They were invited to take

their seats in the House of Parliament, where Leighton had very soon an

opportunity of opposing the introduction of the oath of Allegiance and

Supremacy, which, however, all men were required to take. Sharp drove

on this and other irritating measures; all meetings of presbyteries

and synods were prohibited under penalty of treason, and Sharp soon

recommended the enforcement of an oath abjuring the Solemn League and

Covenant; and with these terrible weapons in their hands, Middleton,

Sharp, and Lauderdale drove the Presbyterians from all offices in the

Church, State, or magistracy, and many were compelled to flee from

the country. The most astonishing thing was, that the spirit of the

people had been so subdued by the arms and supremacy of Cromwell, that,

instead of rising as their fathers did, they submitted in passive

surprise. It required fresh indignities and atrocities to raise them

again to the fighting pitch, and they came. In a short time the number

of prelates was augmented to fourteen, and the Kirk appeared to be

extinguished in Scotland.

Whilst these things were taking place in Ireland and Scotland, in

England the king and his Cavalier courtiers were running a high

career, and the new Parliament proved violently Royalist. The old

great families, the old gentry, the Cavaliers, and the clergy, were

all united to strain every old corrupt practice to pack a Parliament

of their own fashion. Royalists, Cavaliers, and the sons of Cavaliers

predominated in the new Parliament, which met on the 8th of May,

1661. Not more than fifty or sixty of the Presbyterian party were

elected, for the Cavaliers everywhere proclaimed them the enemies

of the monarchy, and they were scared into silence. This Parliament

acquired the name of the Pension Parliament, and, to the disgrace of

the country, continued to sit much longer than the so-called Long

Parliament, of which the constitution was so altered as occasion

demanded that it could not be properly regarded as _one_ Parliament

from 1640 to 1660--it continued eighteen years. The Parliament and the

Church far outran the Court in zeal for the destruction of liberty

and the restoration of a perfect despotism. The Commons commenced

their proceedings by requiring every member, on pain of expulsion, to

take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England.

They ordered, in conjunction with the Lords, the Solemn League and

Covenant to be burnt by the common hangman; they proposed to annul

all the statutes of the Long Parliament, and restore the Star Chamber

and Court of High Commission, but in this they failed. They passed

a Bill declaring that neither House, nor both Houses together, had

any legislative power without the king; that in him resided the sole

command of the militia, and all other forces of land and sea; and that

an oath should be taken, by all members of corporations, magistrates,

and other persons bearing office, to this effect:--"I do declare and

believe that it is not lawful upon any pretence whatever to take

arms against the king, and that I do abhor that traitorous position

of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against those

commissioned by him." This was called the Corporation Oath. They

restored the bishops to their seats in the House of Peers; they made

Episcopalian ordination indispensable to Church preferment; they

revived the old Liturgy without any concession to the prejudices of the

Presbyterians, and thus drove two thousand ministers from the Church

in one day; they reminded the sufferers that the Long Parliament had

done the same, but they did not imitate that Parliament in allowing

the ejected ministers an annuity to prevent them from starving; they

declared it a high misdemeanour to call the king a Papist, that is, to

speak the truth, for he was notoriously one; increased the rigour of

the law of treason, and knocked on the head the last chance of popular

liberty by abolishing the right of sending petitions to Parliament with

more than twenty names attached, except by permission of three justices

of the peace, or the majority of the grand jury. When this Parliament

had done these notable feats, and passed a Bill of Supply, Charles

prorogued it till the 28th of November.

On assembling at this date Parliament was alarmed by Clarendon with

rumours of fresh conspiracies in the country. The object was to obtain

the death of more of the Regicides. The Commons fell readily into the

snare. To make a spectacle of disaffected men, they ordered three

eminent Commonwealth men--Lord Monson, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Sir

Robert Wallop, to be drawn with ropes round their necks from the Tower

to Tyburn and back again, to remain perpetual prisoners. But this

did not satisfy them; they must have more blood, and though Charles

had promised their lives to Sir Harry Vane and General Lambert, they

demanded their trial and execution; and Charles, who had no more regard

for his word than his father, complied. They were to be tried the

next session. Parliament then proceeded to draw up a more stringent

Conformity Bill, which passed both Houses. This Bill enacted that

every clergyman should publicly, before his congregation, declare his

assent to everything contained in the Common Prayer Book, and that

every preacher who had not received Episcopal ordination must do so

before the next feast of St. Bartholomew. They added some new collects,

in one of which they styled the lecherous monarch "our most religious

king." They made the 30th of January a holiday for ever, in memory of

"King Charles the martyr;" and voted the king a subsidy of one million

two hundred thousand pounds, and a hearth tax for ever. The king then

prorogued them on the 19th of May, 1662, with many professions of

economy and reformation of manners, one of which he observed as much as

the other.

Of the improvement of his morals he soon gave a striking example.

The Duke of York, as has been stated, had married Anne Hyde, though

she had been his mistress and was on the point of being delivered

of an illegitimate child, which Charles Berkeley publicly claimed

as his own, and brought forward the Earls of Arran, Talbot, Jermyn,

and others to testify to her loose conduct. Berkeley was afterwards

brought to contradict his own statement; but these circumstances, and

James's gloomy and bigoted temper, rendered it desirable that Charles

should marry. Heirs and heiresses he had in abundance, had they been

legitimate. Besides Lucy Walters or Barlow, by whom he had the Duke of

Monmouth, though the paternity of the child was generally awarded to

the brother of Algernon Sidney--for Mrs. Walters or Barlow was very

liberal of her favours--Charles had, on arriving in London, established

a connection with the wife of a Mr. Palmer, whose maiden name was

Barbara Villiers. The husband's connivance was purchased with the title

of Earl of Castlemaine, and the countess was afterwards advanced to the

rank of the Duchess of Cleveland.

As it was requisite for Charles, however, to marry, his ministers

looked about for a suitable wife. Nothing could reconcile him to the

idea of a German bride, and the Catholic princesses of the south were

regarded by the nation with suspicion, both from the memory of the

last queen, and the suspected tendency of Charles himself to Popery.

Whilst Charles was in France, in 1659, he made an offer to the niece

of Cardinal Mazarin, which that shrewd politician--who showed himself,

however, a bad prophet--politely declined, for Charles was then a mere

fugitive, and the cardinal did not foresee so sudden a change.

On the recall of Charles to the throne, both Mazarin and his master,

Louis XIV., saw their mistake, for they had not only treated Charles

with as much indifference as if it were a moral certainty that he could

never again reach the throne of England, but had even sent him out of

the country at the demand of Cromwell. Mazarin now offered his niece,

but the scene was changed, and Charles no longer stooped to the niece

of a cardinal. Louis, who had no suitable princess of France to offer

him, and who wanted to prevent Portugal from falling into the power of

Spain, recommended to him Donna Catarina of Braganza, the Portuguese

monarch's sister. Could he accomplish this match, Louis, who was bound

by treaty with Spain to offer no aid to Portugal, might be able to do

it under cover of the King of England. The king's ministers, after

some apprehension on the score of the lady's religion, were of opinion

that the match was desirable, if it were only for the great dowry

offered--five hundred thousand pounds, the Settlements of Tangier in

Africa, and Bombay in the East Indies, besides a free trade to all the

Portuguese colonies. De Mello, the Portuguese ambassador in London, was

informed that the proposal met the approbation of the king. To link

the interests of France and England closer, the Princess Henrietta,

Charles's youngest sister, was married to the Duke of Orleans, the only

brother of the French king.

[Illustration: SHILLING OF CHARLES II.]

[Illustration: CROWN OF CHARLES II.]

[Illustration: FIVE-GUINEA PIECE OF CHARLES II.]

On the 13th of May the Portuguese princess arrived at Spithead; Charles

was not there to receive her, pretending pressure of Parliamentary

business, but he sent to request of her that the marriage ceremony

after the Catholic form, which he had promised, might be waived.

Catherine would not consent. On the 20th, Charles having arrived at

Portsmouth, they were, therefore, married in private by Catherine's

almoner, Stuart D'Aubigny, in the presence of Philip, afterwards

Cardinal Howard, and five other witnesses, and subsequently in public

by the Bishop of London.

[Illustration: HALFPENNY (WITH FIGURE OF BRITANNIA) OF CHARLES II.]

On the journey to Hampton Court, and for a few days afterwards, Charles

appeared extremely pleased with his wife, who--though she could not

compete in person with the dazzling Lady Castlemaine, and has been

described by some contemporaries as a homely person, as "a little

swarthy body, proud, and ill-favoured"--is stated by others also to

have been "a most pretty woman." According to Lely's portrait of her,

she is a very pleasing brunette beauty, and by all accounts she was

extremely amiable; but the misfortune was, that she had been brought up

as in a convent, completely secluded from society, and therefore was

little calculated, by the amount of her information, or the graces of

her manners, to fascinate a person of Charles's worldly and volatile

character.

How was such a woman to support her influence with such a man against

the beauty and determined temper of Lady Castlemaine, a woman as

dissolute and unprincipled as she was handsome? In her fits of passion

she often threatened the king to tear their children to pieces, and set

his palace on fire; and when she was in these tempers, a contemporary

says, "she resembled Medusa less than one of her dragons." Charles

was the perfect slave of her charms and her passions. She had wrung

from him a promise that his marriage should not cause him to withdraw

himself from her, and having borne him a son a few days after his

marriage, she only awaited her convalescence to take her place as one

of the queen's own ladies. Catherine had heard of his amour before

coming to England, for it was the talk of Europe, and her mother had

bade her never to allow her name to be mentioned in her presence.

But very soon the king presented her a list of the ladies of her

household, and the first on the list she saw, to her astonishment,

was Lady Castlemaine. She at once struck it out and, notwithstanding

the king's remonstrances, declared that sooner than submit to such

an indignity, she would return to Portugal. But she was not long in

learning that no regard to her feelings was to be expected from this

sensual and unfeeling monster. He brought Lady Castlemaine into the

Queen's chamber, leading her by the hand, and presenting her before

the assembled Court. Such a scandalous offence to public decorum, such

a brutal insult to a young wife in a strange land, was perhaps never

perpetrated before. Catherine, who did not recognise the name uttered

by the king, received her graciously, and permitted her to kiss her

hand; but a whisper from one of the Portuguese ladies made her aware of

the outrage. She burst into tears, the blood gushed from her nostrils

in the violent effort to subdue her feelings, and she fell senseless

into the arms of her attendants. Instead of feeling any compunction

for the pain thus inflicted on his wife, the demoralised reprobate

was enraged at her for thus, as he called it, casting a slur on the

reputation of the fair lady. He abused the queen for her perversity,

and vowed that she should receive Lady Castlemaine as a lady of her

bedchamber, as a due reparation for this public insult. It was in vain,

however, that he stormed at his unhappy wife; she remained firm in

her resolve, either to be freed from the pollution of the mistress's

presence, or to return to Portugal. Clarendon and Ormond ventured to

remonstrate with Charles on his cruelty, but Charles was especially

indignant that they should "level the mistresses of kings and princes

with other lewd women, it being his avowed doctrine that they ought

to be looked upon as above other men's wives." However opposed such a

doctrine may be to the more refined taste and purer morality of the

present age, it was quite in harmony with the habits and feelings which

regulated the social system of Europe at that period. Charles was at

least no worse than Louis XIV., whose mistresses were admitted to the

intimacy of married ladies of approved virtue and chastity. The same,

too, may be said of the English Court under the first two kings of the

House of Brunswick.

The part which Clarendon played on this occasion is greatly at variance

with that reputation for honour, wisdom, virtue, and true dignity with

which his admirers invest him. It shows that however much he might

recoil at it, however deeply disgraceful and degrading he might feel

it, he was ready to stoop to this disgrace and degradation, rather than

sacrifice his interest at Court. Accordingly Charles let him know that

he expected him not only to cease to object to his unmanly conduct

to his wife, but to make himself the instrument of inducing her to

submit to the ignominy; and the hoary moralist, the great minister and

historian, showed himself humbly pliant, and set to work in earnest

to bend the mind of this virtuous and outraged woman to the shame of

receiving her husband's harlot as her daily companion and attendant.

And this Clarendon did perseveringly, and at length successfully. When

Catherine talked of returning to Portugal, he bade her understand

that she was utterly in the power of her husband; that so far from

going to Portugal, she could not even go out of the palace without

his permission; and, in fact, he so worked upon the poor creature's

terrors, backed by the savage threats of the king, that he broke her

spirit, and taught her to acquiesce in an example of profligacy, which

at once scandalised and corrupted the morals of the age. Charles,

when Catherine repeated her determination to return to Portugal, told

her rudely that she must first see whether her mother would receive

her, and that he would send her Portuguese servants to ascertain that

point; and he discharged all her attendants. Thus abandoned in a

foreign country, the miserable queen told the Chancellor that she had

to struggle with greater difficulties than any woman of her condition

before; but that pattern minister only showed her that it was the more

necessary to submit. And thus Clarendon complacently writes:--"In all

this the king preserved his point; the lady came to Court, was lodged

there, was every day in the queen's presence, and the king in continual

conference with her, whilst the queen sat untaken notice of; and if her

Majesty rose at the indignity, and retired into her chamber, it may be

one or two attended her; but all the company remained in the room she

left, and too often said those things aloud which nobody ought to have

whispered. She alone was left out in all jollities, and not suffered to

have any part of those pleasant applications and caresses which she saw

made abroad to everybody else; a universal mirth in all company but in

hers, and in all places but in her chamber, her own servants showing

more respect and more diligence to the person of the lady than towards

their own mistress, who, they found, could do them less good. All these

mortifications were too heavy to be borne, so that at last, when it was

least expected or suspected, the queen of a sudden let herself fall

first to conversation, and then to familiarity, and even in the same

instant to a confidence with the lady; was merry with her in public,

talked kindly of her, and in private used nobody more friendly."

Catherine was subdued to her yoke, and this was the treatment of an

English king to a princess who brought him besides a splendid money

dowry, the Settlement of Tangier, which might in any reign of sense

and policy have been made a commanding station in the Mediterranean,

and Bombay, our first Settlement in India, the nucleus of our present

magnificent Indian empire.

Whilst these scenes had been passing in the palace, the lives of

Cromwell's supporters were brought into question without. Vane and

Lambert were put upon their trial before the Court of King's Bench

on the 2nd of June. The prominent actors in the drama of the late

Rebellion had both in their different ways done immense damage to

Royalty; and though the Convention Parliament had requested Charles

to leave them unpunished--notwithstanding that they were not included

in the Bill of Indemnity--and Charles had assented, the Cavaliers

could not rest satisfied without their blood. Lambert had been one of

Cromwell's chief generals--one of his major-generals--and to the last

he had done his best to maintain the cause of the Commonwealth by his

sword, and had attempted to prevent the march of Monk at the very time

that he was planning the return of the king. Vane had been one of the

very ablest counsellors and diplomatists that the Commonwealth had had.

True, he had not sat on the trial of the king, he had had no hand

whatever in his death; but he had done two things which could never be

forgotten or forgiven by the Royalists. He had furnished the minutes

of the Privy Council from his father's cabinet, which determined the

fate of Strafford, and the Court held him to be the real author of

his death; next, though he did not assist in condemning the king, he

accepted office under what was now termed the rebel Government. Besides

and beyond these, he was a man of the highest diplomatic abilities, and

of a spotless character and high religious temperament, which caused

the vile spirit and lives of the new reigning power and party to look

even viler by the contrast. The prisoners were charged with conspiring

and compassing the death of the present king, and the recent acts in

proof of this were alleged to be consulting with others to bring the

king to destruction, and to keep him out of his kingdom and authority,

and actually assembling in arms. These were vague and general charges,

which might have been applied to all who had been engaged in the late

Government, and on the same pleas all the Commonwealth men might have

been put to death.

Lambert, who had been most courageous in the field, appeared, before a

court of justice, a thorough coward. His late transactions had shown

that he was a man of no military genius, and now he trembled at the

sight of his judges. He assumed a very humble tone, pretended that when

he opposed General Monk he did not know that he was a favourer of the

house of Stuart, and he threw himself on the royal clemency. As there

was clearly nothing to be feared from such a man, he received judgment

of death, but was then sent to a prison in Guernsey for life, where he

amused himself with painting and gardening.

But Vane showed by the ability with which he defended himself that

he was a most dangerous man to so corrupt and contemptible a dynasty

as now reigned. The nobility of his sentiments, the dignity of his

conduct, and the acuteness of his reasonings, all marked a man who

kept alive most perilous and disparaging reminiscences. Every plea

that he advanced, and the power with which he advanced it, which

before a fair and independent tribunal would have excited admiration,

and ensured his acquittal, here only inspired terror and rage, and

ensured his destruction. He contended that he was no traitor. By all

principles of civil government, and by the statute of Henry VII., he

had only contended against a man who was no longer king _de facto_.

The Parliament, he said, before his union with it, had entered on

the contest with the late king, and put him, on what they held to be

sufficient grounds, out of his former position and authority. Moreover,

by the law of the land--the statute of the 11th of Henry VII., and

the practice based upon it--the Parliament were become the reigning

and rightful power. Under that power, and by the constitutional,

acknowledged Government he had acted, taking no part in the shedding of

the king's blood; and what he did after he did by the authority of the

only ruling Government. He therefore denied the right of any court but

the High Court of Parliament to call him in question, and he demanded

counsel to assist him in any case in rebutting the charges against him.

But every argument that he advanced only the more militated against

himself. The court was met to condemn him and get rid of him, and the

more he could prove its incompetence, the worse must their arbitrary

injustice appear. The more he could prove the Commonwealth a rightful

Government, the more must the present Government hate and dread him.

The judges declared that Charles had never ceased to be king either

_de facto_ or _de jure_ from the moment of his father's death. That he

was not king _de facto_, but an outcast from England, deprived of all

power and name, was notorious enough, but that mattered little; they

were resolved to have it so. In order to induce Vane to plead, they

promised him counsel, but when he had complied, and pleaded not guilty,

they answered his demand for counsel by telling him _they_ would be his

counsel.

Before such a tribunal there could be but one result--right or

wrong, the prisoner must be condemned; but Vane made so able and

unanswerable a defence, that the counsel employed against him were

reduced to complete silence: whereupon Chief-Justice Foster said to his

colleagues, "Though we know not what to say to him, we know what to

do with him." And when he adverted to the promise of the king that he

should not be condemned for what was past, and to his repeated demand

for counsel, the Solicitor-General exclaimed, "What counsel does he

think would dare to speak for him in such a manifest case of treason,

unless he could call down the heads of his fellow traitors--Bradshaw or

Coke--from the top of Westminster Hall?" He might have added--in that

vile state of things, that disgraceful relapse of the English public

into moral and political slavery--what jury would dare to acquit him?

The king was so exasperated at the accounts carried to him at Hampton

Court of the bold and unanswerable defence of Vane, that he wrote to

Clarendon, "The relation that hath been made to me of Sir Harry Vane's

carriage yesterday in the hall is the occasion of this letter, which,

if I am rightly informed, was so insolent as to justify all that he had

done, acknowledging no supreme power in England but Parliament, and

many things to that purpose. You have had a true account of all, and if

he has given new occasion to be hanged, certainly he is too dangerous

a man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way. Think of

this, and give me some account of it to-morrow." What account Clarendon

gave we may imagine, for he is careful in his own autobiography to

pass over altogether so small a matter as the trial and death of this

eminent man.

Vane was condemned, and executed on Tower Hill on the 14th of June,

1662, on the very spot where Strafford suffered, thus studiously making

his death an act of retribution for his evidence against that nobleman.

On taking leave of his wife and friends, Sir Harry confidently

predicted--as the former victims, Harrison, Scott, and Peters had

done--that his blood would rise from the ground against the reigning

family in judgment, on earth as well as in heaven. "As a testimony

and seal," he said, "to the justness of that quarrel, I leave now my

life upon it, as a legacy to all the honest interests in these three

nations. Ten thousand deaths rather than defile my conscience, the

chastity and purity of which I value beyond all this world." So alarmed

were the king and courtiers at the impression which this heroic and

virtuous conduct was likely to make on the public, that they took every

means to prevent the prisoner from being heard on the scaffold. They

placed drummers and trumpeters under the scaffold, to drown his voice

when he addressed the people. When he complained of the unfairness of

his trial, Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, rudely and

furiously contradicted him, saying, "It's a lie; I am here to testify

that it is a lie. Sir, you must not rail at the judges." When he began

again, the drummers and trumpeters made the loudest din that they

could, but he ordered them to be stopped, saying he knew what was meant

by it. Again, as he attempted to proceed, they burst forth louder than

ever; and Robinson, furious, attempted to snatch the paper out of his

hand which contained his notes. Vane, however, held it firmly, and then

Robinson, seeing several persons taking notes of what the prisoner

said, exclaimed in a rage, "He utters rebellion, and you write it;"

and the books were seized, or all that could be discovered. They

next, two or three of them, attempted to wrest his papers from him,

and thrust their hands into his pockets, on pretence of searching for

others. A more indecent scene never was witnessed, and Vane, seeing

that it was useless to attempt being heard, laid his head on the block,

and it was severed at a stroke.

[Illustration: RESCUED FROM THE PLAGUE, LONDON, 1665.

FROM THE PAINTING BY F. W. W. TOPHAM, R.I.

"IT WAS THE CHILD OF A VERY ABLE CITIZEN OF GRACIOUS [GRACECHURCH]

STREET. A SADDLER, WHO HAD BURIED ALL THE REST OF HIS CHILDREN OF THE

PLAGUE, AND HIMSELF AND WIFE NOW BEING SHUT UP IN DESPAIR OF ESCAPING

DID DESIRE ONLY TO SAVE THE LIFE OF THIS LITTLE CHILD; I SO PREVAILED

TO HAVE IT RECEIVED STARK NAKED INTO THE ARMS OF A FRIEND, WHO BROUGHT

IT (HAVING PUT IT INTO FRESH CLOTHES) TO GREENWICH."--_Pepys's Diary._]

But the effect of Vane's words and conduct died not with him. The

people, degraded as they had become, could not avoid perceiving that

the spirit of evil was abroad; that revenge was being taken for the

virtue and the great principles of the Commonwealth; that the base and

worthless were exterminating the true--those who were the real glory of

the nation. Burnet says, "It was generally thought that the Government

lost more than it gained by the death of Vane;" and even the gossiping

Pepys said that he was told that "Sir Harry Vane was gone to heaven,

for he died as much a saint and martyr as ever man did, and that the

king had lost more by that man's death than he would get again for a

long while."

[Illustration: SIR HARRY VANE TAKING LEAVE OF HIS WIFE AND FRIENDS.

(_See p._ 208.)]

But these plain signs could not stop the thirst for blood. Colonels

Okey, Corbet, and Barkstead, three of the Regicides, had got away

to Holland, as Goffe, Whalley, and Dixwell had to the New England

settlements. The last three managed, in various disguises, but in

continual fears, to escape; but Okey, Corbet, and Barkstead were hunted

out by Downing, who, having been Cromwell's ambassador at the Hague,

had made his peace with the new Government, and was ready to earn

favour by making himself its bloodhound in running down his former

friends. He had once been chaplain to Okey's regiment. Having secured

them, the States were mean enough to surrender them, and they suffered

all the horrors of hanging and embowelling at the gallows. General

Ludlow, Mr. Lisle, and others of the Commonwealth men had retired to

Switzerland, which nobly refused to give them up; but the Royalists

determined to assassinate them if they could not have them to hack and

mangle at the gibbet. Murderers were sent after them to dog them, and

though Ludlow escaped, as by a miracle, from several attempts, Lisle

was shot, on Sunday of all days, as he was entering the church at

Lausanne; and the murderers rode away shouting, "God save the king!"

and made their escape into France.

If the country was discontented at the destruction of its most eminent

and virtuous men, it found that it must prepare to see its foreign

prestige sold to France. The king wanted money; Louis XIV. wanted

Dunkirk back again, which Cromwell had wrested from France, and which

remained a proof of the ascendency of England under that great ruler.

Clarendon, who should have endeavoured to save the nation from that

disgrace, did not know where else to look for the necessary supplies

for Charles's pleasures, and if he did not suggest, actually counselled

the measure. It was contended that Dunkirk was useless to England, and

that the expense of maintaining it was onerous. But not only France,

but Spain and Holland, knew very well its value as a bulwark against

the notorious designs of Louis of adding Belgium, and if possible

Holland, to France. Charles knew this very well, too, and was ready to

sell it to the highest bidder. Spain and Holland were eager to make

the purchase, but Charles was expecting other favours from France, and

could not get them if he sold Dunkirk to either of those nations. He

was in treaty with Louis for ten thousand foot and a body of cavalry,

to enable him to tread down the remaining liberties of the people. He

therefore gave the preference to France--for not a patriotic feeling,

but the most base personal views swayed him in such matters--and

struck a bargain with D'Estrades for five million livres. Charles

struggled for the payment in cash, but Louis would only give bills for

the amount; and then, knowing Charles's necessity, he privately sent

a broker, who discounted the bills at sixteen per cent.; and Louis

himself boasts, in his published works, that he thus saved five hundred

thousand livres out of the bargain, without Charles being aware of

it. The indignation of the public at this transaction was loud and

undisguised; the merchants of London had in vain offered themselves

to advance the king money, so that Dunkirk might not be sacrificed,

and now the people openly said that the place was sold only to satisfy

the rapacity of the king's mistresses, of whom he was getting more

and more--Miss Stewart, Nell Gwynn, and others of less mark. The

reprobation of the affair was so universal and violent, and Clarendon

was so fiercely accused of being a party to it, that from this hour his

favour with the nation was gone for ever.

Whilst the king was thus spilling the best blood, and selling the

possessions of the country, the Nonconformists were vainly hoping for

his fulfilment of his Declaration of Breda, as it regarded liberty

to tender consciences. The Act of Uniformity came into force on the

24th of August, St. Bartholomew's Day, on which day the deprivation

of two thousand Presbyterian ministers would be enforced. They

therefore petitioned for three months' delay, which Charles promised,

on condition that during that time they should use the Book of Common

Prayer. But no sooner was this promise given than the Royalists,

and especially the bishops, contended that the king was under no

obligation to keep the Declaration of Breda, inasmuch as it had only

been made to the Convention Parliament, which had never called for its

fulfilment. Clarendon did not venture to counsel Charles to break his

word, but he advised the summoning of the bishops to Hampton Court,

where the question was discussed in the presence of Ormond, Monk, and

the chief law-officers and ministers of State. The bishops expressed

much disgust at "those fellows," the Nonconformists, still insisting

on interrupting the king in the exercise of his undoubted prerogative;

they were supported by the Crown lawyers, and the Act was enforced in

all its rigour, despite the royal promise, which had over and over

lost its slightest value. The storm of persecution burst forth on the

Nonconformists with fury. Their meetings were forcibly broken up by

soldiery, and their preachers and many of themselves thrust into prison

on charges of heresy and violation of the laws. Numbers again prepared

for flight to New England, and to prevent this sweeping emigration

of useful artisans, the Earl of Bristol, the former impetuous and

eccentric Lord Digby of the Civil Wars, and Ashley Cooper planned a

scheme which should at once relieve both Dissenters and Catholics.

This was to induce the king, on the plea of fulfilling his Declaration

of Breda, to issue a declaration of indulgence of a broad and

comprehensive character. This was supported in the Council by Robartes,

Lord Privy Seal, and Bennet, the new Secretary of State. Accordingly,

Charles, on the 6th of December, issued his declaration, called "a

Declaration for Refuting Four Scandals cast on the Government"--namely,

that the Act of Indemnity had been merely intended to be temporary;

that there was an intention to keep a large standing army; that the

king was a persecutor; and that he was a favourer of Popery. In answer

to the third scandal, he declared he would submit to Parliament a

Bill for ample indulgence to tender consciences; and though he would

not refuse to make the Catholics, like the rest of his subjects,

a partaker in this privilege, yet to show the fallacy of the fourth

scandal, if they abused his goodness he would pursue them with all the

rigour of the laws already existing against them.

[Illustration: CHARLES II. AND NELL GWYNN.

FROM THE PICTURE BY E. M. WARD, R.A.

IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON.

]

This announcement was received with an outburst of indignation by all

parties except the Independents and the other Dissenters who partook

of their ideas of general toleration. But the Presbyterians adhered

to their ancient bigotry so firmly, that rather than Catholics should

enjoy toleration, they were ready to forego it themselves. The Church,

and a vast number of people of no religion at all, joined in the cry

out of their hereditary alarm at Popery. The moment that the session

of 1663 opened, on the 18th of February, both houses attacked the

Declaration, and the Commons, though the Bill was not before them,

sent an address to the king, thanking him for the other parts of the

Declaration, but represented the third clause as pregnant with schism,

endless liberties and importunities of sects, and certain disturbance

of the national tranquillity. In the Lords the Lord-Treasurer led the

opposition, and the bishops supported him with all their energies, and,

to the astonishment of Charles himself, Clarendon, who had been laid

up with gout, on the second day of the debate went to the House, and

attacked it with a vehemence of language which gave great offence to

the king. Probably Clarendon calculated on more serious damage from

the popular feeling, of which his Dunkirk policy had recently given

him a sharp taste, than on any strong resentment of Charles, but he

was mistaken; the Bill was defeated, but the king expressed his wrath

to Southampton, the Treasurer, and Clarendon, in such terms as struck

terror into them, and from that time it was evident that neither of

them possessed his confidence any longer. Nor did he spare the bishops.

He reproached them with bigotry and ingratitude. He told them that it

was owing to his Declaration of Breda that they owed their restoration,

and that now they were driving him to break that promise. The

intolerance of the bishops in his father's time had caused, he said,

the destruction of the hierarchy, and done much to ruin the monarchy

itself; and no sooner were they reinstated, than they were pursuing the

same blind and fatal course. From that day, too, his manner to them

changed, and his courtiers, quick to perceive the change, imitated it,

and, glad to excuse their profligacy, indulged in ridicule of their

persons, and mockery of their sermons.

But though Charles had boldly spoken much severe truth in the moment

of his resentment, all parties calculated too well on the evanescence

of anything in him like a wise or virtuous perseverance, and they

pursued their object with an obstinacy which compelled the ease-loving

monarch to give way. The Commons passed a Bill to check the growth

of Popery, and another that of Nonconformity, but though strongly

supported in the Lords, they were defeated by the Presbyterian and

Catholic members. They then changed their tack, and presented an

address to the king, praying him to put in force all the penal laws

against the Catholics and sectaries of every description. Having

expressed their wishes, the Commons granted the king four subsidies,

and he was about to prorogue Parliament, when a strange incident

delayed this event for some time. The king, during the discussion

on the Supplies, made a statement which seemed to commit the Earl

of Bristol with Parliament. The earl and the king becoming warm

in mutual explanation before Lord Arlington, Charles used strong

language, and Bristol, losing his temper, reproached the king with

his amours, his indolence, and the sacrifice of his best friends to

the malice of Clarendon, and vowed that unless justice was done him

within twenty-four hours, he would do a thing that would astonish both

the king and the Chancellor. This thing was to impeach Clarendon of

high treason on the ground that he had, both publicly and privately,

endeavoured to fix the character of a papist on the king, and had

represented that he alone protected the Protestant establishment.

Bristol's hasty temper had betrayed him into a charge which he could

not substantiate. He was foiled with disgrace, and he only escaped

being arrested by flight.

When the next session of Parliament opened, on the 16th of March,

1664, the Commons returned with unabated animus, and circumstances in

the interim had occurred, which, as they favoured both the orthodox

scheme and a scheme of the king's, enabled them to carry their point by

conceding his. In October, a trifling insurrection broke out at Farnley

Wood, in Yorkshire. The people, who were of an obscure class, appeared

to be Fifth-Monarchy men and Republicans, who complained of the

persecutions for religion, and of the violation of the Triennial Act,

and contended that as the present Parliament had sat more than three

years, it was illegal, and the people had nothing to do but to elect

another of their own accord. This was a mistake; the Act did not limit

the duration of Parliament, but the interval between one Parliament and

another. The Triennial Act, passed in the 16th of Charles I., when

his Parliament wrung a number of those guarantees from him, authorised

the sheriffs to issue writs for an election after any Parliament had

ceased to sit three years, if the Government did not summon one, and in

default of the sheriffs issuing such writs, the people might assemble,

and proceed to election without writs.

The Government wanted to be rid of this Act, and therefore the Duke

of Buckingham set Gere, sheriff of Yorkshire, and others, to send

incendiaries amongst the people to excite them to proceedings of this

sort. They were then arrested to the number of about fifty persons

in Yorkshire and Westmoreland, on the plea that they were assembled

without lawful cause, the Parliament, so far from having ceased to

sit three years, being still sitting. The ignorant people had been

probably purposely misinformed, and some of them were hanged for it.

The end of Charles was gained. He told the Parliament that the Act

thus encouraged seditious meetings, and that though he never wished

to be without a Parliament for three years, he was resolved never to

allow of a Parliament summoned by such means as prescribed by that Act.

The Parliament readily repealed the Act, and passed another, still

requiring a Parliament at farthest after three years' interval, but

sweeping away what Charles called the "wonderful clauses" of the Bill.

In return for this favour, the Commons now solicited his assent to

the Conventicle Act, which it was hoped would extinguish Dissent

altogether. This was a continuation of those tyrannic Acts which were

passed in this infamous reign, some of which, as the Corporation and

Test Acts, even survived the revolution of 1688. The Test Act, the Act

of Uniformity, by which Bishop Sheldon, the Laud of his time, ejected

two thousand ministers, now the Conventicle, and soon after this the

Five Mile Act, completed the code of despotism.

Here was the king, who, in the last session of Parliament, published

his declaration for the indulgence of tender consciences, now wheeling

round like a weathercock, and consenting to the Conventicle Act.

And what was this Act? It forbade more than five persons to meet

together for worship, except that worship was according to the Common

Prayer Book. All magistrates were empowered to levy ten pounds on the

ministers, five pounds on every hearer, and twenty pounds on the house

where this conventicle, as it was called, was held. This fine, or

three months' imprisonment, was the punishment for the first offence;

ten pounds a hearer or six months' imprisonment for the second

offence; one hundred pounds a hearer or seven years' transportation

for the third; and death without benefit of clergy in case of return

or escape. This diabolical Act Clarendon applauded, and said that if

rigorously executed, it would have produced entire Conformity. What was

Clarendon's idea of rigour?

Sheldon, the Bishop of London, let loose all the myrmidons of the law

on the devoted country. The houses of Nonconformists were invaded

by informers, constables, and the vilest and lowest rabble of their

assailants. They broke open the houses of all Nonconformists, in search

of offenders, but still more in search of plunder; they drove them

from their meetings with soldiery, and thrust them into prisons--and

such prisons! No language can describe the horrors and vileness of

the pestiferous prisons of those days. The two thousand Nonconformist

ministers were starving. "Their wives and children," says Baxter, "had

neither house nor home." Such as dared to preach in fields and private

houses were dragged to those horrible prisons; those who ventured to

offer them food or shelter, if discovered, were treated the same. To

prevent the Nonconformist ministers from remaining amongst their old

friends, Sheldon, the very next session, procured the Five Mile Act,

which restrained all dissenting clergy from coming within five miles of

any place where they had exercised their ministry, and from teaching

school, under a penalty of forty pounds for each offence.

In Scotland it was not against sects, but against the whole

Presbyterian Church that the fury of the persecutors was directed.

The Presbyterians had effectually crushed out all Dissenters, and now

they themselves felt the iron hand of intolerance. No sooner did the

Conventicle Act pass in England than the Royalist Parliament passed one

there in almost the same terms, and another Act offering Charles twenty

thousand foot and two thousand horse to march into England, to assist

in putting down his subjects there, if necessary. Sharp was wonderfully

elated by the Conventicle Act, and, establishing what proved to be

a High Commission Court, he managed to place his creature, Lord

Rothes, at the head of the law department as Chancellor, who brow-beat

magistrates and lawyers, and twisted the laws as Sharp thought fit. The

prisons were soon crammed as full as those in England, and proceedings

of the law courts more resembled those of an inquisition than anything

else, till the peasantry rose and endeavoured to defend themselves. The

names of Lauderdale and Archbishop Sharp are made immortal for the

infliction of infernal tortures; their racks and thumbscrews, their

iron boots and gibbets are riveted fast and firm to their names.

[Illustration: THE GREAT PLAGUE: SCENES IN THE STREETS OF LONDON. (_See

p._ 216.)]

[Illustration: THUMBSCREW.]

And now the king was about to plunge into war to serve the purposes

of his paymaster, the ambitious French king. Whatever could weaken or

embarrass Holland suited exactly the plans of Louis XIV., and to have

England contending with Holland whilst he was contemplating an attack

on Spain was extremely convenient. The immediate cause, however, came

from the complaints of the merchants, or rather of the Duke of York.

The duke was governor of an African company, which imported gold dust

from the coast of Guinea, and was deeply engaged in the slave trade,

supplying West Indian planters with negroes. The Dutch complained of

the encroachments of the English, both there and in the East Indies,

and the English replied by similar complaints. The duke advocated

hostilities against the Dutch, but found Charles unwilling to be

diverted from his pleasures by the anxieties of war. He was worked on,

however, by appeals to his resentment against the Louvestein faction in

Holland, which had treated him with great indignity whilst he was an

exile, and though the differences might have been readily settled by a

little honest negotiation, the duke was desirous of a plea for further

aggression on the Dutch, and his plans were fostered by Downing, the

ambassador at the Hague, a most unprincipled man, who under Cromwell

had held the same post, and traded most profitably on the fears of the

Dutch.

In the spring of 1664, James's admiral, Sir Robert Holmes, arrived

on the coast of Africa with a few small ships of war, to recover the

castle of Cape Coast, which the Dutch had claimed and seized. He

exceeded his commission as an officer of the African Company, and

not only reduced the castle of Cape Coast, but the forts of Goree,

and then sailed away to America, and cast anchor at the settlement of

New Amsterdam, lately taken from the Dutch by Sir Richard Nicholas,

and named it after his patron, New York. The Dutch ambassador now

presented the strongest remonstrances, and the king, excusing himself

on the plea that Holmes had gone out on a private commission, assured

the ambassador that he would have him recalled and put upon his trial.

Holmes, indeed, was recalled, and sent to the Tower, but was soon

after liberated. The Dutch were not disposed to sit down under this

indignity, and De Ruyter attacked the English settlements on the coast

of Guinea, committed great depredations, and then, sailing to the West

Indies, captured above twenty sail of English merchantmen. There was

now a vehement cry for war, and Charles appealed to Parliament, which

granted the unprecedented supply of two millions and a half. The City

of London also presented several large sums of money, for which they

received the thanks of Parliament. A very remarkable circumstance

attended the Act granting this Parliamentary supply. The ancient mode

of subsidies was abandoned, and a mode of assessment, copied from

the plan of the Commonwealth, was adopted; the first time that the

Royalists practically paid homage to the Republican superiority of

finance. The tax was to be raised by quarterly assessments. Moreover,

the clergy, instead of voting their money separately in Convocation,

were called upon to pay their taxes with the laity, and thus ended the

separate jurisdiction of Convocation: it became a mere form.

The Duke of York, who, with all his faults, was by no means destitute

of courage, took the command of the fleet as Lord Admiral against the

Dutch, and showed much ability in his command. He divided the fleet

into three squadrons, one of which he commanded himself, the second he

gave to Prince Rupert, who here again appeared in English affairs, and

the third to the Earl of Sandwich, formerly Admiral Montagu. The whole

fleet consisted of ninety-eight sail of the line and four fire-ships.

On the 4th of June, 1665, he came to an engagement near Lowestoft

with the Dutch under Admiral Opdam, a gallant and experienced seaman,

followed by a hundred and thirteen men-of-war, manned by the most

spirited and distinguished youth of Holland. The battle was terrible,

but James, discharging all his guns into Opdam's vessel, caused it to

blow up, and thus destroyed the admiral with five hundred men. The

Dutch having lost their chief commander, drew off towards the Texel,

but Van Tromp collected the scattered vessels, and there was a prospect

of a second fight; but the duke went to bed, and Lord Brounker, a

gentleman of the bedchamber, went on deck and ordered Penn to slacken

sail. The consequence was that the Dutch were allowed to retire in

safety, and much of the honour won by the duke was lost again by this

circumstance. It was said that the duke knew nothing of it, and that

Brounker had given the order of his own accord; but the prevailing

opinion was that the duke thought he had got honour enough, and the

Earl of Montague, who was serving as a volunteer, said the duke had

been much impressed by seeing, in the heat of the action, the Earl of

Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Boyle, son of the Earl of Burlington,

killed by his side. Penn, moreover, was said to have told the duke

that if they engaged again, the fight would be more bloody than ever,

for the Dutch would grow desperate with revenge. The fleet, therefore,

made homeward, and, says Pepys, the duke and his officers returned from

sea "all fat and ruddy with being in the sun." It was given out as a

great victory, and the duke received one hundred and twenty thousand

pounds for his services; but the public was far from satisfied, and

Lord Sandwich far less so. He complained to Pepys that he had borne

the brunt of the battle, and that all the honour was given to the

duke in the printed account. That there was much in these statements

was sanctioned by the fact that the duke was removed from the fleet,

and the command restored to the brave but unprincipled Sandwich. In

the battle the Dutch are stated to have lost seven thousand men, and

eighteen sail burnt, sunk, or taken. The English are reported to have

lost only one ship, and six hundred men in killed and wounded. Amongst

the slain were the Earls of Marlborough and Portland, and Admirals

Lawson and Sampson.

Sandwich was scarcely in independent command when he heard of a most

magnificent chance. Two Dutch merchant fleets, one from the East

Indies and one from the Levant, to avoid the English fleet at the

Texel, united and sailed round the north of Ireland and Scotland, and

took shelter in the neutral harbour of Bergen, in Norway. They were

jointly valued at twenty-five millions of livres. Sandwich sailed

thither after them, and the King of Denmark, the sovereign of Norway,

though at peace with the Dutch, was tempted, by the hope of sharing

the booty, to let Sandwich attack them in port. Sandwich, however,

was not satisfied to give the king half, as demanded, and in spite of

Alefeldt, the governor, who begged him to wait till the terms were

finally settled with the monarch, he ordered Captain Tyddiman to dash

in and cut the ships out and all the Dutch vessels. But Tyddiman found

himself between two fires; the Dutch defended themselves resolutely

and the Danes, resenting this lawless proceeding, fired on them from

the fort and batteries. Five of Sandwich's commanders were killed,

one ship was sunk, much damage was done to the fleet, and it was glad

to escape out of the harbour. Sandwich, however, was lucky enough

soon after to secure eight men-of-war and about thirty other vessels,

including two of the richest Indiamen, which were dispersed by a storm

whilst under the convoy of De Witt. The unscrupulous Sandwich made free

to appropriate two thousand pounds' worth of the booty, and allowed

his officers to do the same, which occasioned his dismissal from the

fleet; but to soften his disgrace, he was sent as ambassador to Spain.

Parliament, to carry on the war, granted the king a fresh supply of one

million two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and, at the same time,

voted the one hundred and twenty thousand pounds to the duke.

Whilst these events had been transpiring the plague had been raging

in the City of London, and had thence spread itself to various parts

of the country. It raged with a fury almost unexampled in any age

or nation. It had shown itself during the previous winter in a few

individual cases, and as spring advanced, it terribly extended its

devastations. In May it burst forth with frightful violence in St.

Giles's, and, spreading over the adjoining parishes, soon threatened

both Whitehall and the City. The nobility fled to the country, the

Court retreated to Salisbury, and left Monk to represent the Government

in his own person, and he boldly maintained his ground through the

whole deadly time. As the hot weather advanced the mortality became

terrible, and the people fled in crowds into the country, till the

Lord Mayor refused to grant fresh bills of health, and the people of

the neighbouring towns and villages declined to receive any one from

London into them. Those who escaped out of the metropolis had to camp

in the fields, whichever way they turned the inhabitants being in arms

to drive them away. In June the City authorities put in force an Act

of James I. They divided the City into districts, and allotted to each

a staff of examiners, searchers, nurses, and watchmen. As soon as the

plague was ascertained to be in a house, they made a red cross upon

the door a foot in length, and wrote over, "Lord, have mercy upon

us!" No one was allowed to issue out of the houses bearing that fatal

sign for a month, if they could keep them in. Persons escaping out of

these infected houses, and mingling with others, were liable to suffer

death as felons. But to remain in these houses was to perish of plague

or famine, and numbers broke wildly from them at all hazards, thus

carrying the infection on all sides. Many in their frenzy jumped naked

from the windows, rushed wildly through the streets, and plunged into

the river.

It was calculated that forty thousand work-people and servants were

left destitute by the flight of their employers, and subscriptions

were made to prevent them from starving, for they were not allowed to

leave the City. The king gave one thousand pounds a week, the City, six

hundred pounds, the Queen Dowager, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and

many noblemen contributed liberally. But the aspect of the place was

terrible. The dead carts were going to and fro continually to collect

the bodies put out into the streets, announced by the tinkling of a

bell, and at night by the glare of links. The corpses were cast into

pits, and covered up as fast as possible. The most populous and lately

busy streets were grass-grown; the people who walked through them kept

along the middle, except they were meeting others, and then they got

as far from each other as possible. Amid all this horror, the sight of

ghastly death, and the ravings of delirium, whilst some brave souls

devoted themselves to the assistance of the suffering and dying, crowds

of others rushed to taverns, theatres, and places of debauch, and a

strange maniacal mirth startled the silence of the night, and added

horror to the work of death. The weekly numbers who perished rose from

one thousand to eight thousand. The wildest rumours of apparitions and

strange omens were afloat. The ghosts of the dead were said to be seen

walking round the pits where their bodies lay; a flaming sword was said

to stretch across the heavens from Westminster to above the Tower,

and men, raised by the awful excitement of the scene into an abnormal

state, went about, as was done at the destruction of Jerusalem,

announcing the judgments of God. One man cried as he passed, "Yet forty

days, and London shall be destroyed;" another stalked nakedly along,

bearing on his head a chafing-dish of burning coal, and declaring that

the Almighty would purge them with fire. Another came suddenly from

side streets and alleys in the darkness of the night, or in open

day, uttering in a deep and fearful tone, the unvarying exclamation,

"Oh, the great and dreadful God!" The confounded people declared that

it was a judgment of God on the nation for its sins, and especially

the sins of the King and Court, and the dreadful persecution of the

religious by the Government and clergy. The Presbyterian ejected

preachers frequently mounted into the pulpits now deserted by their

usual occupants, and preached with a solemn eloquence to audiences who

listened to them from amid the shadows of death, and thus gave great

offence to the incumbents, who had abandoned their own charges. This

was made one plea, after the danger was over, for passing the Five Mile

Act in October of this year (1665). Many other metropolitan clergy

stood by their flocks, and displayed the noblest characters during

the pestilence. This terrible plague swept off upwards of one hundred

thousand people during the year; and though it ceased with the winter,

it raged the following summer in Colchester, Norwich, Cambridge,

Salisbury, and even in the Peak of Derbyshire.

Whilst the plague had been raging, numbers of the Republicans,

Algernon Sidney among the rest, had gone over to Holland and taken

service in its army, urging the States to invade England, and restore

the Commonwealth, and a conspiracy was detected in London itself for

seizing the Tower and burning the City. Rathbone, Tucker, and six

others, were seized and hanged, but Colonel Danvers, their leader,

escaped. Parliament attainted a number of the conspirators by name,

and also every British subject who should remain in the Dutch service

after a fixed day. But neither plague nor insurrection had any effect

in checking the wild licence and riot of the Court. The same scenes

of drinking, gambling, and debauchery went on faster than ever after

the Court removed from Salisbury to Oxford. The king was in pursuit

of a new flame, Miss Stewart, one of the queen's maids of honour, and

the Duke of York was as violently in love with her. Charles could not

eat his breakfast till he visited both her and Castlemaine; and even

Clarendon complains that "it was a time when all licence in discourse

and in actions was spread over the kingdom, to the heart-breaking of

many good men, who had terrible apprehensions of the consequences of

it."

[Illustration: THE GREAT PLAGUE: THE MANIAC PRONOUNCING THE DOOM OF

LONDON. (_See p._ 216.)]

The war, meanwhile, went on, and now assumed a more formidable aspect,

for Louis XIV. made a sudden veer round in his politics, and joined

the Dutch. He was actually under conditions of peace and assistance

with them, and they called upon him to fulfil his engagements; but

they publicly would have called in vain, had not Charles of late become

too independent of his French paymaster, by having received liberal

supplies from Parliament. Louis liked extremely to see Holland and

England exhausting one another whilst he was aiming at the acquisition

of the Netherlands; but it was not his policy to leave Charles free

from his control. Charles, meanwhile, had been neglecting the very

sailors who were to fight his battles against the united power of

France and Holland. The sailors who had fought so gallantly last

summer had lain during the winter in the streets, having received no

pay. Pepys says that, whilst the plague was raging in London, they

were besieging the Navy Office with clamorous demands. "Did business,

though not much, at the Navy Office, because of the horrible crowd and

lamentable moan of the poor seamen that lie starving in the streets for

lack of money, which do trouble and perplex me to the heart; and more

at noon when we were to go through them, for then above a whole hundred

of them followed us, some cursing, some swearing, and some praying to

us."

Whilst the royal duke had received one hundred and twenty thousand

pounds for fighting one battle and leaving it unfinished, and the poor

men were thus turned adrift to starvation and danger of death from the

plague, the fleet had lost nearly all its experienced officers, who

had been turned off because of their having helped the immortal Blake

to shed glory on the Commonwealth, and their places were supplied by

young, insolent, ignorant sprigs of the aristocracy, who neither knew

their business, nor were disposed to do it if they did. Pepys, who, as

Secretary to the Admiralty, saw all this, says that Admiral Penn spoke

very freely to him on the subject, and lamented the loss which the

fleet had experienced in the cashiered officers.

Such was the state of our navy when it put to sea to face the enemy.

The command was entrusted to Monk and Prince Rupert. And here were

fresh proofs of the wretched management of this miserable monarch. Monk

had taken desperately to drinking, and to this commander the fortunes

of England were entrusted in conjunction with Rupert, who, with the

courage of a lion, was never in the right place at the right time.

On the 1st of June, 1666, Monk discovered the Dutch fleet under De

Ruyter and De Witt lying at anchor off the North Foreland. They had

eighty-four sail, and Monk would have had an equal number, but Rupert

had received an order to go in quest of the French fleet with thirty

sail. Monk, therefore, having little more than fifty sail, was strongly

advised by Sir John Harman and Sir Thomas Tyddiman not to engage with

such unequal numbers, especially as the wind and sea were such as would

prevent the use of their lower tier of guns. But Monk, who was probably

drunk, would not listen, and was encouraged by the younger and more

inexperienced officers. He bore down rapidly on the Dutch fleet, having

the weather gauge, and the Dutchmen were taken so much by surprise that

they had not time to weigh anchor, but cut their cables, and made for

their own coast. But there they faced about, and Monk, in his turn, was

obliged to tack so abruptly, that his topmast went by the board, and

whilst he was bringing his vessel into order, Sir William Berkeley, who

had not noticed the accident, was amid the thick of the enemy, and,

being unsupported, was soon killed on his quarter-deck, and his ship

and a frigate attending him were taken. Sir Thomas Tyddiman refused to

engage, and Sir John Harman, surrounded by the Dutch, had his masts

shot away, and was severely wounded. The masts and rigging of the

English vessels were cut to pieces by chain shot, a new invention of

Admiral De Witt's, and Monk, with his disabled ships, had to sustain a

desperate and destructive fight till it was dark. He then gave orders

to make for the first English port, but in their haste and the darkness

they ran upon the Galloper Sand, where the _Prince Royal_, the finest

vessel in the fleet, grounded, and was taken by the Dutch. The next day

Monk continued a retreating fight, and would probably have lost the

whole fleet, but just then Rupert, with the White squadron, appeared in

sight. The next morning the battle was renewed with more equal forces

till they were separated by a fog, and when that cleared away the Dutch

were seen in retreat. Both sides claimed the victory, but the English

had certainly suffered most, and lost the most ships. The only wonder

was that they had not lost the whole. Nothing, however, could exceed

the lion-like courage of the seamen. "They may be killed," exclaimed

De Witt, "but they cannot be conquered." They very soon reminded him

of his words, for before the end of June they were at sea again,

fought, and defeated him and De Ruyter, pursued them to their own

coast, entered the channel between Vlie and Schelling, and destroyed

two men-of-war, one hundred and fifty merchantmen, and reduced the town

of Brandaris to ashes. De Witt, enraged at this devastation, vowed to

Almighty God that he would never sheath the sword till he had taken

ample revenge.

In August a French fleet, under the Duke of Beaufort, arrived from

the Mediterranean to join the Dutch fleet, under De Ruyter, which was

already in the Channel watching for position. Rupert, however, was on

the look-out, and De Ruyter took refuge in the roadstead of Boulogne,

but whilst Rupert was preparing to prevent the advance of Beaufort up

the Channel, a storm obliged him to retreat to St. Helier, by which

Beaufort was enabled to reach Dieppe; and the Dutch, severely damaged

by the tempest, returned home. But this storm had produced a terrible

catastrophe on land. A fire broke out in the night, between the 2nd and

3rd of September, in Pudding Lane, near Fish Street, where the Monument

to commemorate the event now stands. It occurred in a bakehouse, which

was built of wood and had a pitched roof, and the buildings in general

being of timber, it soon spread. The wind was raging furiously from

the east, and the neighbourhood being filled with warehouses of pitch,

tar, resin, and other combustible materials, the conflagration rushed

along with wonderful force and vehemence. The summer had been one of

the hottest and driest ever known, and the timber houses were in a

state to catch and burn amazingly. Clarendon says, "The fire and the

wind continued in the same excess all Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday,

till afternoon, and flung and scattered brands into all quarters; the

nights more terrible than the days, and the light the same, the light

of the fire supplying that of the sun." The timidity of the Lord Mayor

favoured the progress of the flames. He at first refused to admit the

military to prevent the plunder of the houses, and to keep off the

crowds where efforts were attempted to stop the fire; but nothing of

this sort could be done, for the pipes from the New River were found

to be empty, and the machine which raised water from the Thames was

burnt to ashes. It was proposed to blow up some of the houses with

gunpowder, to arrest the progress of the fire; but the aldermen, whose

houses would be the first to be exploded, would not allow it, and thus

permitted the advance of the raging element without saving their own

property. Nearly the whole of the City from the Tower to Temple Bar was

soon one raging mass of fire, the glare of which lit up the country for

ten miles around.

The terrors of the catastrophe were fearfully aggravated by the wild

rumours and suspicions that flew to and fro. It was declared to be the

doings of the Papists in combination with the French and Dutch, and

the pipes of the New River works at Islington being empty confirmed

it. One Grant, a Catholic and partner in the works, was accused of

having turned off the water on the preceding Saturday, and carried

away the keys; but it was afterwards shown by the books of the company

that Grant was not a partner there till the 25th of September, three

weeks afterwards. There were plenty of people ready to depose that

they had seen men carrying about parcels of combustibles, which, on

being crushed, burst out in inextinguishable flame, and others throwing

fire-balls into houses. There were twenty thousand French resident

in the city, and they were declared to be engaged with the Catholics

to massacre the whole population during the confusion of the fire.

Distraction and terror spread on every side--some were labouring

frantically to extinguish the flames, others were hurrying out their

goods and conveying them away, others flying from the expected

massacre, and others coming out armed to oppose the murderers. Not

a foreigner or Catholic could appear in the streets without danger

of his life. What made it worse, an insane Frenchman, of the name of

Hubert, declared that it was he who set fire to the first house, and

that his countrymen were in the plot to help him. He was examined,

and was so evidently crazed, the judges declared to the king that

they gave no credit whatever to his story, nor was there the smallest

particle of proof produced; but the jury, in their fear and suspicion,

pronounced him guilty, and the poor wretch was hanged. The inscription

on the Monument after the fire, however--and which was not erased till

December, 1830--accused the Catholics of being the incendiaries, for

which reason, Pope, a Catholic, referring to this particular libel,

says:--

"Where London's Column, pointing at the skies,

Like a tall bully, lifts the head and _lies_."

"Let the cause be what it would," says Clarendon, "the effect was

terrible, for above two parts of three of that great city, and those

the most rich and wealthy parts, where the greatest warehouses and

the best shops stood, the Royal Exchange, with all the streets about

it--Lombard Street, Cheapside, Paternoster Row, St. Paul's Church,

and almost all the other churches in the City, with the Old Bailey,

Ludgate, all Paul's Churchyard, even to the Thames, and the greatest

part of Fleet Street, all which were places the best inhabited,

were all burnt without one house remaining. The value or estimate

of what that devouring element consumed over and above the houses,

could never be computed in any degree." The houses were calculated at

thirteen thousand two hundred, covering, more or less, one hundred and

thirty-six acres. Eighty-nine churches were consumed.

[Illustration: PIE CORNER, SMITHFIELD, WHERE THE GREAT FIRE REACHED ITS

LIMITS.]

Towards the evening on Wednesday the wind abated, and buildings were

blown up to clear the ground round Westminster Abbey, the Temple

Church, and Whitehall. The next day, the weather being calm, the danger

was thought to be over, but in the night the fire burst out again in

the neighbourhood of the Temple, in Cripplegate, and near the Tower.

The king, the Duke of York, and many noblemen assisted to blow up

houses in those quarters, and thus contributed to save those places,

and finally stop the conflagration. Nothing is said so completely to

have roused Charles as this catastrophe, and both he and the duke were

indefatigable in giving their personal attendance, encouragement, and

assistance. They placed guards to prevent thieving, and distributed

food to the starving inhabitants. In the fields about Islington and

Highgate two hundred thousand people were seen occupying the bare

ground, or under huts and tents hastily constructed, with the remains

of their property lying about them. Charles was indefatigable in

arranging for the accommodation of this unfortunate mass of people

in the neighbouring towns and villages, till their houses could

be rebuilt. But for months afterwards the enormous field of ruins

presented a burning and smoking chaos. Had Charles and his brother

conducted themselves at other times as during this brief but awful

time, they had left very different names and effects behind them.

The great misfortune for the moment even softened down the acrimony

of bigotry and party; but this did not last long. An inquiry was

instituted, both by the Commons and the Privy Council, into the cause

of the calamity, but nothing was elicited to prove it the work of

incendiaries.

The people at large firmly believed that the plague and the fire were

judgments for the sins of the King and Court.

[Illustration: GEORGE MONK, DUKE OF ALBEMARLE.]