THE LIBERAL ideas bred in sectarian circles, here And in America, did
not become the common property of mankind until they were detached
from their theological root, and became the creed of a party. That is
the transition which occupies the reign of Charles II. It is the era
in which parties took the place of churches as a political force.
A gentleman has written to remind me that the Independents did not
jointly or corporately renounce the connection between Church and
State, or assert religious liberty as a principle of government. They
did individually that which they never did collectively, and such
individuals were acting conformably to the logic of the system. In
the Petition of 1616 they say, "We deny also a national, a provincial,
and diocesan church under the Gospel to be a true, visible, political
church." John Robinson writes: "It is the Church of England, or State
Ecclesiastical, which we account Babylon, and from which we withdraw
in spiritual communion." In 1644 we are told: "Godwin is a bitter
enemy to presbytery, and is openly for a full liberty of conscience,
to all sects, even Turks, Jews, Papists." The author of the tract,
"What the Independents would have", writes that he thinks it a sin
either to follow an erring conscience or to go against it; but to
oppose it the greater sin, for he that will do the least sin against
conscience is prepared in disposition to do the greatest. Therefore
he reckons liberty of conscience to be England's chiefest good.
When I said that the English exiles in Holland came in contact with
the most spiritual remnant of the Reformers, I meant the German
Anabaptists. The English Baptists and the Quakers were as much
opposed to the principle of persecution as the Independents I have
quoted.
Only two conditions were imposed on Charles II before he came over.
One of these was liberty of conscience. Cromwell had died without
leaving behind him an established Constitution, and his lieutenants
succeeded no better than his son. The army refused to obey a
parliament of their own creating, the remnant which remained when
Pride expelled the majority. It was a parliament founded not on law
but on violence, on the act of men thirsting for the king's blood. The
simplest solution was to restore the Long Parliament, to give power to
the Presbyterian majority, which had been excluded, and was not
responsible for the miscarriages and the constitutional instability of
the last eleven years. The idea was so obvious that it occurred to
everybody--to Monk in Scotland, to Fairfax at York, and to the army
which Lambert collected to meet Monk at Newcastle, and which dispersed
without fighting for its own imperial supremacy.
It is worth while to study, in the second volume of Guizot's "Richard
Cromwell", the consummate policy with which Monk prepared the desired
result. For the recall of the excluded members was the restoration to
power of men who had persisted in negotiating with Charles I, of men
who had been Royalists in season and out of season. They were no
friends of arbitrary government; but it was certain that they would
restore the monarchy. A premature rising of incautious Royalists was
put down; and the object of Monk was to gain time, until the blindest
could perceive what was inevitable. His hand was forced by Fairfax,
who was ill with gout, but had himself lifted into the saddle, and
raised Yorkshire for a free parliament. Under that flag Monk crossed
the Tweed at Coldstream on New Year's Day. He was already the master
of England, and met with no resistance on the way to Westminster. The
Republicans, in their extremity, offered him the crown, which Monk
refused. He likewise refused the offers of the king, who would have
made him chancellor and grand constable, besides making lavish grants
of money, which the general was believed to like. He knew that he was
sure of his reward when the time came. It came quickly. The Long
Parliament made way for a Convention Parliament, which renewed the
fundamental laws, and finally abolished the feudal rights of the
crown. Whilst these bills were being voted, Charles issued the
Declaration of Breda, proposed by Monk, and resumed the crown without
a struggle.
The nation was glad to escape from the misgovernment of the Republic,
which had weighed heavily on numerous classes, and believed that the
crown had received a lesson which could not be forgotten. The new
government was not imposed by a victorious monarchy. It was an
expression of the national wish. Parliament retained control, and
there was no political reaction.
The changes now introduced went to strengthen not the prerogative, but
the gentry, who were the governing class. They were relieved from the
payment of feudal dues, by means of a tax which fell on other classes;
members were taken from the towns and added to the country districts;
and the militia, which was to protect society from the parliamentary
army, was placed in the hands of the gentry. The new order of things
was the work not of a party, but of a class. The dominant cavaliers
were willing to refuse a share in their power to the old Puritan
enemy, and passed every measure for inflicting disabilities on the
Nonconformists. They were excluded from all offices, in the Church and
in the State, even in the municipalities. In this way, by a religious
test, the class that consisted mainly of Churchmen secured all
political authority for themselves. They, however, added a political
test. They imposed an oath in favour of non-resistance. Nobody could
hold office who was not what was afterwards known as a Tory. This was
Anglican doctrine; and the clergy set to work to rule the country in
conjunction with the conservative country gentlemen, on a basis of
principles laid down by Hobbes, the philosopher of the day, who denied
the right, and even the existence of conscience.
Clarendon was minister; and it was an ingenious and politic thing in
his eyes to suppress the Roundhead by suppressing the Presbyterian.
He had reflected more deeply than any man then living on the problem
of Church and State; and he did not believe in the sacred fixity of
divisions founded on schemes of Church government only. Archbishop
Ussher had made great concessions to the Presbyterians. Baxter had
made concessions to Prelacy. The see of Hereford was offered to him,
and it was thought he might accept it. Leighton, who was as much the
greatest Puritan divine in Scotland as Baxter in England, did accept
the offer of a mitre, and became Archbishop of Glasgow. The restored
government was intolerant, because, by intolerance, it could exercise
political repression. This did not apply to the Catholics. Clarendon
had pledged himself that they should profit by the indulgence which
was afterwards promised at Breda. When he adopted the policy of
coercion against the Puritans, he was unable to keep his promise. The
unnatural situation could not last after his fall. The Puritans had
made war upon the throne, and the Catholics had defended it. When it
was restored, they proclaimed their principles in a series of
voluntary declarations which dealt with the customary suspicions and
reproaches, and fully satisfied the purpose aimed at by the oath of
allegiance. No people could be more remote from the type of Allen and
Parsons than the English Benedictines and the Irish Franciscans who
hailed the revived monarchy. Against such men the old argument of
Elizabethan persecutors was vain.
After the fall of Clarendon a different policy was attempted. The
rigid exclusiveness of the Puritans had bequeathed one sinister vice
to the English people. They were complacent in their insularity, and
had a prejudice against the foreigner. It had been directed against
Spain, for the sake of Plate fleets to seize and coasts to pillage;
and now it was strongest against the Dutch, who were dangerous rivals
by sea, both in peace and war. It was least, at that time, against
France, whose great statesman, Mazarin, had made terms with the
Republic, and retained the friendship of the restored king. A trivial
dispute on the Guinea Coast was fanned into a quarrel by the Duke of
York, who was a sailor, and who hoped to strengthen his position at
home by his professional skill, in which he only partially
succeeded. This is the war that terminated in the memorable change of
front of the Triple Alliance, uniting the Dutch, the English, and the
Swedes against France. It was a popular but totally ineffective
measure; and in 1669 England abandoned her allies and went over to
France. Lewis XIV accomplished this important diplomatic success by
the Treaty of Dover, the first in the process of events that overthrew
the Stuart monarchy, and brought in the modern type of Constitution.
Soon after his return to England, Charles opened negotiations with
Rome, which were carried on through one of his sons, born before
Monmouth, who became a Jesuit; and he vainly endeavoured to obtain
supplies from Alexander VII. Later on, he sought them in France. It
was impossible, he said, to restore the royal authority unless it was
done through the restoration of Catholicism. That could be secured, if
Lewis would make him independent of the House of Commons. The scheme
was prepared in January 1669, Arlington consenting, for a bribe of
L12,000. It was decided to restore the Catholic Church in England by
such a display of force as should be sufficient to raise the crown
above the restraints of parliament. In execution of the design Lewis
advanced L80,000, and undertook, in case of resistance, to furnish a
force of 6000 men, to be a French garrison in England, for the
repression of Protestants. The sum was much less than Charles
demanded, for the object of the French king was not to strengthen, but
to weaken him. The second point in the Treaty was that England engaged
to support France in any claims she might have upon Spain. Lastly,
England was to help her ally against Holland, in return for further
payments and the annexation of Walcheren. But it was agreed to
postpone the Dutch war until the year 1672. That is the solid
substance of the phantom which is called the Popish Plot.
It was, in reality, a plot, under cover of Catholicism, to introduce
absolute monarchy, and to make England a dependency of France, not
only by the acceptance of French money, but by submission to a French
army. Charles I and his ministers had gone to the block for less than
this.
If the thing should become known, nobody could foretell the
consequences. Turenne was told, because he would be wanted if it came
to blows; and Turenne told a lady of his acquaintance, who proved
indiscreet. The king, in a fury, asked him how he could be such a
fool. The marshal, not unaccustomed to the experience of being under
fire, replied that he was not the only man who had been made a fool of
by a woman, and King Lewis XIV did not see his way to pursue the
conversation. His political object was secured, even if nothing
should be done in England to fulfil the agreement. He had Charles
completely in his power. The secret text only needed to be divulged,
in order to raise the country against him. He never again could be
formidable. If all other devices for dividing him from his people
were insufficient, this one could not fail. Many years later Lewis
caused a book to be printed, by an Italian adventurer, in which the
secret was revealed. The book was suppressed and the author
imprisoned, for the sake of appearances. But 155 copies were in
circulation, and the culprit was released after six days. It became
dangerous for Charles to meet parliament. The facts became known to
Shaftesbury long before, and determined his course from the time of
his dismissal from office, in November 1673. The scheme laid down in
the Dover Treaty was a dangerous one, and after the beginning of the
Dutch war there were no French troops to spare.
Charles tried another way to gain his purpose. Both he and his
brother desired to establish Catholicism for its own sake. They were
not converts, but they intended to be before they died. The
difference was that James was ready to make some sacrifice for his
religion, Charles was not. They both regarded it as the only means of
putting the crown above the law. This could be done more safely by
claiming the right to dispense from penalties and disabilities imposed
by parliament. The idea, entertained as early as 1662, ripened ten
years later, when the Penal Laws, as well as the intolerant
legislation of Clarendon against the Puritans, which had been
considered the safeguard of monarchy, were declared inoperative. The
ministers, including Shaftesbury, expected to obtain the support of
Nonconformists. This calculation proved delusive. The Dissenters, on
an assurance that they would be relieved by parliament if they
resisted the offers of the king, refused to accept them. The object
of his declaration was too apparent, and was indeed too openly avowed.
Just then the Duke of York became a Catholic, and although the fact
was not made public, it was suspected. Ministers advised Charles to
maintain his offer of indulgence and his claim to the dispensing
power. Charles gave way and accepted his defeat. He gave way because
Lewis advised it, and promised him more French regiments than had been
stipulated for, as soon as he was again at peace with the Dutch.
The House of Commons followed up its victory by passing the Test Act,
excluding Catholics from office. The Duke of York resigned his post as
Lord High Admiral. It was, he said, the beginning of the scheme for
depriving him of the succession to the throne. In November 1673
Shaftesbury, who had promoted the Declaration of Indulgence, was
dismissed from office and went into opposition, for the purposes of
which Lewis sent him L10,000. He learnt from Arlington the main
particulars of the Treaty of Dover, and in the following month of
January the secret was substantially made public in a pamphlet, which
is reprinted in the State Tracts. From that moment he devoted himself
to the exclusion of James.
In 1676 the Duke of York made it known that he had become a Catholic.
This was so gratuitous that people took it to mean that he was strong
in the support which the French king gave him. He was still true to
the policy of the Dover Treaty, which his brother had abandoned, and
still watched his opportunity to employ force for the restoration of
his Church. All this was fully understood, and his enemy, Shaftesbury,
was implacable.
When he had been five years out of office, in September 1678, Titus
Oates appeared. Who the people were who brought him forward, with the
auxiliary witnesses, Bedloe, Dangerfield, and Turberville, the one who
received L600 for his evidence against Stafford, is still unknown.
Shaftesbury was not the originator. He would not have waited so many
years. His part in the affair was to employ the public alarm for the
destruction of the Duke of York. Therefore, from the summer of 1678
there was a second plot. The first, consisting in the Treaty of
Dover, drawn up by the Catholic advisers, Arundel, Bellasis, the
historian Belling, and Leighton, the great archbishop's brother. The
second was the Protestant plot against the Catholics, especially the
Duke of York. The indignation against the real plot, that of Dover,
was essentially political.
In February 1675 the opposition proposed to James to restore his
offices if he would abandon Lewis. When the imperial ambassador, in
July 1677, complained of the No Popery cry, they replied that there
was no question of religion, but of liberty. In the case of Oates and
his comrades, the political motive faded into insignificance beside
the religious. At first the evidence was unsubstantial. Oates was an
ignorant man, and he obtained credit only by the excitement and
distrust caused by the discovery of the premeditated coup d'etat.
Godfrey, the magistrate who conducted the inquiry, warned James that
the secretary of the Duchess of York, was implicated. His name was
Coleman, and he had time to destroy his papers. Some of them were
seized. They spoke of a great blow which was being prepared against
the Protestants. It appeared also that he was in the pay of Lewis,
and had solicited his confessor, Pere La Chaise, for a sum of
L300,000 in order to get rid of parliament. It was argued that if
such things were found in the papers he had not burnt, there must have
been worse still in those which had perished. It showed that the
scheme of Dover was still pursued, was still a danger. At that moment
the magistrate who sent the warning disappeared. After some days his
dead body was found at the foot of Green Berry Hill, now Primrose
Hill; and one of the most extraordinary coincidences, so interesting
in the study of historical criticism, is the fact that the men hanged
for the murder were named Green, Berry, and Hill. It was of course
suspected that Godfrey had perished because he knew too much.
For some time the excitement rose very high. On the day when two
Jesuits were executed, one of the Catholic envoys writes that nothing
else could have saved the lives of all the Catholics in London. Taking
advantage of the state of public feeling, Shaftesbury proposed that
James should be excluded from the succession for his religion. The
crown was to go to the next heir, the Princess of Orange. This was
thrown out by the Lords. Meantime the second Test Act expelled the
Catholic peers from the House of Lords. James withdrew from the
council, from the palace, and at last from the kingdom.
The second Exclusion Bill was founded, not on his religion, but on his
politics, that is, his treasonable connection with the King of France.
The opponents of exclusion proposed limitation of the royal power, in
a manner such as that which has since prevailed. Charles preferred
this amendment to the Constitution rather than an Act which enabled
parliament to regulate the succession. William of Orange vigorously
opposed it, as the same restraints might be retained when his wife
came to the throne. Halifax, who defeated the Exclusion Bill and
defended the Limitation Bill, assured the prince that it would never
be applied, as James had no chance whatever of succeeding his brother.
His only purpose in proposing his Bill was to preserve the succession,
according to law, from parliamentary control.
In order to obtain evidence that should ruin James's prospects, it was
resolved now to put the Catholic peers on their trial. Stafford came
first. He had not been in the secret of the fatal Treaty. But the
plans this time were cleverly laid. Although Lord Stafford was
entirely innocent, Count Thun, the Austrian envoy, was profoundly
impressed by the weight of the case against him and the weakness of
the defence. He was beheaded amid shrieks of execration and
exultation. Arundel was to come next; and Arundel did know enough to
compromise the duke. But the plan had failed. Nothing had been
discovered in Stafford's trial that could help the exclusion; and a
revulsion of popular feeling followed. Monmouth was now put
forward. If James could not be excluded he must make way for Monmouth,
if Monmouth was legitimate. The king was pressed to acknowledge him. A
black box was said to contain the necessary evidence of his mother's
marriage. A bishop was spoken of who knew all about it. Monmouth
himself accepted the idea. When the Duke of Plymouth died he refused
to wear mourning. He would not mourn, he said, for a brother who was
illegitimate. After the Test Act, the Exclusion Bill, the succession
of Monmouth, the indefatigable Shaftesbury had still one resource. He
tried an insurrection. When he found it impossible to draw the line
between insurrection and murder, he thought the position dangerous,
and went abroad. Russell and Sidney were put to death. Charles was
victorious over his enemies. He owed his victory to the French king,
who gave him L700,000, and enabled him to exist without a parliament
for three years.
It was during this struggle against the overshadowing suspicion of the
Dover Treaty that the Habeas Corpus Act was passed, and that Party
took shape in England. In general, the old cavalier families, led by
the clergy and the lawyers, acquiesced in the royal prerogative, the
doctrine of passive obedience, the absolute and irresistible authority
of that which Hobbes called Leviathan, meaning the abstract notion of
the State. They had a passion for order, not for oppression; good
government was as dear to them as to their opponents, and they
believed that it would not be secured if the supreme authority was
called in question. That was the Court Party, known as Tories. As
time went on, after the Revolution, they underwent many developments.
But at first they were simply defenders of royal authority against
aggression, without any original ideas.
The Country Party was the party of reform. They were the people
excluded from the public service by the oath in favour of
non-resistance. They believed in the rightfulness of the war which the
Long Parliament waged against the king, and were prepared, eventually,
to make war against Charles II. That was the essential distinction
between them and the Tories. They dreaded revolution, but, in an
extreme case, they thought it justifiable. "Acts of tyranny," said
Burnet, "will not justify the resistance of subjects, yet a total
subversion of their constitution will." When Burnet and Tillotson
urged this doctrine on Lord Russell, he replied that he did not see a
difference between a legal and a Turkish Constitution, upon this
hypothesis.
Whig history exhibits a gradual renunciation of Burnet's mitigated
doctrine, that resistance is only justified by extreme provocation,
and a gradual approach to the doctrine of Russell, on which the
American Revolution proceeded. The final purpose of the Whigs was not
distinct from that of their fathers in the Long Parliament. They
desired security against injustice and oppression. The victors in the
Civil War sought this security in a Republic, and in this they
conspicuously failed. It was obvious that they made a mistake in
abolishing the monarchy, the Established Church, and the House of
Lords. For all these things came back, and were restored as it were by
the force of Nature, not by the force of man.
The Whigs took this lesson of recent experience to heart. They
thought it unscientific to destroy a real political force. Monarchy,
Aristocracy, Prelacy, were things that could be made innocuous, that
could be adjusted, limited and preserved. The very essence of the new
Party was compromise. They saw that it is an error to ride a
principle to death, to push things to an extreme, to have an eye for
one thing only, to prefer abstraction to realities, to disregard
practical conditions. They were a little disappointing, a little too
fond of the half-way house. Their philosophy, or rather their
philosopher, John Locke, is always reasonable and sensible, but
diluted and pedestrian and poor. They became associated with great
interests in English society, with trade, and banking, and the city,
with elements that were progressive, but exclusive, and devoted to
private, not to national ends. So far as they went, they were in the
right, ethically as well as politically. But they proceeded slowly
beyond the bare need of the moment. They were a combination of men
rather than a doctrine, and the idea of fidelity to comrades was often
stronger among them than the idea of fidelity to truths. General
principles were so little apparent in the system that excellent
writers suppose that the Whigs were essentially English,
Nonconformists, associated with limited monarchy, unfit for
exportation over the world. They took long to outgrow the narrow
limits of the society in which they arose. A hundred years passed
before Whiggism assumed the universal and scientific character. In
the American speeches of Chatham and Camden, in Burke's writings from
1778 to 1783, in the Wealth of Nations, and the tracts of Sir William
Jones, there is an immense development. The national bounds are
overcome. The principles are sacred, irrespective of interests. The
charter of Rhode Island is worth more than the British Constitution,
and Whig statesmen toast General Washington, rejoice that America has
resisted, and insist on the acknowledgment of independence. The
progress is entirely consistent; and Burke's address to the colonists
is the logical outcome of the principles of liberty and the notion of
a higher law above municipal codes and constitutions, with which
Whiggism began.
It is the supreme achievement of Englishmen, and their bequest to the
nations; but the patriarchs of the doctrine were the most infamous of
men. They set up the monument to perpetuate the belief that the
Catholics set fire to London. They invented the Black Box and the
marriage of Lucy Waters. They prompted, encouraged, and rewarded the
murderer Oates. They proclaimed that the Prince of Wales came in the
warming pan. They were associated with the Rye House assassins; that
conspiracy was their ruin. Charles triumphed, and did not spare his
enemies. When he died, in spite of the Dover Treaty, of his paid
subserviency to France, of the deliberate scheme to subvert the
liberties of England, James, the chief culprit, succeeded, with
undiminished power. The prostrate Whigs were at the mercy of
Jeffreys.
But forty years of agitation had produced the leaven that has leavened
the world. The revolutionary system was saved, because the king threw
away his advantage. The Whig party became supreme in the State by a
series of events which are the most significant in English History.