VOL. I.
PHILADELPHIA
PORTER & COATES
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
Introduction
Britain under the Romans
Britain under the Saxons
Conversion of the Saxons to Christianity
Danish Invasions; The Normans
The Norman Conquest
Separation of England and Normandy
Amalgamation of Races
English Conquests on the Continent
Wars of the Roses
Extinction of Villenage
Beneficial Operation of the Roman Catholic Religion
The early English Polity often misrepresented, and why?
Nature of the Limited Monarchies of the Middle Ages
Prerogatives of the early English Kings
Limitations of the Prerogative
Resistance an ordinary Check on Tyranny in the Middle Ages
Peculiar Character of the English Aristocracy
Government of the Tudors
Limited Monarchies of the Middle Ages generally turned into
Absolute Monarchies
The English Monarchy a singular Exception
The Reformation and its Effects
Origin of the Church of England
Her peculiar Character7
Relation in which she stood to the Crown
The Puritans
Their Republican Spirit
No systematic parliamentary Opposition offered to the Government of Elizabeth
Question of the Monopolies
Scotland and Ireland become Parts of the same Empire with England
Diminution of the Importance of England after the Accession of James I
Doctrine of Divine Right
The Separation between the Church and the Puritans becomes wider
Accession and Character of Charles
Tactics of the Opposition in the House of Commons
Petition of Right
Petition of Right violated; Character and Designs of Wentworth
Character of Laud
Star Chamber and High Commission
Ship-Money
Resistance to the Liturgy in Scotland
A Parliament called and dissolved
The Long Parliament
First Appearance of the Two great English Parties
The Remonstrance
Impeachment of the Five Members
Departure of Charles from London
Commencement of the Civil War
Successes of the Royalists
Rise of the Independents
Oliver Cromwell
Selfdenying Ordinance; Victory of the Parliament
Domination and Character of the Army
Rising against the Military Government suppressed
Proceedings against the King
His Execution
Subjugation of Ireland and Scotland
Expulsion of the Long Parliament
The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell
Oliver succeeded by Richard
Fall of Richard and Revival of the Long Parliament
Second Expulsion of the Long Parliament
The Army of Scotland marches into England
Monk declares for a Free Parliament
General Election of 1660
The Restoration
CHAPTER II.
Conduct of those who restored the House of Stuart unjustly censured
Abolition of Tenures by Knight Service; Disbandment of the Army
Disputes between the Roundheads and Cavaliers renewed
Religious Dissension
Unpopularity of the Puritans
Character of Charles II
Character of the Duke of York and Earl of Clarendon
General Election of 1661
Violence of the Cavaliers in the new Parliament
Persecution of the Puritans
Zeal of the Church for Hereditary Monarchy
Change in the Morals of the Community
Profligacy of Politicians
State of Scotland
State of Ireland
The Government become unpopular in England
War with the Dutch
Opposition in the House of Commons
Fall of Clarendon
State of European Politics, and Ascendancy of France
Character of Lewis XIV
The Triple Alliance
The Country Party
Connection between Charles II. and France
Views of Lewis with respect to England
Treaty of Dover
Nature of the English Cabinet
The Cabal
Shutting of the Exchequer
War with the United Provinces, and their extreme Danger
William, Prince of Orange
Meeting of the Parliament; Declaration of Indulgence
It is cancelled, and the Test Act passed
The Cabal dissolved
Peace with the United Provinces; Administration of Danby
Embarrassing Situation of the Country Party
Dealings of that Party with the French Embassy
Peace of Nimeguen
Violent Discontents in England
Fall of Danby; the Popish Plot
Violence of the new House of Commons
Temple's Plan of Government
Character of Halifax
Character of Sunderland
Prorogation of the Parliament; Habeas Corpus Act; Second General
Election of 1679
Popularity of Monmouth
Lawrence Hyde
Sidney Godolphin
Violence of Factions on the Subject of the Exclusion Bill
Names of Whig and Tory
Meeting of Parliament; The Exclusion Bill passes the Commons;
Exclusion Bill rejected by the Lords
Execution of Stafford; General Election of 1681
Parliament held at Oxford, and dissolved
Tory Reaction
Persecution of the Whigs
Charter of the City confiscated; Whig Conspiracies
Detection of the Whig Conspiracies
Severity of the Government; Seizure of Charters
Influence of the Duke of York
He is opposed by Halifax
Lord Guildford
Policy of Lewis
State of Factions in the Court of Charles at the time of his
Death
CHAPTER III.
Great Change in the State of England since 1685
Population of England in 1685
Increase of Population greater in the North than in the South
Revenue in 1685
Military System
The Navy
The Ordnance
Noneffective Charge; Charge of Civil Government
Great Gains of Ministers and Courtiers
State of Agriculture5
Mineral Wealth of the Country
Increase of Rent
The Country Gentlemen
The Clergy
The Yeomanry; Growth of the Towns; Bristol
Norwich
Other Country Towns
Manchester; Leeds; Sheffield
Birmingham
Liverpool
Watering-places; Cheltenham; Brighton; Buxton; Tunbridge Wells
Bath
London
The City
Fashionable Part of the Capital
Lighting of London
Police of London
Whitefriars; The Court
The Coffee Houses
Difficulty of Travelling
Badness of the Roads
Stage Coaches
Highwaymen
Inns
Post Office
Newspapers
News-letters
The Observator
Scarcity of Books in Country Places; Female Education
Literary Attainments of Gentlemen
Influence of French Literature
Immorality of the Polite Literature of England
State of Science in England
State of the Fine Arts
State of the Common People; Agricultural Wages
Wages of Manufacturers
Labour of Children in Factories
Wages of different Classes of Artisans
Number of Paupers
Benefits derived by the Common People from the Progress of
Civilisation
Delusion which leads Men to overrate the Happiness of preceding
Generations
CHAPTER IV.
Death of Charles II
Suspicions of Poison
Speech of James II. to the Privy Council
James proclaimed
State of the Administration
New Arrangements
Sir George Jeffreys
The Revenue collected without an Act of Parliament
A Parliament called
Transactions between James and the French King
Churchill sent Ambassador to France; His History
Feelings of the Continental Governments towards England
Policy of the Court of Rome
Struggle in the Mind of James; Fluctuations in his Policy
Public Celebration of the Roman Catholic Rites in the Palace
His Coronation
Enthusiasm of the Tories; Addresses
The Elections
Proceedings against Oates
Proceedings against Dangerfield
Proceedings against Baxter
Meeting of the Parliament of Scotland
Feeling of James towards the Puritans
Cruel Treatment of the Scotch Covenanters
Feeling of James towards the Quakers
William Penn
Peculiar Favour shown to Roman Catholics and Quakers
Meeting of the English Parliament; Trevor chosen Speaker;
Character of Seymour
The King's Speech to the Parliament
Debate in the Commons; Speech of Seymour
The Revenue voted; Proceedings of the Commons concerning Religion
Additional Taxes voted; Sir Dudley North
Proceedings of the Lords
Bill for reversing the Attainder of Stafford
CHAPTER V.
Whig Refugees on the Continent
Their Correspondents in England
Characters of the leading Refugees; Ayloffe; Wade
Goodenough; Rumbold
Lord Grey
Monmouth
Ferguson
Scotch Refugees; Earl of Argyle
Sir Patrick Hume; Sir John Cochrane; Fletcher of Saltoun
Unreasonable Conduct of the Scotch Refugees
Arrangement for an Attempt on England and Scotland
John Locke
Preparations made by Government for the Defence of Scotland
Conversation of James with the Dutch Ambassadors; Ineffectual
Attempts to prevent Argyle from sailing
Departure of Argyle from Holland; He lands in Scotland
His Disputes with his Followers
Temper of the Scotch Nation
Argyle's Forces dispersed
Argyle a Prisoner
His Execution.
Execution of Rumbold
Death of Ayloffe
Devastation of Argyleshire
Ineffectual Attempts to prevent Monmouth from leaving Holland
His Arrival at Lyme
His Declaration
His Popularity in the West of England
Encounter of the Rebels with the Militia at Bridport
Encounter of the Rebels with the Militia at Axminster; News of the Rebellion carried to London; Loyalty of the Parliament
Reception of Monmouth at Taunton
He takes the Title of King
His Reception at Bridgewater
Preparations of the Government to oppose him
His Design on Bristol
He relinquishes that Design
Skirmish at Philip's Norton; Despondence of Monmouth
He returns to Bridgewater; The Royal Army encamps at Sedgemoor
Battle of Sedgemoor
Pursuit of the Rebels
Military Executions; Flight of Monmouth
His Capture
His Letter to the King; He is carried to London
His Interview with the King
His Execution
His Memory cherished by the Common People
Cruelties of the Soldiers in the West; Kirke
Jeffreys sets out on the Western Circuit
Trial of Alice Lisle
The Bloody Assizes
Abraham Holmes
Christopher Battiseombe; The Hewlings
Punishment of Tutchin
Rebels Transported
Confiscation and Extortion
Rapacity of the Queen and her Ladies
Grey; Cochrane; Storey
Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson
Jeffreys made Lord Chancellor
Trial and Execution of Cornish
Trials and Executions of Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt
Trial and Execution of Bateman
Persecution of the Protestant Dissenters
HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
I PURPOSE to write the history of England from the accession of
King James the Second down to a time which is within the memory
of men still living. I shall recount the errors which, in a few
months, alienated a loyal gentry and priesthood from the House of
Stuart. I shall trace the course of that revolution which
terminated the long struggle between our sovereigns and their
parliaments, and bound up together the rights of the people and
the title of the reigning dynasty. I shall relate how the new
settlement was, during many troubled years, successfully defended
against foreign and domestic enemies; how, under that settlement,
the authority of law and the security of property were found to
be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual
action never before known; how, from the auspicious union of
order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of
human affairs had furnished no example; how our country, from a
state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of
umpire among European powers; how her opulence and her martial
glory grew together; how, by wise and resolute good faith, was
gradually established a public credit fruitful of marvels which
to the statesmen of any former age would have seemed incredible;
how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared
with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks
into insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at
length united to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by
indissoluble ties of interest and affection; how, in America, the
British colonies rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than
the realms which Cortes and Pizarro had added to the dominions of
Charles the Fifth; how in Asia, British adventurers founded an
empire not less splendid and more durable than that of Alexander.
Nor will it be less my duty faithfully to record disasters
mingled with triumphs, and great national crimes and follies far
more humiliating than any disaster. It will be seen that even
what we justly account our chief blessings were not without
alloy. It will be seen that the system which effectually secured
our liberties against the encroachments of kingly power gave
birth to a new class of abuses from which absolute monarchies are
exempt. It will be seen that, in consequence partly of unwise
interference, and partly of unwise neglect, the increase of
wealth and the extension of trade produced, together with immense
good, some evils from which poor and rude societies are free. It
will be seen how, in two important dependencies of the crown,
wrong was followed by just retribution; how imprudence and
obstinacy broke the ties which bound the North American colonies
to the parent state; how Ireland, cursed by the domination of
race over race, and of religion over religion, remained indeed a
member of the empire, but a withered and distorted member, adding
no strength to the body politic, and reproachfully pointed at by
all who feared or envied the greatness of England.
Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of this
chequered narrative will be to excite thankfulness in all
religious minds, and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For the
history of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is
eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual
improvement. Those who compare the age on which their lot has
fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagination
may talk of degeneracy and decay: but no man who is correctly
informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or
desponding view of the present.
I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have
undertaken if I were merely to treat of battles and sieges, of
the rise and fall of administrations, of intrigues in the palace,
and of debates in the parliament. It will be my endeavour to
relate the history of the people as well as the history of the
government, to trace the progress of useful and ornamental arts,
to describe the rise of religious sects and the changes of
literary taste, to portray the manners of successive generations
and not to pass by with neglect even the revolutions which have
taken place in dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements.
I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below
the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing before the
English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of
their ancestors.
The events which I propose to relate form only a single act of a
great and eventful drama extending through ages, and must be very
imperfectly understood unless the plot of the preceding acts be
well known. I shall therefore introduce my narrative by a slight
sketch of the history of our country from the earliest times. I
shall pass very rapidly over many centuries: but I shall dwell at
some length on the vicissitudes of that contest which the
administration of King James the Second brought to a decisive
crisis.1
Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the greatness
which she was destined to attain. Her inhabitants when first they
became known to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the
natives of the Sandwich Islands. She was subjugated by the Roman
arms; but she received only a faint tincture of Roman arts and
letters. Of the western provinces which obeyed the Caesars, she
was the last that was conquered, and the first that was flung
away. No magnificent remains of Latin porches and aqueducts are
to be found in Britain. No writer of British birth is reckoned
among the masters of Latin poetry and eloquence. It is not
probable that the islanders were at any time generally familiar
with the tongue of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the
vicinity of the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been
predominant. It drove out the Celtic; it was not driven out by
the Teutonic; and it is at this day the basis of the French,
Spanish and Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears
never to have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and could not
stand its ground against the German.
The scanty and superficial civilisation which the Britons had
derived from their southern masters was effaced by the calamities
of the fifth century. In the continental kingdoms into which the
Roman empire was then dissolved, the conquerors learned much from
the conquered race. In Britain the conquered race became as
barbarous as the conquerors.
All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the continental
provinces of the Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric, Clovis, Alboin,
were zealous Christians. The followers of Ida and Cerdic, on the
other hand, brought to their settlements in Britain all the
superstitions of the Elbe. While the German princes who reigned
at Paris, Toledo, Arles, and Ravenna listened with reverence to
the instructions of bishops, adored the relics of martyrs, and
took part eagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the
rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performing savage rites in
the temples of Thor and Woden.
The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the
Western Empire kept up some intercourse with those eastern
provinces where the ancient civilisation, though slowly fading
away under the influence of misgovernment, might still astonish
and instruct barbarians, where the court still exhibited the
splendour of Diocletian and Constantine, where the public
buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of Polycletus
and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants,
themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still
read and interpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes,
and of Plato. From this communion Britain was cut off. Her shores
were, to the polished race which dwelt by the Bosphorus, objects
of a mysterious horror, such as that with which the Ionians of
the age of Homer had regarded the Straits of Scylla and the city
of the Laestrygonian cannibals. There was one province of our
island in which, as Procopius had been told, the ground was
covered with serpents, and the air was such that no man could
inhale it and live. To this desolate region the spirits of the
departed were ferried over from the land of the Franks at
midnight. A strange race of fishermen performed the ghastly
office. The speech of the dead was distinctly heard by the
boatmen, their weight made the keel sink deep in the water; but
their forms were invisible to mortal eye. Such were the marvels
which an able historian, the contemporary of Belisarius, of
Simplicius, and of Tribonian, gravely related in the rich and
polite Constantinople, touching the country in which the founder
of Constantinople had assumed the imperial purple. Concerning all
the other provinces of the Western Empire we have continuous
information. It is only in Britain that an age of fable
completely separates two ages of truth. Odoacer and Totila, Euric
and Thrasimund, Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild, are
historical men and women. But Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and
Rowena, Arthur and Mordred are mythical persons, whose very
existence may be questioned, and whose adventures must be classed
with those of Hercules and Romulus
At length the darkness begins to break; and the country which had
been lost to view as Britain reappears as England. The conversion
of the Saxon colonists to Christianity was the first of a long
series of salutary revolutions. It is true that the Church had
been deeply corrupted both by that superstition and by that
philosophy against which she had long contended, and over which
she had at last triumphed. She had given a too easy admission to
doctrines borrowed from the ancient schools, and to rites
borrowed from the ancient temples. Roman policy and Gothic
ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and Syrian asceticism, had
contributed to deprave her. Yet she retained enough of the
sublime theology and benevolent morality of her earlier days to
elevate many intellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things
also which at a later period were justly regarded as among her
chief blemishes were, in the seventh century, and long
afterwards, among her chief merits. That the sacerdotal order
should encroach on the functions of the civil magistrate would,
in our time, be a great evil. But that which in an age of good
government is an evil may, in an ago of grossly bad government,
be a blessing. It is better that mankind should be governed by
wise laws well administered, and by an enlightened public
opinion, than by priestcraft: but it is better that men should be
governed by priestcraft than by brute violence, by such a prelate
as Dunstan than by such a warrior as Penda. A society sunk in
ignorance, and ruled by mere physical force, has great reason to
rejoice when a class, of which the influence is intellectual and
moral, rises to ascendancy. Such a class will doubtless abuse its
power: but mental power, even when abused, is still a nobler and
better power than that which consists merely in corporeal
strength. We read in our Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who, when
at the height of greatness, were smitten with remorse, who
abhorred the pleasures and dignities which they had purchased by
guilt, who abdicated their crowns, and who sought to atone for
their offences by cruel penances and incessant prayers. These
stories have drawn forth bitter expressions of contempt from some
writers who, while they boasted of liberality, were in truth as
narrow-minded as any monk of the dark ages, and whose habit was
to apply to all events in the history of the world the standard
received in the Parisian society of the eighteenth century. Yet
surely a system which, however deformed by superstition,
introduced strong moral restraints into communities previously
governed only by vigour of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a
system which taught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was,
like his meanest bondman, a responsible being, might have seemed
to deserve a more respectful mention from philosophers and
philanthropists.
The same observations will apply to the contempt with which, in
the last century, it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages,
the sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of
the middle ages. In times when men were scarcely ever induced to
travel by liberal curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was
better that the rude inhabitant of the North should visit Italy
and the East as a pilgrim, than that he should never see anything
but those squalid cabins and uncleared woods amidst which he was
born. In times when life and when female honour were exposed to
daily risk from tyrants and marauders, it was better that the
precinct of a shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe,
than that there should be no refuge inaccessible to cruelty and
licentiousness. In times when statesmen were incapable of forming
extensive political combinations, it was better that the
Christian nations should be roused and united for the recovery of
the Holy Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be
overwhelmed by the Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a
later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury
of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age of
ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and
gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated,
in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an asylum,
in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing the
Æneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of
Aristotle, in which he who had a genius for art might illuminate
a martyrology or carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn
for natural philosophy might make experiments on the properties
of plants and minerals. Had not such retreats been scattered here
and there, among the huts of a miserable peasantry, and the
castles of a ferocious aristocracy, European society would have
consisted merely of beasts of burden and beasts of prey. The
Church has many times been compared by divines to the ark of
which we read in the Book of Genesis: but never was the
resemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she
alone rode, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath
which all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay
entombed, bearing within her that feeble germ from which a Second
and more glorious civilisation was to spring.
Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the
dark ages, productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was
to unite the nations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth.
What the Olympian chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to
all the Greek cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her
Bishop were to all Christians of the Latin communion, from
Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged
benevolence. Races separated from each other by seas and
mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of
public law. Even in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not
seldom mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished
enemies were all members of one great federation.
Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A
regular communication was opened between our shores and that part
of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and policy were
yet discernible. Many noble monuments which have since been
destroyed or defaced still retained their pristine magnificence;
and travellers, to whom Livy and Sallust were unintelligible,
might gain from the Roman aqueducts and temples some faint notion
of Roman history. The dome of Agrippa, still glittering with
bronze, the mausoleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of its columns
and statues, the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a
quarry, told to the rude English pilgrims some part of the story
of that great civilised world which had passed away. The
islanders returned, with awe deeply impressed on their half
opened minds, and told the wondering inhabitants of the hovels of
London and York that, near the grave of Saint Peter, a mighty
race, now extinct, had piled up buildings which would never be
dissolved till the judgment day. Learning followed in the train
of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was
assiduously studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries. The
names of Bede and Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout
Europe. Such was the state of our country when, in the ninth
century, began the last great migration of the northern
barbarians
During many years Denmark and Scandinavia continued to pour forth
innumerable pirates, distinguished by strength, by valour, by
merciless ferocity, and by hatred of the Christian name. No
country suffered so much from these invaders as England. Her
coast lay near to the ports whence they sailed; nor was any shire
so far distant from the sea as to be secure from attack. The same
atrocities which had attended the victory of the Saxon over the
Celt were now, after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at
the hand of the Dane. Civilization,-just as it began to rise,
was met by this blow, and sank down once more. Large colonies of
adventurers from the Baltic established themselves on the eastern
shores of our island, spread gradually westward, and, supported
by constant reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the
dominion of the whole realm. The struggle between the two fierce
Teutonic breeds lasted through six generations. Each was
alternately paramount. Cruel massacres followed by cruel
retribution, provinces wasted, convents plundered, and cities
rased to the ground, make up the greater part of the history of
those evil days. At length the North ceased to send forth a
constant stream of fresh depredators; and from that time the
mutual aversion of the races began to subside. Intermarriage
became frequent. The Danes learned the religion of the Saxons;
and thus one cause of deadly animosity was removed. The Danish
and Saxon tongues, both dialects of one widespread language, were
blended together. But the distinction between the two nations was
by no means effaced, when an event took place which prostrated
both, in common slavery and degradation, at the feet of a third
people.
The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom. Their
valour and ferocity had made them conspicuous among the rovers
whom Scandinavia had sent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their
sails were long the terror of both coasts of the Channel. Their
arms were repeatedly carried far into the heart of: the
Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under the walls of
Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble heirs of
Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered by
a noble river, and contiguous to the sea which was their
favourite element. In that province they founded a mighty state,
which gradually extended its influence over the neighbouring
principalities of Britanny and Maine. Without laying aside that
dauntless valour which had been the terror of every land from the
Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans rapidly acquired all, and more
than all, the knowledge and refinement which they found in the
country where they settled. Their courage secured their territory
against foreign invasion. They established internal order, such
as had long been unknown in the Frank empire. They embraced
Christianity; and with Christianity they learned a great part of
what the clergy had to teach. They abandoned their native speech,
and adopted the French tongue, in which the Latin was the
predominant element. They speedily raised their new language to a
dignity and importance which it had never before possessed. They
found it a barbarous jargon; they fixed it in writing; and they
employed it in legislation, in poetry, and in romance. They
renounced that brutal intemperance to which all the other
branches of the great German family were too much inclined. The
polite luxury of the Norman presented a striking contrast to the
coarse voracity and drunkenness of his Saxon and Danish
neighbours. He loved to display his magnificence, not in huge
piles of food and hogsheads of strong drink, but in large and
stately edifices, rich armour, gallant horses, choice falcons,
well ordered tournaments, banquets delicate rather than abundant,
and wines remarkable rather for their exquisite flavour than for
their intoxicating power. That chivalrous spirit, which has
exercised so powerful an influence on the politics, morals, and
manners of all the European nations, was found in the highest
exaltation among the Norman nobles. Those nobles were
distinguished by their graceful bearing and insinuating address.
They were distinguished also by their skill in negotiation, and
by a natural eloquence which they assiduously cultivated. It was
the boast of one of their historians that the Norman gentlemen
were orators from the cradle. But their chief fame was derived
from their military exploits. Every country, from the Atlantic
Ocean to the Dead Sea, witnessed the prodigies of their
discipline and valour. One Norman knight, at the head of a
handful of warriors, scattered the Celts of Connaught. Another
founded the monarchy of the Two Sicilies, and saw the emperors
both of the East and of the West fly before his arms. A third,
the Ulysses of the first crusade, was invested by his fellow
soldiers with the sovereignty of Antioch; and a fourth, the
Tancred whose name lives in the great poem of Tasso, was
celebrated through Christendom as the bravest and most generous
of the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre.
The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to produce an
effect on the public mind of England. Before the Conquest,
English princes received their education in Normandy. English
sees and English estates were bestowed on Normans. The French of
Normandy was familiarly spoken in the palace of Westminster. The
court of Rouen seems to have been to the court of Edward the
Confessor what the court of Versailles long afterwards was to the
court of Charles the Second.
The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not
only placed a Duke of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up
the whole population of England to the tyranny of the Norman
race. The subjugation of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in
Asia, been more complete. The country was portioned out among the
captains of the invaders. Strong military institutions, closely
connected with the institution of property, enabled the foreign
conquerors to oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal
code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the
sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten
down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold
men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook
themselves to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws
and forest laws, waged a predatory war against their oppressors.
Assassination was an event of daily occurrence. Many Normans
suddenly disappeared leaving no trace. The corpses of many were
found bearing the marks of violence. Death by torture was
denounced against the murderers, and strict search was made for
them, but generally in vain; for the whole nation was in a
conspiracy to screen them. It was at length thought necessary to
lay a heavy fine on every Hundred in which a person of French
extraction should be found slain; and this regulation was
followed up by another regulation, providing that every person
who was found slain should be supposed to be a Frenchman, unless
he was proved to be a Saxon.
During the century and a half which followed the Conquest, there
is, to speak strictly, no English history. The French Kings of
England rose, indeed, to an eminence which was the wonder and
dread of all neighbouring nations. They conquered Ireland. They
received the homage of Scotland. By their valour, by their
policy, by their fortunate matrimonial alliances, they became far
more popular on the Continent than their liege lords the Kings of
France. Asia, as well as Europe, was dazzled by the power and
glory of our tyrants. Arabian chroniclers recorded with unwilling
admiration the fall of Acre, the defence of Joppa, and the
victorious march to Ascalon; and Arabian mothers long awed their
infants to silence with the name of the lionhearted Plantagenet.
At one time it seemed that the line of Hugh Capet was about to
end as the Merovingian and Carlovingian lines had ended, and that
a single great monarchy would spread from the Orkneys to the
Pyrenees. So strong an association is established in most minds
between the greatness of a sovereign and the greatness of the
nation which he rules, that almost every historian of England has
expatiated with a sentiment of exultation on the power and
splendour of her foreign masters, and has lamented the decay of
that power and splendour as a calamity to our country. This is,
in truth, as absurd as it would be in a Haytian negro of our time
to dwell with national pride on the greatness of Lewis the
Fourteenth, and to speak of Blenheim and Ramilies with patriotic
regret and shame. The Conqueror and his descendants to the fourth
generation were not Englishmen: most of them were born in France:
they spent the greater part of their lives in France: their
ordinary speech was French: almost every high office in their
gift was filled by a Frenchman: every acquisition which they made
on the Continent estranged them more and more from the population
of our island. One of the ablest among them indeed attempted to
win the hearts of his English subjects by espousing an English
princess. But, by many of his barons, this marriage was regarded
as a marriage between a white planter and a quadroon girl would
now be regarded in Virginia. In history he is known by the
honourable surname of Beauclerc; but, in his own time, his own
countrymen called him by a Saxon nickname, in contemptuous
allusion to his Saxon connection.
Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, succeeded in
uniting all France under their government, it is probable that
England would never have had an independent existence. Her
princes, her lords, her prelates, would have been men differing
in race and language from the artisans and the tillers of the
earth. The revenues of her great proprietors would have been
spent in festivities and diversions on the banks of the Seine.
The noble language of Milton and Burke would have remained a
rustic dialect, without a literature, a fixed grammar, or a fixed
orthography, and would have been contemptuously abandoned to the
use of boors. No man of English extraction would have risen to
eminence, except by becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman.
England owes her escape from such calamities to an event which
her historians have generally represented as disastrous. Her
interest was so directly opposed to the interests of her rulers
that she had no hope but in their errors and misfortunes. The
talents and even the virtues of her first six French Kings were a
curse to her. The follies and vices of the seventh were her
salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities of his father,
of Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had he even
possessed the martial courage of Stephen or of Richard, and had
the King of France at the same time been as incapable as all the
other successors of Hugh Capet had been, the House of Plantagenet
must have risen to unrivalled ascendancy in Europe. But, just at
this conjuncture, France, for the first time since the death of
Charlemagne, was governed by a prince of great firmness and
ability. On the other hand England, which, since the battle of
Hastings, had been ruled generally by wise statesmen, always by
brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of a trifler and a
coward. From that moment her prospects brightened. John was
driven from Normandy. The Norman nobles were compelled to make
their election between the island and the continent. Shut up by
the sea with the people whom they had hitherto oppressed and
despised, they gradually came to regard England as their country,
and the English as their countrymen. The two races, so long
hostile, soon found that they had common interests and common
enemies. Both were alike aggrieved by the tyranny of a bad king.
Both were alike indignant at the favour shown by the court to the
natives of Poitou and Aquitaine. The great grandsons of those who
had fought under William and the great grandsons of those who had
fought under Harold began to draw near to each other in
friendship; and the first pledge of their reconciliation was the
Great Charter, won by their united exertions, and framed for
their common benefit.
Here commences the history of the English nation. The history of
the preceding events is the history of wrongs inflicted and
sustained by various tribes, which indeed all dwelt on English
ground, but which regarded each other with aversion such as has
scarcely ever existed between communities separated by physical
barriers. For even the mutual animosity of countries at war with
each other is languid when compared with the animosity of nations
which, morally separated, are yet locally intermingled. In no
country has the enmity of race been carried farther than in
England. In no country has that enmity been more completely
effaced. The stages of the process by which the hostile elements
were melted down into one homogeneous mass are not accurately
known to us. But it is certain that, when John became King, the
distinction between Saxons and Normans was strongly marked, and
that before the end of the reign of his grandson it had almost
disappeared. In the time of Richard the First, the ordinary
imprecation of a Norman gentleman was "May I become an
Englishman!" His ordinary form of indignant denial was "Do you
take me for an Englishman?" The descendant of such a gentleman a
hundred years later was proud of the English name.
The sources of the noblest rivers which spread fertility over
continents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be
sought in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down
in maps, and rarely explored by travellers. To such a tract the
history of our country during the thirteenth century may not
unaptly be compared. Sterile and obscure as is that portion of
our annals, it is there that we must seek for the origin of our
freedom, our prosperity, and our glory. Then it was that the
great English people was formed, that the national character
began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has ever since
retained, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders,
islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their
politics, their feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared
with distinctness that constitution which has ever since, through
all changes, preserved its identity; that constitution of which
all the other free constitutions in the world are copies, and
which, in spite of some defects, deserves to be regarded as the
best under which any great society has ever yet existed during
many ages. Then it was that the House of Commons, the archetype
of all the representative assemblies which now meet, either in
the old or in the new world, held its first sittings. Then it was
that the common law rose to the dignity of a science, and rapidly
became a not unworthy rival of the imperial jurisprudence. Then
it was that the courage of those sailors who manned the rude
barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England terrible
on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient colleges which
still exist at both the great national seats of learning were
founded. Then was formed that language, less musical indeed than
the languages of the south, but in force, in richness, in
aptitude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the
philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the tongue of Greece
alone. Then too appeared the first faint dawn of that noble
literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many
glories of England.
Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races was
all but complete; and it was soon made manifest, by signs not to
be mistaken, that a people inferior to none existing in the world
had been formed by the mixture of three branches of the great
Teutonic family with each other, and with the aboriginal Britons.
There was, indeed, scarcely anything in common between the
England to which John had been chased by Philip Augustus, and the
England from which the armies of Edward the Third went forth to
conquer France.
A period of more than a hundred years followed, during which the
chief object of the English was to establish, by force of arms, a
great empire on the Continent. The claim of Edward to the
inheritance occupied by the House of Valois was a claim in which
it might seem that his subjects were little interested. But the
passion for conquest spread fast from the prince to the people.
The war differed widely from the wars which the Plantagenets of
the twelfth century had waged against the descendants of Hugh
Capet. For the success of Henry the Second, or of Richard the
First, would have made England a province of France. The effect
of the successes of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth was to
make France, for a time, a province of England. The disdain with
which, in the twelfth century, the conquerors from the Continent
had regarded the islanders, was now retorted by the islanders on
the people of the Continent. Every yeoman from Kent to
Northumberland valued himself as one of a race born for victory
and dominion, and looked down with scorn on the nation before
which his ancestors had trembled. Even those knights of Gascony
and Guienne who had fought gallantly under the Black Prince were
regarded by the English as men of an inferior breed, and were
contemptuously excluded from honourable and lucrative commands.
In no long time our ancestors altogether lost sight of the
original ground of quarrel. They began to consider the crown of
France as a mere appendage to the crown of England; and, when in
violation of the ordinary law of succession, they transferred the
crown of England to the House of Lancaster, they seem to have
thought that the right of Richard the Second to the crown of
France passed, as of course, to that house. The zeal and vigour
which they displayed present a remarkable contrast to the torpor
of the French, who were far more deeply interested in the event
of the struggle. The most splendid victories recorded in the
history of the middle ages were gained at this time, against
great odds, by the English armies. Victories indeed they were of
which a nation may justly be proud; for they are to be attributed
to the moral superiority of the victors, a superiority which was
most striking in the lowest ranks. The knights of England found
worthy rivals in the knights of France. Chandos encountered an
equal foe in Du Guesclin. But France had no infantry that dared
to face the English bows and bills. A French King was brought
prisoner to London. An English King was crowned at Paris. The
banner of St. George was carried far beyond the Pyrenees and the
Alps. On the south of the Ebro the English won a great battle,
which for a time decided the fate of Leon and Castile; and the
English Companies obtained a terrible preeminence among the bands
of warriors who let out their weapons for hire to the princes and
commonwealths of Italy.
Nor were the arts of peace neglected by our fathers during that
stirring period. While France was wasted by war, till she at
length found in her own desolation a miserable defence against
invaders, the English gathered in their harvests, adorned their
cities, pleaded, traded, and studied in security. Many of our
noblest architectural monuments belong to that age. Then rose
the fair chapels of New College and of Saint George, the nave of
Winchester and the choir of York, the spire of Salisbury and the
majestic towers of Lincoln. A copious and forcible language,
formed by an infusion of French into German, was now the common
property of the aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it long
before genius began to apply that admirable machine to worthy
purposes. While English warriors, leaving behind them the
devastated provinces of France, entered Valladolid in triumph,
and spread terror to the gates of Florence, English poets
depicted in vivid tints all the wide variety of human manners and
fortunes, and English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to
doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe.
The same age which produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos
and Hawkwood, produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe.
In so splendid and imperial a manner did the English people,
properly so called, first take place among the nations of the
world. Yet while we contemplate with pleasure the high and
commanding qualities which our forefathers displayed, we cannot
but admit that the end which they pursued was an end condemned
both by humanity and by enlightened policy, and that the reverses
which compelled them, after a long and bloody struggle, to
relinquish the hope of establishing a great continental empire,
were really blessings in the guise of disasters. The spirit of
the French was at last aroused: they began to oppose a vigorous
national resistance to the foreign conquerors; and from that time
the skill of the English captains and the courage of the English
soldiers were, happily for mankind, exerted in vain. After many
desperate struggles, and with many bitter regrets, our ancestors
gave up the contest. Since that age no British government has
ever seriously and steadily pursued the design of making great
conquests on the Continent. The people, indeed, continued to
cherish with pride the recollection of Cressy, of Poitiers, and
of Agincourt. Even after the lapse of many years it was easy to
fire their blood and to draw forth their subsidies by promising
them an expedition for the conquest of France. But happily the
energies of our country have been directed to better objects; and
she now occupies in the history of mankind a place far more
glorious than if she had, as at one time seemed not improbable,
acquired by the sword an ascendancy similar to that which
formerly belonged to the Roman republic.
Cooped up once more within the limits of the island, the warlike
people employed in civil strife those arms which had been the
terror of Europe. The means of profuse expenditure had long been
drawn by the English barons from the oppressed provinces of
France. That source of supply was gone: but the ostentatious and
luxurious habits which prosperity had engendered still remained;
and the great lords, unable to gratify their tastes by plundering
the French, were eager to plunder each other. The realm to which
they were now confined would not, in the phrase of Comines, the
most judicious observer of that time, suffice for them all. Two
aristocratical factions, headed by two branches of the royal
family, engaged in a long and fierce struggle for supremacy. As
the animosity of those factions did not really arise from the
dispute about the succession it lasted long after all ground of
dispute about the succession was removed. The party of the Red
Rose survived the last prince who claimed the crown in right of
Henry the Fourth. The party of the White Rose survived the
marriage of Richmond and Elizabeth. Left without chiefs who had
any decent show of right, the adherents of Lancaster rallied
round a line of bastards, and the adherents of York set up a
succession of impostors. When, at length, many aspiring nobles
had perished on the field of battle or by the hands of the
executioner, when many illustrious houses had disappeared forever
from history, when those great families which remained had been
exhausted and sobered by calamities, it was universally
acknowledged that the claims of all the contending Plantagenets
were united in the house of Tudor.
Meanwhile a change was proceeding infinitely more momentous than
the acquisition or loss of any province, than the rise or fall of
any dynasty. Slavery and the evils by which slavery is everywhere
accompanied were fast disappearing.
It is remarkable that the two greatest and most salutary social
revolutions which have taken place in England, that revolution
which, in the thirteenth century, put an end to the tyranny of
nation over nation, and that revolution which, a few generations
later, put an end to the property of man in man, were silently
and imperceptibly effected. They struck contemporary observers
with no surprise, and have received from historians a very scanty
measure of attention. They were brought about neither by
legislative regulations nor by physical force. Moral causes
noiselessly effaced first the distinction between Norman and
Saxon, and then the distinction between master and slave. None
can venture to fix the precise moment at which either distinction
ceased. Some faint traces of the old Norman feeling might perhaps
have been found late in the fourteenth century. Some faint traces
of the institution of villenage were detected by the curious so
late as the days of the Stuarts; nor has that institution ever,
to this hour, been abolished by statute.
It would be most unjust not to acknowledge that the chief agent
in these two great deliverances was religion; and it may perhaps
be doubted whether a purer religion might not have been found a
less efficient agent. The benevolent spirit of the Christian
morality is undoubtedly adverse to distinctions of caste. But to
the Church of Rome such distinctions are peculiarly odious; for
they are incompatible with other distinctions which are essential
to her system. She ascribes to every priest a mysterious dignity
which entitles him to the reverence of every layman; and she does
not consider any man as disqualified, by reason of his nation or
of his family, for the priesthood. Her doctrines respecting the
sacerdotal character, however erroneous they may be, have
repeatedly mitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict
society. That superstition cannot be regarded as unmixedly
noxious which, in regions cursed by the tyranny of race over
race, creates an aristocracy altogether independent of race,
inverts the relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and
compels the hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual
tribunal of the hereditary bondman. To this day, in some
countries where negro slavery exists, Popery appears in
advantageous contrast to other forms of Christianity. It is
notorious that the antipathy between the European and African
races is by no means so strong at Rio Janerio as at Washington.
In our own country this peculiarity of the Roman Catholic system
produced, during the middle ages, many salutary effects. It is
true that, shortly after the battle of Hastings, Saxon prelates
and abbots were violently deposed, and that ecclesiastical
adventurers from the Continent were intruded by hundreds into
lucrative benefices. Yet even then pious divines of Norman blood
raised their voices against such a violation of the constitution
of the Church, refused to accept mitres from the hands of
William, and charged him, on the peril of his soul, not to forget
that the vanquished islanders were his fellow Christians. The
first protector whom the English found among the dominant caste
was Archbishop Anselm. At a time when the English name was a
reproach, and when all the civil and military dignities of the
kingdom were supposed to belong exclusively to the countrymen of
the Conqueror, the despised race learned, with transports of
delight, that one of themselves, Nicholas Breakspear, had been
elevated to the papal throne, and had held out his foot to be
kissed by ambassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy.
It was a national as well as a religious feeling that drew great
multitudes to the shrine of Becket, whom they regarded as the
enemy of their enemies. Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be
doubted: but there is no doubt that he perished by Norman hands,
and that the Saxons cherished his memory with peculiar tenderness
and veneration, and, in their popular poetry, represented him as
one of their own race. A successor of Becket was foremost among
the refractory magnates who obtained that charter which secured
the privileges both of the Norman barons and of the Saxon
yeomanry. How great a part the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics
subsequently had in the abolition of villenage we learn from the
unexceptionable testimony of Sir Thomas Smith, one of the ablest
Protestant counsellors of Elizabeth. When the dying slaveholder
asked for the last sacraments, his spiritual attendants regularly
adjured him, as he loved his soul, to emancipate his brethren for
whom Christ had died. So successfully had the Church used her
formidable machinery that, before the Reformation came, she had
enfranchised almost all the bondmen in the kingdom except her
own, who, to do her justice, seem to have been very tenderly
treated.
There can be no doubt that, when these two great revolutions had
been effected, our forefathers were by far the best governed
people in Europe. During three hundred years the social system
had been in a constant course of improvement. Under the first
Plantagenets there had been barons able to bid defiance to the
sovereign, and peasants degraded to the level of the swine and
oxen which they tended. The exorbitant power of the baron had
been gradually reduced. The condition of the peasant had been
gradually elevated. Between the aristocracy and the working
people had sprung up a middle class, agricultural and commercial.
There was still, it may be, more inequality than is favourable to
the happiness and virtue of our species: but no man was
altogether above the restraints of law; and no man was altogether
below its protection.
That the political institutions of England were, at this early
period, regarded by the English with pride and affection, and by
the most enlightened men of neighbouring nations with admiration
and envy, is proved by the clearest evidence. But touching the
nature of these institutions there has been much dishonest and
acrimonious controversy.
The historical literature of England has indeed suffered
grievously from a circumstance which has not a little contributed
to her prosperity. The change, great as it is, which her polity
has undergone during the last six centuries, has been the effect
of gradual development, not of demolition and reconstruction. The
present constitution of our country is, to the constitution under
which she flourished five hundred years ago, what the tree is to
the sapling, what the man is to the boy. The alteration has been
great. Yet there never was a moment at which the chief part of
what existed was not old. A polity thus formed must abound in
anomalies. But for the evils arising from mere anomalies we have
ample compensation. Other societies possess written constitutions
more symmetrical. But no other society has yet succeeded in
uniting revolution with prescription, progress with stability,
the energy of youth with the majesty of immemorial antiquity.
This great blessing, however, has its drawbacks: and one of those
drawbacks is that every source of information as to our early
history has been poisoned by party spirit. As there is no country
where statesmen have been so much under the influence of the
past, so there is no country where historians have been so much
under the influence of the present. Between these two things,
indeed, there is a natural connection. Where history is regarded
merely as a picture of life and manners, or as a collection of
experiments from which general maxims of civil wisdom may be
drawn, a writer lies under no very pressing temptation to
misrepresent transactions of ancient date. But where history is
regarded as a repository of titledeeds, on which the rights of
governments and nations depend, the motive to falsification
becomes almost irresistible. A Frenchman is not now impelled by
any strong interest either to exaggerate or to underrate the
power of the Kings of the house of Valois. The privileges of the
States General, of the States of Britanny, of the States of
Burgundy, are to him matters of as little practical importance as
the constitution of the Jewish Sanhedrim or of the Amphictyonic
Council. The gulph of a great revolution completely separates the
new from the old system. No such chasm divides the existence of
the English nation into two distinct parts. Our laws and customs
have never been lost in general and irreparable ruin. With us the
precedents of the middle ages are still valid precedents, and are
still cited, on the gravest occasions, by the most eminent
Statesmen. For example, when King George the Third was attacked
by the malady which made him incapable of performing his regal
functions, and when the most distinguished lawyers and
politicians differed widely as to the course which ought, in such
circumstances, to be pursued, the Houses of Parliament would not
proceed to discuss any plan of regency till all the precedents
which were to be found in our annals, from the earliest times,
had been collected and arranged. Committees were appointed to
examine the ancient records of the realm. The first case reported
was that of the year 1217: much importance was attached to the
cases of 1326, of 1377, and of 1422: but the case which was
justly considered as most in point was that of 1455. Thus in our
country the dearest interests of parties have frequently been on
the results of the researches of antiquaries. The inevitable
consequence was that our antiquaries conducted their researches
in the spirit of partisans.
It is therefore not surprising that those who have written,
concerning the limits of prerogative and liberty in the old
polity of England should generally have shown the temper, not of
judges, but of angry and uncandid advocates. For they were
discussing, not a speculative matter, but a matter which had a
direct and practical connection with the most momentous and
exciting disputes of their own day. From the commencement of the
long contest between the Parliament and the Stuarts down to the
time when the pretensions of the Stuarts ceased to be
formidable, few questions were practically more important than
the question whether the administration of that family had or had
not been in accordance with the ancient constitution of the
kingdom. This question could be decided only by reference to the
records of preceding reigns. Bracton and Fleta, the Mirror of
Justice and the Rolls of Parliament, were ransacked to find
pretexts for the excesses of the Star Chamber on one side, and of
the High Court of Justice on the other. During a long course of
years every Whig historian was anxious to prove that the old
English government was all but republican, every Tory historian
to prove that it was all but despotic.
With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronicles of
the middle ages. Both readily found what they sought; and both
obstinately refused to see anything but what they sought. The
champions of the Stuarts could easily point out instances of
oppression exercised on the subject. The defenders of the
Roundheads could as easily produce instances of determined and
successful resistance offered to the Crown. The Tories quoted,
from ancient writings, expressions almost as servile as were
heard from the pulpit of Mainwaring. The Whigs discovered
expressions as bold and severe as any that resounded from the
judgment seat of Bradshaw. One set of writers adduced numerous
instances in which Kings had extorted money without the authority
of Parliament. Another set cited cases in which the Parliament
had assumed to itself the power of inflicting punishment on
Kings. Those who saw only one half of the evidence would have
concluded that the Plantagenets were as absolute as the Sultans
of Turkey: those who saw only the other half would have concluded
that the Plantagenets had as little real power as the Doges of
Venice; and both conclusions would have been equally remote from
the truth.
The old English government was one of a class of limited
monarchies which sprang up in Western Europe during the middle
ages, and which, notwithstanding many diversities, bore to one
another a strong family likeness. That there should have been
such a likeness is not strange The countries in which those
monarchies arose had been provinces of the same great civilised
empire, and had been overrun and conquered, about the same time,
by tribes of the same rude and warlike nation. They were members
of the same great coalition against Islam. They were in communion
with the same superb and ambitious Church. Their polity naturally
took the same form. They had institutions derived partly from
imperial Rome, partly from papal Rome, partly from the old
Germany. All had Kings; and in all the kingly office became by
degrees strictly hereditary. All had nobles bearing titles which
had originally indicated military rank. The dignity of
knighthood, the rules of heraldry, were common to all. All had
richly endowed ecclesiastical establishments, municipal
corporations enjoying large franchises, and senates whose consent
was necessary to the validity of some public acts.
Of these kindred constitutions the English was, from an early
period, justly reputed the best. The prerogatives of the
sovereign were undoubtedly extensive. The spirit of religion and
the spirit of chivalry concurred to exalt his dignity. The sacred
oil had been poured on his head. It was no disparagement to the
bravest and noblest knights to kneel at his feet. His person was
inviolable. He alone was entitled to convoke the Estates of the
realm: he could at his pleasure dismiss them; and his assent was
necessary to all their legislative acts. He was the chief of the
executive administration, the sole organ of communication with
foreign powers, the captain of the military and naval forces of
the state, the fountain of justice, of mercy, and of honour. He
had large powers for the regulation of trade. It was by him that
money was coined, that weights and measures were fixed, that
marts and havens were appointed. His ecclesiastical patronage was
immense. His hereditary revenues, economically administered,
sufficed to meet the ordinary charges of government. His own
domains were of vast extent. He was also feudal lord paramount of
the whole soil of his kingdom, and, in that capacity, possessed
many lucrative and many formidable rights, which enabled him to
annoy and depress those who thwarted him, and to enrich and
aggrandise, without any cost to himself, those who enjoyed his
favour.
But his power, though ample, was limited by three great
constitutional principles, so ancient that none can say when they
began to exist, so potent that their natural development,
continued through many generations, has produced the order of
things under which we now live.
First, the King could not legislate without the consent of his
Parliament. Secondly, he could impose no tax without the consent
of his Parliament. Thirdly, he was bound to conduct the executive
administration according to the laws of the land, and, if he
broke those laws, his advisers and his agents were responsible.
No candid Tory will deny that these principles had, five hundred
years ago, acquired the authority of fundamental rules. On the
other hand, no candid Whig will affirm that they were, till a
later period, cleared from all ambiguity, or followed out to all
their consequences. A constitution of the middle ages was not,
like a constitution of the eighteenth or nineteenth century,
created entire by a single act, and fully set forth in a single
document. It is only in a refined and speculative age that a
polity is constructed on system. In rude societies the progress
of government resembles the progress of language and of
versification. Rude societies have language, and often copious
and energetic language: but they have no scientific grammar, no
definitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods,
tenses, and voices. Rude societies have versification, and often
versification of great power and sweetness: but they have no
metrical canons; and the minstrel whose numbers, regulated solely
by his ear, are the delight of his audience, would himself be
unable to say of how many dactyls and trochees each of his lines
consists. As eloquence exists before syntax, and song before
prosody, so government may exist in a high degree of excellence
long before the limits of legislative, executive, and judicial
power have been traced with precision.
It was thus in our country. The line which bounded the royal
prerogative, though in general sufficiently clear, had not
everywhere been drawn with accuracy and distinctness. There was,
therefore, near the border some debatable ground on which
incursions and reprisals continued to take place, till, after
ages of strife, plain and durable landmarks were at length set
up. It may be instructive to note in what way, and to what
extent, our ancient sovereigns were in the habit of violating the
three great principles by which the liberties of the nation were
protected.
No English King has ever laid claim to the general legislative
power. The most violent and imperious Plantagenet never fancied
himself competent to enact, without the consent of his great
council, that a jury should consist of ten persons instead of
twelve, that a widow's dower should be a fourth part instead of a
third, that perjury should be a felony, or that the custom of
gavelkind should be introduced into Yorkshire.2 But the King had
the power of pardoning offenders; and there is one point at which
the power of pardoning and the power of legislating seem to fade
into each other, and may easily, at least in a simple age, be
confounded. A penal statute is virtually annulled if the
penalties which it imposes are regularly remitted as often as
they are incurred. The sovereign was undoubtedly competent to
remit penalties without limit. He was therefore competent to
annul virtually a penal statute. It might seem that there could
be no serious objection to his doing formally what he might do
virtually. Thus, with the help of subtle and courtly lawyers,
grew up, on the doubtful frontier which separates executive from
legislative functions, that great anomaly known as the dispensing
power.
That the King could not impose taxes without the consent of
Parliament is admitted to have been, from time immemorial, a
fundamental law of England. It was among the articles which John
was compelled by the Barons to sign. Edward the First ventured to
break through the rule: but, able, powerful, and popular as he
was, he encountered an opposition to which he found it expedient
to yield. He covenanted accordingly in express terms, for himself
and his heirs, that they would never again levy any aid without
the assent and goodwill of the Estates of the realm. His powerful
and victorious grandson attempted to violate this solemn compact:
but the attempt was strenuously withstood. At length the
Plantagenets gave up the point in despair: but, though they
ceased to infringe the law openly, they occasionally contrived,
by evading it, to procure an extraordinary supply for a temporary
purpose. They were interdicted from taxing; but they claimed the
right of begging and borrowing. They therefore sometimes begged
in a tone not easily to be distinguished from that of command,
and sometimes borrowed with small thought of repaying. But the
fact that they thought it necessary to disguise their exactions
under the names of benevolences and loans sufficiently proves
that the authority of the great constitutional rule was
universally recognised.
The principle that the King of England was bound to conduct the
administration according to law, and that, if he did anything
against law, his advisers and agents were answerable, was
established at a very early period, as the severe judgments
pronounced and executed on many royal favourites sufficiently
prove. It is, however, certain that the rights of individuals
were often violated by the Plantagenets, and that the injured
parties were often unable to obtain redress. According to law no
Englishman could be arrested or detained in confinement merely by
the mandate of the sovereign. In fact, persons obnoxious to the
government were frequently imprisoned without any other authority
than a royal order. According to law, torture, the disgrace of
the Roman jurisprudence, could not, in any circumstances, be
inflicted on an English subject. Nevertheless, during the
troubles of the fifteenth century, a rack was introduced into the
Tower, and was occasionally used under the plea of political
necessity. But it would be a great error to infer from such
irregularities that the English monarchs were, either in theory
or in practice, absolute. We live in a highly civilised society,
through which intelligence is so rapidly diffused by means of the
press and of the post office that any gross act of oppression
committed in any part of our island is, in a few hours, discussed
by millions. If the sovereign were now to immure a subject in
defiance of the writ of Habeas Corpus, or to put a conspirator to
the torture, the whole nation would be instantly electrified by
the news. In the middle ages the state of society was widely
different. Rarely and with great difficulty did the wrongs of
individuals come to the knowledge of the public. A man might be
illegally confined during many months in the castle of Carlisle
or Norwich; and no whisper of the transaction might reach London.
It is highly probable that the rack had been many years in use
before the great majority of the nation had the least suspicion
that it was ever employed. Nor were our ancestors by any means so
much alive as we are to the importance of maintaining great
general rules. We have been taught by long experience that we
cannot without danger suffer any breach of the constitution to
pass unnoticed. It is therefore now universally held that a
government which unnecessarily exceeds its powers ought to be
visited with severe parliamentary censure, and that a government
which, under the pressure of a great exigency, and with pure
intentions, has exceeded its powers, ought without delay to apply
to Parliament for an act of indemnity. But such were not the
feelings of the Englishmen of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. They were little disposed to contend for a principle
merely as a principle, or to cry out against an irregularity
which was not also felt to be a grievance. As long as the general
spirit of the administration was mild and popular, they were
willing to allow some latitude to their sovereign. If, for ends
generally acknowledged to be good, he exerted a vigour beyond the
law, they not only forgave, but applauded him, and while they
enjoyed security and prosperity under his rule, were but too
ready to believe that whoever had incurred his displeasure had
deserved it. But to this indulgence there was a limit; nor was
that King wise who presumed far on the forbearance of the English
people. They might sometimes allow him to overstep the
constitutional line: but they also claimed the privilege of
overstepping that line themselves, whenever his encroachments
were so serious as to excite alarm. If, not content with
occasionally oppressing individuals, he cared to oppress great
masses, his subjects promptly appealed to the laws, and, that
appeal failing, appealed as promptly to the God of battles.
Our forefathers might indeed safely tolerate a king in a few
excesses; for they had in reserve a check which soon brought the
fiercest and proudest king to reason, the check of physical
force. It is difficult for an Englishman of the nineteenth
century to imagine to himself the facility and rapidity with
which, four hundred years ago, this check was applied. The people
have long unlearned the use of arms. The art of war has been
carried to a perfection unknown to former ages; and the knowledge
of that art is confined to a particular class. A hundred thousand
soldiers, well disciplined and commanded, will keep down ten
millions of ploughmen and artisans. A few regiments of household
troops are sufficient to overawe all the discontented spirits of
a large capital. In the meantime the effect of the constant
progress of wealth has been to make insurrection far more
terrible to thinking men than maladministration. Immense sums
have been expended on works which, if a rebellion broke out,
might perish in a few hours. The mass of movable wealth collected
in the shops and warehouses of London alone exceeds five
hundredfold that which the whole island contained in the days of
the Plantagenets; and, if the government were subverted by
physical force, all this movable wealth would be exposed to
imminent risk of spoliation and destruction. Still greater would
be the risk to public credit, on which thousands of families
directly depend for subsistence, and with which the credit of the
whole commercial world is inseparably connected. It is no
exaggeration to say that a civil war of a week on English ground
would now produce disasters which would be felt from the Hoang-ho
to the Missouri, and of which the traces would be discernible at
the distance of a century. In such a state of society resistance
must be regarded as a cure more desperate than almost any malady
which can afflict the state. In the middle ages, on the contrary,
resistance was an ordinary remedy for political distempers, a
remedy which was always at hand, and which, though doubtless
sharp at the moment, produced no deep or lasting ill effects. If
a popular chief raised his standard in a popular cause, an
irregular army could be assembled in a day. Regular army there
was none. Every man had a slight tincture of soldiership, and
scarcely any man more than a slight tincture. The national wealth
consisted chiefly in flocks and herds, in the harvest of the
year, and in the simple buildings inhabited by the people. All
the furniture, the stock of shops, the machinery which could be
found in the realm was of less value than the property which some
single parishes now contain. Manufactures were rude; credit was
almost unknown. Society, therefore, recovered from the shock as
soon as the actual conflict was over. The calamities of civil war
were confined to the slaughter on the field of battle, and to a
few subsequent executions and confiscations. In a week the
peasant was driving his team and the esquire flying his hawks
over the field of Towton or of Bosworth, as if no extraordinary
event had interrupted the regular course of human life.
More than a hundred and sixty years have now elapsed since the
English people have by force subverted a government. During the
hundred and sixty years which preceded the union of the Roses,
nine Kings reigned in England. Six of these nine Kings were
deposed. Five lost their lives as well as their crowns. It is
evident, therefore, that any comparison between our ancient and
our modern polity must lead to most erroneous conclusions, unless
large allowance be made for the effect of that restraint which
resistance and the fear of resistance constantly imposed on the
Plantagenets. As our ancestors had against tyranny a most
important security which we want, they might safely dispense with
some securities to which we justly attach the highest importance.
As we cannot, without the risk of evils from which the
imagination recoils, employ physical force as a check on
misgovernment, it is evidently our wisdom to keep all the
constitutional checks on misgovernment in the highest state of
efficiency, to watch with jealousy the first beginnings of
encroachment, and never to suffer irregularities, even when
harmless in themselves, to pass unchallenged, lest they acquire
the force of precedents. Four hundred years ago such minute
vigilance might well seem unnecessary. A nation of hardy archers
and spearmen might, with small risk to its liberties, connive at
some illegal acts on the part of a prince whose general
administration was good, and whose throne was not defended by a
single company of regular soldiers.
Under this system, rude as it may appear when compared with those
elaborate constitutions of which the last seventy years have been
fruitful, the English long enjoyed a large measure of freedom and
happiness. Though, during the feeble reign of Henry the Sixth,
the state was torn, first by factions, and at length by civil
war; though Edward the Fourth was a prince of dissolute and
imperious character; though Richard the Third has generally been
represented as a monster of depravity; though the exactions of
Henry the Seventh caused great repining; it is certain that our
ancestors, under those Kings, were far better governed than the
Belgians under Philip, surnamed the Good, or the French under
that Lewis who was styled the Father of his people. Even while
the wars of the Roses were actually raging, our country appears
to have been in a happier condition than the neighbouring realms
during years of profound peace. Comines was one of the most
enlightened statesmen of his time. He had seen all the richest
and most highly civilised parts of the Continent. He had lived in
the opulent towns of Flanders, the Manchesters and Liverpools of
the fifteenth century. He had visited Florence, recently adorned
by the magnificence of Lorenzo, and Venice, not yet bumbled by
the Confederates of Cambray. This eminent man deliberately
pronounced England to be the best governed country of which he
had any knowledge. Her constitution he emphatically designated as
a just and holy thing, which, while it protected the people,
really strengthened the hands of a prince who respected it. In no
other country were men so effectually secured from wrong. The
calamities produced by our intestine wars seemed to him to be
confined to the nobles and the fighting men, and to leave no
traces such as he had been accustomed to see elsewhere, no ruined
dwellings, no depopulated cities.
It was not only by the efficiency of the restraints imposed on
the royal prerogative that England was advantageously
distinguished from most of the neighbouring countries. A:
peculiarity equally important, though less noticed, was the
relation in which the nobility stood here to the commonalty.
There was a strong hereditary aristocracy: but it was of all
hereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had
none of the invidious character of a caste. It was constantly
receiving members from the people, and constantly sending down
members to mingle with the people. Any gentleman might become a
peer. The younger son of a peer was but a gentleman. Grandsons of
peers yielded precedence to newly made knights. The dignity of
knighthood was not beyond the reach of any man who could by
diligence and thrift realise a good estate, or who could attract
notice by his valour in a battle or a siege. It was regarded as
no disparagement for the daughter of a Duke, nay of a royal Duke,
to espouse a distinguished commoner. Thus, Sir John Howard
married the daughter of Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk. Sir
Richard Pole married the Countess of Salisbury, daughter of
George, Duke of Clarence. Good blood was indeed held in high
respect: but between good blood and the privileges of peerage
there was, most fortunately for our country, no necessary
connection. Pedigrees as long, and scutcheons as old, were to be
found out of the House of Lords as in it. There were new men who
bore the highest titles. There were untitled men well known to be
descended from knights who had broken the Saxon ranks at
Hastings, and scaled the walls of Jerusalem. There were Bohuns,
Mowbrays, DeVeres, nay, kinsmen of the House of Plantagenet, with
no higher addition than that of Esquire, and with no civil
privileges beyond those enjoyed by every farmer and shopkeeper.
There was therefore here no line like that which in some other
countries divided the patrician from the plebeian. The yeoman was
not inclined to murmur at dignities to which his own children
might rise. The grandee was not inclined to insult a class into
which his own children must descend.
After the wars of York and Lancaster, the links which connected
the nobility and commonalty became closer and more numerous than
ever. The extent of destruction which had fallen on the old
aristocracy may be inferred from a single circumstance. In the
year 1451 Henry the Sixth summoned fifty-three temporal Lords to
parliament. The temporal Lords summoned by Henry the Seventh to
the parliament of 1485 were only twenty-nine, and of these
several had recently been elevated to the peerage. During the
following century the ranks of the nobility were largely
recruited from among the gentry. The constitution of the House of
Commons tended greatly to promote the salutary intermixture of
classes. The knight of the shire was the connecting link between
the baron and the shopkeeper. On the same benches on which sate
the goldsmiths, drapers, and grocers, who had been returned to
parliament by the commercial towns, sate also members who, in any
other country, would have been called noblemen, hereditary lords
of manors, entitled to hold courts and to bear coat armour, and
able to trace back an honourable descent through many
generations. Some of them were younger sons and brothers of
lords. Others could boast of even royal blood. At length the
eldest son of an Earl of Bedford, called in courtesy by the
second title of his father, offered himself as candidate for a
seat in the House of Commons, and his example was followed by
others. Seated in that house, the heirs of the great peers
naturally became as zealous for its privileges as any of the
humble burgesses with whom they were mingled. Thus our democracy
was, from an early period, the most aristocratic, and our
aristocracy the most democratic in the world; a peculiarity which
has lasted down to the present day, and which has produced many
important moral and political effects.
The government of Henry the Seventh, of his son, and of his
grandchildren was, on the whole, more arbitrary than that of the
Plantagenets. Personal character may in some degree explain the
difference; for courage and force of will were common to all the
men and women of the House of Tudor. They exercised their power
during a period of a hundred and twenty years, always with
vigour, often with violence, sometimes with cruelty. They, in
imitation of the dynasty which had preceded them, occasionally
invaded the rights of the subject, occasionally exacted taxes
under the name of loans and gifts, and occasionally dispensed
with penal statutes: nay, though they never presumed to enact any
permanent law by their own authority, they occasionally took upon
themselves, when Parliament was not sitting, to meet temporary
exigencies by temporary edicts. It was, however, impossible for
the Tudors to carry oppression beyond a certain point: for they
had no armed force, and they were surrounded by an armed people.
Their palace was guarded by a few domestics, whom the array of a
single shire, or of a single ward of London, could with ease have
overpowered. These haughty princes were therefore under a
restraint stronger than any that mere law can impose, under a
restraint which did not, indeed, prevent them from sometimes
treating an individual in an arbitrary and even in a barbarous
manner, but which effectually secured the nation against general
and long continued oppression. They might safely be tyrants,
within the precinct of the court: but it was necessary for them
to watch with constant anxiety the temper of the country. Henry
the Eighth, for example, encountered no opposition when he wished
to send Buckingham and Surrey, Anne Boleyn and Lady Salisbury, to
the scaffold. But when, without the consent of Parliament, he
demanded of his subjects a contribution amounting to one sixth of
their goods, he soon found it necessary to retract. The cry of
hundreds of thousands was that they were English and not French,
freemen and not slaves. In Kent the royal commissioners fled for
their lives. In Suffolk four thousand men appeared in arms. The
King's lieutenants in that county vainly exerted themselves to
raise an army. Those who did not join in the insurrection
declared that they would not fight against their brethren in such
a quarrel. Henry, proud and selfwilled as he was, shrank, not
without reason from a conflict with the roused spirit of the
nation. He had before his eyes the fate of his predecessors who
had perished at Berkeley and Pomfret. He not only cancelled his
illegal commissions; he not only granted a general pardon to all
the malecontents; but he publicly and solemnly apologised for his
infraction of the laws.
His conduct, on this occasion, well illustrates the whole policy
of his house. The temper of the princes of that line was hot, and
their spirits high, but they understood the character of the
nation that they governed, and never once, like some of their
predecessors, and some of their successors, carried obstinacy to
a fatal point. The discretion of the Tudors was such, that their
power, though it was often resisted, was never subverted. The
reign of every one of them was disturbed by formidable
discontents: but the government was always able either to soothe
the mutineers or to conquer and punish them. Sometimes, by timely
concessions, it succeeded in averting civil hostilities; but in
general it stood firm, and called for help on the nation. The
nation obeyed the call, rallied round the sovereign, and enabled
him to quell the disaffected minority.
Thus, from the age of Henry the Third to the age of Elizabeth,
England grew and flourished under a polity which contained the
germ of our present institutions, and which, though not very
exactly defined, or very exactly observed, was yet effectually
prevented from degenerating into despotism, by the awe in which
the governors stood of the spirit and strength of the governed.
But such a polity is suited only to a particular stage in the
progress of society. The same causes which produce a division of
labour in the peaceful arts must at length make war a distinct
science and a distinct trade. A time arrives when the use of arms
begins to occupy the entire attention of a separate class. It
soon appears that peasants and burghers, however brave, are
unable to stand their ground against veteran soldiers, whose
whole life is a preparation for the day of battle, whose nerves
have been braced by long familiarity with danger, and whose
movements have all the precision of clockwork. It is found that
the defence of nations can no longer be safely entrusted to
warriors taken from the plough or the loom for a campaign of
forty days. If any state forms a great regular army, the
bordering states must imitate the example, or must submit to a
foreign yoke. But, where a great regular army exists, limited
monarchy, such as it was in the middle ages, can exist no longer.
The sovereign is at once emancipated from what had been the chief
restraint on his power; and he inevitably becomes absolute,
unless he is subjected to checks such as would be superfluous in
a society where all are soldiers occasionally, and none
permanently.
With the danger came also the means of escape. In the monarchies
of the middle ages the power of the sword belonged to the prince;
but the power of the purse belonged to the nation; and the
progress of civilisation, as it made the sword of the prince more
and more formidable to the nation, made the purse of the nation
more and more necessary to the prince. His hereditary revenues
would no longer suffice, even for the expenses of civil
government. It was utterly impossible that, without a regular and
extensive system of taxation, he could keep in constant
efficiency a great body of disciplined troops. The policy which
the parliamentary assemblies of Europe ought to have adopted was
to take their stand firmly on their constitutional right to give
or withhold money, and resolutely to refuse funds for the support
of armies, till ample securities had been provided against
despotism.
This wise policy was followed in our country alone. In the
neighbouring kingdoms great military establishments were formed;
no new safeguards for public liberty were devised; and the
consequence was, that the old parliamentary institutions
everywhere ceased to exist. In France, where they had always been
feeble, they languished, and at length died of mere weakness. In
Spain, where they had been as strong as in any part of Europe,
they struggled fiercely for life, but struggled too late. The
mechanics of Toledo and Valladolid vainly defended the privileges
of the Castilian Cortes against the veteran battalions of Charles
the Fifth. As vainly, in the next generation, did the citizens of
Saragossa stand up against Philip the Second, for the old
constitution of Aragon. One after another, the great national
councils of the continental monarchies, councils once scarcely
less proud and powerful than those which sate at Westminster,
sank into utter insignificance. If they met, they met merely as
our Convocation now meets, to go through some venerable forms.
In England events took a different course. This singular felicity
she owed chiefly to her insular situation. Before the end of the
fifteenth century great military establishments were
indispensable to the dignity, and even to the safety, of the
French and Castilian monarchies. If either of those two powers
had disarmed, it would soon have been compelled to submit to the
dictation of the other. But England, protected by the sea against
invasion, and rarely engaged in warlike operations on the
Continent, was not, as yet, under the necessity of employing
regular troops. The sixteenth century, the seventeenth century,
found her still without a standing army. At the commencement of
the seventeenth century political science had made considerable
progress. The fate of the Spanish Cortes and of the French States
General had given solemn warning to our Parliaments; and our
Parliaments, fully aware of the nature and magnitude of the
danger, adopted, in good time, a system of tactics which, after a
contest protracted through three generations, was at length
successful
Almost every writer who has treated of that contest has been
desirous to show that his own party was the party which was
struggling to preserve the old constitution unaltered. The truth
however is that the old constitution could not be preserved
unaltered. A law, beyond the control of human wisdom, had decreed
that there should no longer be governments of that peculiar class
which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had been common
throughout Europe. The question, therefore, was not whether our
polity should undergo a change, but what the nature of the change
should be. The introduction of a new and mighty force had
disturbed the old equilibrium, and had turned one limited
monarchy after another into an absolute monarchy. What had
happened elsewhere would assuredly have happened here, unless the
balance had been redressed by a great transfer of power from the
crown to the parliament. Our princes were about to have at their
command means of coercion such as no Plantagenet or Tudor had
ever possessed. They must inevitably have become despots, unless
they had been, at the same time, placed under restraints to which
no Plantagenet or Tudor had ever been subject.
It seems certain, therefore, that, had none but political causes
been at work, the seventeenth century would not have passed away
without a fierce conflict between our Kings and their
Parliaments. But other causes of perhaps greater potency
contributed to produce the same effect. While the government of
the Tudors was in its highest vigour an event took place which
has coloured the destinies of all Christian nations, and in an
especial manner the destinies of England. Twice during the middle
ages the mind of Europe had risen up against the domination of
Rome. The first insurrection broke out in the south of France.
The energy of Innocent the Third, the zeal of the young orders of
Francis and Dominic, and the ferocity of the Crusaders whom the
priesthood let loose on an unwarlike population, crushed the
Albigensian churches. The second reformation had its origin in
England, and spread to Bohemia. The Council of Constance, by
removing some ecclesiastical disorders which had given scandal to
Christendom, and the princes of Europe, by unsparingly using fire
and sword against the heretics, succeeded in arresting and
turning back the movement. Nor is this much to be lamented. The
sympathies of a Protestant, it is true, will naturally be on the
side of the Albigensians and of the Lollards. Yet an enlightened
and temperate Protestant will perhaps be disposed to doubt
whether the success, either of the Albigensians or of the
Lollards, would, on the whole, have promoted the happiness and
virtue of mankind. Corrupt as the Church of Rome was, there is
reason to believe that, if that Church had been overthrown in the
twelfth or even in the fourteenth century, the vacant space would
have been occupied by some system more corrupt still. There was
then, through the greater part of Europe, very little knowledge;
and that little was confined to the clergy. Not one man in five
hundred could have spelled his way through a psalm. Books were
few and costly. The art of printing was unknown. Copies of the
Bible, inferior in beauty and clearness to those which every
cottager may now command, sold for prices which many priests
could not afford to give. It was obviously impossible that the
laity should search the Scriptures for themselves. It is probable
therefore, that, as soon as they had put off one spiritual yoke,
they would have put on another, and that the power lately
exercised by the clergy of the Church of Rome would have passed
to a far worse class of teachers. The sixteenth century was
comparatively a time of light. Yet even in the sixteenth century
a considerable number of those who quitted the old religion
followed the first confident and plausible guide who offered
himself, and were soon led into errors far more serious than
those which they had renounced. Thus Matthias and Kniperdoling,
apostles of lust, robbery, and murder, were able for a time to
rule great cities. In a darker age such false prophets might have
founded empires; and Christianity might have been distorted into
a cruel and licentious superstition, more noxious, not only than
Popery, but even than Islamism.
About a hundred years after the rising of the Council of
Constance, that great change emphatically called the Reformation
began. The fulness of time was now come. The clergy were no
longer the sole or the chief depositories of knowledge The
invention of printing had furnished the assailants of the Church
with a mighty weapon which had been wanting to their
predecessors. The study of the ancient writers, the rapid
development of the powers of the modern languages, the
unprecedented activity which was displayed in every department of
literature, the political state of Europe, the vices of the Roman
court, the exactions of the Roman chancery, the jealousy with
which the wealth and privileges of the clergy were naturally
regarded by laymen, the jealousy with which the Italian
ascendency was naturally regarded by men born on our side of the
Alps, all these things gave to the teachers of the new theology
an advantage which they perfectly understood how to use.
Those who hold that the influence of the Church of Rome in the
dark ages was, on the whole, beneficial to mankind, may yet with
perfect consistency regard the Reformation as an inestimable
blessing. The leading strings, which preserve and uphold the
infant, would impede the fullgrown man. And so the very means by
which the human mind is, in one stage of its progress, supported
and propelled, may, in another stage, be mere hindrances. There
is a season in the life both of an individual and of a society,
at which submission and faith, such as at a later period would be
justly called servility and credulity, are useful qualities. The
child who teachably and undoubtingly listens to the instructions
of his elders is likely to improve rapidly. But the man who
should receive with childlike docility every assertion and dogma
uttered by another man no wiser than himself would become
contemptible. It is the same with communities. The childhood of
the European nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy.
The ascendancy of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendancy
which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority.
The priests, with all their faults, were by far the wisest
portion of society. It was, therefore, on the whole, good that
they should be respected and obeyed. The encroachments of the
ecclesiastical power on the province of the civil power produced
much more happiness than misery, while the ecclesiastical power
was in the hands of the only class that had studied history,
philosophy, and public law, and while the civil power was in the
hands of savage chiefs, who could not read their own grants and
edicts. But a change took place. Knowledge gradually spread among
laymen. At the commencement of the sixteenth century many of them
were in every intellectual attainment fully equal to the most
enlightened of their spiritual pastors. Thenceforward that
dominion, which, during the dark ages, had been, in spite of many
abuses, a legitimate and salutary guardianship, became an unjust
and noxious tyranny.
From the time when the barbarians overran the Western Empire to
the time of the revival of letters, the influence of the Church
of Rome had been generally favourable to science to civilisation,
and to good government. But, during the last three centuries, to
stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object.
Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in
knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has
been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse
proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces
of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in
political servitude, and in intellectual torpor, while Protestant
countries, once proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been
turned by skill and industry into gardens, and can boast of a
long list of heroes and statesmen, philosophers and poets.
Whoever, knowing what Italy and Scotland naturally are, and what,
four hundred years ago, they actually were, shall now compare the
country round Rome with the country round Edinburgh, will be able
to form some judgment as to the tendency of Papal domination. The
descent of Spain, once the first among monarchies, to the lowest
depths of degradation, the elevation of Holland, in spite of many
natural disadvantages, to a position such as no commonwealth so
small has ever reached, teach the same lesson. Whoever passes in
Germany from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality, in
Switzerland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant canton, in
Ireland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that
he has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civilisation. On
the other side of the Atlantic the same law prevails. The
Protestants of the United States have left far behind them the
Roman Catholics of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The Roman Catholics
of Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole continent round
them is in a ferment with Protestant activity and enterprise. The
French have doubtless shown an energy and an intelligence which,
even when misdirected, have justly entitled them to be called a
great people. But this apparent exception, when examined, will be
found to confirm. the rule; for in no country that is called
Roman Catholic, has the Roman Catholic Church, during several
generations, possessed so little authority as in France. The
literature of France is justly held in high esteem throughout the
world. But if we deduct from that literature all that belongs to
four parties which have been, on different grounds, in rebellion
against the Papal domination, all that belongs to the
Protestants, all that belongs to the assertors of the Gallican
liberties, all that belongs to the Jansenists, and all that
belongs to the philosophers, how much will be left?
It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the Roman
Catholic religion or to the Reformation. For the amalgamation of
races and for the abolition of villenage, she is chiefly indebted
to the influence which the priesthood in the middle ages
exercised over the laity. For political and intellectual freedom,
and for all the blessings which political and intellectual
freedom have brought in their train, she is chiefly indebted to
the great rebellion of the laity against the priesthood.
The struggle between the old and the new theology in our country
was long, and the event sometimes seemed doubtful. There were two
extreme parties, prepared to act with violence or to suffer with
stubborn resolution. Between them lay, during a considerable
time, a middle party, which blended, very illogically, but by no
means unnaturally, lessons learned in the nursery with the
sermons of the modern evangelists, and, while clinging with
fondness to all observances, yet detested abuses with which those
observances were closely connected. Men in such a frame of mind
were willing to obey, almost with thankfulness, the dictation of
an able ruler who spared them the trouble of judging for
themselves, and, raising a firm and commanding voice above the
uproar of controversy, told them how to worship and what to
believe. It is not strange, therefore, that the Tudors should
have been able to exercise a great influence on ecclesiastical
affairs; nor is it strange that their influence should, for the
most part, have been exercised with a view to their own interest.
Henry the Eighth attempted to constitute an Anglican Church
differing from the Roman Catholic Church on the point of the
supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this attempt
was extraordinary. The force of his character, the singularly
favourable situation in which he stood with respect to foreign
powers, the immense wealth which the spoliation of the abbeys
placed at his disposal, and the support of that class which still
halted between two Opinions, enabled him to bid defiance to both
the extreme parties, to burn as heretics those who avowed the
tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as traitors those who owned
the authority of the Pope. But Henry's system died with him. Had
his life been prolonged, he would have found it difficult to
maintain a position assailed with equal fury by all who were
zealous either for the new or for the old opinions. The ministers
who held the royal prerogatives in trust for his infant son could
not venture to persist in so hazardous a policy; nor could
Elizabeth venture to return to it. It was necessary to make a
choice. The government must either submit to Rome, or must obtain
the aid of the Protestants. The government and the Protestants
had only one thing in common, hatred of the Papal power. The
English Reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on
the Continent. They unanimously condemned as Antichristian
numerous dogmas and practices to which Henry had stubbornly
adhered, and which Elizabeth reluctantly abandoned. Many felt a
strong repugnance even to things indifferent which had formed
part of the polity or ritual of the mystical Babylon. Thus Bishop
Hooper, who died manfully at Gloucester for his religion, long
refused to wear the episcopal vestments. Bishop Ridley, a martyr
of still greater renown, pulled down the ancient altars of his
diocese, and ordered the Eucharist to be administered in the
middle of churches, at tables which the Papists irreverently
termed oyster boards. Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb
to be a stage dress, a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites,
and promised that he would spare no labour to extirpate such
degrading absurdities. Archbishop Grindal long hesitated about
accepting a mitre from dislike of what he regarded as the mummery
of consecration. Bishop Parkhurst uttered a fervent prayer that
the Church of England would propose to herself the Church of
Zurich as the absolute pattern of a Christian community. Bishop
Ponet was of opinion that the word Bishop should be abandoned to
the Papists, and that the chief officers of the purified church
should be called Superintendents. When it is considered that none
of these prelates belonged to the extreme section of the
Protestant party, it cannot be doubted that, if the general sense
of that party had been followed. the work of reform would have
been carried on as unsparingly in England as in Scotland.
But, as the government needed the support of the protestants, so
the Protestants needed the protection of the government. Much was
therefore given up on both sides: an union was effected; and the
fruit of that union was the Church of England.
To the peculiarities of this great institution, and to the strong
passions which it has called forth in the minds both of friends
and of enemies, are to be attributed many of the most important
events which have, since the Reformation, taken place in our
country; nor can the secular history of England be at all
understood by us, unless we study it in constant connection with
the history of her ecclesiastical polity.
The man who took the chief part in settling the condition, of the
alliance which produced the Anglican Church was Archbishop
Cranmer. He was the representative of both the parties which, at
that time, needed each other's assistance. He was at once a
divine and a courtier. In his character of divine he was
perfectly ready to go as far in the way of change as any Swiss or
Scottish Reformer. In his character of courtier he was desirous
to preserve that organisation which had, during many ages,
admirably served the purposes of the Bishops of Rome, and might
be expected now to serve equally well the purposes of the English
Kings and of their ministers. His temper and his understanding,
eminently fitted him to act as mediator. Saintly in his
professions, unscrupulous in his dealings, zealous for nothing,
bold in speculation, a coward and a timeserver in action, a
placable enemy and a lukewarm friend, he was in every way
qualified to arrange the terms of the coalition between the
religious and the worldly enemies of Popery.
To this day the constitution, the doctrines, and the services of
the Church, retain the visible marks of the compromise from which
she sprang. She occupies a middle position between the Churches
of Rome and Geneva. Her doctrinal confessions and discourses,
composed by Protestants, set forth principles of theology in
which Calvin or Knox would have found scarcely a word to
disapprove. Her prayers and thanksgivings, derived from the
ancient Breviaries, are very generally such that Cardinal Fisher
or Cardinal Pole might have heartily joined in them. A
controversialist who puts an Arminian sense on her Articles and
Homilies will be pronounced by candid men to be as unreasonable
as a controversialist who denies that the doctrine of baptismal
regeneration can be discovered in her Liturgy.
The Church of Rome held that episcopacy was of divine
institution, and that certain supernatural graces of a high order
had been transmitted by the imposition of hands through fifty
generations, from the Eleven who received their commission on the
Galilean mount, to the bishops who met at Trent. A large body of
Protestants, on the other hand, regarded prelacy as positively
unlawful, and persuaded themselves that they found a very
different form of ecclesiastical government prescribed in
Scripture. The founders of the Anglican Church took a middle
course. They retained episcopacy; but they did not declare it to
be an institution essential to the welfare of a Christian
society, or to the efficacy of the sacraments. Cranmer, indeed,
on one important occasion, plainly avowed his conviction that, in
the primitive times, there was no distinction between bishops and
priests, and that the laying on of hands was altogether
superfluous.
Among the Presbyterians the conduct of public worship is, to a
great extent, left to the minister. Their prayers, therefore, are
not exactly the same in any two assemblies on the same day, or on
any two days in the same assembly. In one parish they are
fervent, eloquent, and full of meaning. In the next parish they
may be languid or absurd. The priests of the Roman Catholic
Church, on the other hand, have, during many generations, daily
chanted the same ancient confessions, supplications, and
thanksgivings, in India and Lithuania, in Ireland and Peru. The
service, being in a dead language, is intelligible only to the
learned; and the great majority of the congregation may be said
to assist as spectators rather than as auditors. Here, again, the
Church of England took a middle course. She copied the Roman
Catholic forms of prayer, but translated them into the vulgar
tongue, and invited the illiterate multitude to join its voice to
that of the minister.
In every part of her system the same policy may be traced.
Utterly rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, and
condemning as idolatrous all adoration paid to the sacramental
bread and wine, she yet, to the disgust of the Puritan, required
her children to receive the memorials of divine love, meekly
kneeling upon their knees. Discarding many rich vestments which
surrounded the altars of the ancient faith, she yet retained, to
the horror of weak minds, a robe of white linen, typical of the
purity which belonged to her as the mystical spouse of Christ.
Discarding a crowd of pantomimic gestures which, in the Roman
Catholic worship, are substituted for intelligible words, she yet
shocked many rigid Protestants by marking the infant just
sprinkled from the font with the sign of the cross. The Roman
Catholic addressed his prayers to a multitude of Saints, among
whom were numbered many men of doubtful, and some of hateful,
character. The Puritan refused the addition of Saint even to the
apostle of the Gentiles, and to the disciple whom Jesus loved.
The Church of England, though she asked for the intercession of
no created being, still set apart days for the commemoration of
some who had done and suffered great things for the faith. She
retained confirmation and ordination as edifying rites; but she
degraded them from the rank of sacraments. Shrift was no part of
her system. Yet she gently invited the dying penitent to confess
his sins to a divine, and empowered her ministers to soothe the
departing soul by an absolution which breathes the very spirit of
the old religion. In general it may be said that she appeals more
to the understanding , and less to the senses and the
imagination, than the Church of Rome, and that she appeals less
to the understanding, and more to the senses and imagination,
than the Protestant Churches of Scotland, France, and
Switzerland.
Nothing, however, so strongly distinguished the Church of England
from other Churches as the relation in which she stood to the
monarchy. The King was her head. The limits of the authority
which he possessed, as such, were not traced, and indeed have
never yet been traced with precision. The laws which declared
him supreme in ecclesiastical matters were drawn rudely and in
general terms. If, for the purpose of ascertaining the sense of
those laws, we examine the books and lives of those who founded
the English Church, our perplexity will be increased. For the
founders of the English Church wrote and acted in an age of
violent intellectual fermentation, and of constant action and
reaction. They therefore often contradicted each other and
sometimes contradicted themselves. That the King was, under
Christ, sole head of the Church was a doctrine which they all
with one voice affirmed: but those words had very different
significations in different mouths, and in the same mouth at
different conjunctures. Sometimes an authority which would have
satisfied Hildebrand was ascribed to the sovereign: then it
dwindled down to an authority little more than that which had
been claimed by many ancient English princes who had been in
constant communion with the Church of Rome. What Henry and his
favourite counsellors meant, at one time, by the supremacy, was
certainly nothing less than the whole power of the keys. The King
was to be the Pope of his kingdom, the vicar of God, the
expositor of Catholic verity, the channel of sacramental graces.
He arrogated to himself the right of deciding dogmatically what
was orthodox doctrine and what was heresy, of drawing up and
imposing confessions of faith, and of giving religious
instruction to his people. He proclaimed that all jurisdiction,
spiritual as well as temporal, was derived from him alone, and
that it was in his power to confer episcopal authority, and to
take it away. He actually ordered his seal to be put to
commissions by which bishops were appointed, who were to exercise
their functions as his deputies, and during his pleasure.
According to this system, as expounded by Cranmer, the King was
the spiritual as well as the temporal chief of the nation. In
both capacities His Highness must have lieutenants. As he
appointed civil officers to keep his seal, to collect his
revenues, and to dispense justice in his name, so he appointed
divines of various ranks to preach the gospel, and to administer
the sacraments. It was unnecessary that there should be any
imposition of hands. The King,-such was the opinion of Cranmer
given in the plainest words,-might in virtue of authority
derived from God, make a priest; and the priest so made needed no
ordination whatever. These opinions the Archbishop, in spite of
the opposition of less courtly divines, followed out to every
legitimate consequence. He held that his own spiritual functions,
like the secular functions of the Chancellor and Treasurer, were
at once determined by a demise of the crown. When Henry died,
therefore, the Primate and his suffragans took out fresh
commissions, empowering them to ordain and to govern the Church
till the new sovereign should think fit to order otherwise. When
it was objected that a power to bind and to loose, altogether
distinct from temporal power, had been given by our Lord to his
apostles, some theologians of this school replied that the power
to bind and to loose had descended, not to the clergy, but to the
whole body of Christian men, and ought to be exercised by the
chief magistrate as the representative of the society. When it
was objected that Saint Paul had spoken of certain persons whom
the Holy Ghost had made overseers and shepherds of the faithful,
it was answered that King Henry was the very overseer, the very
shepherd whom the Holy Ghost had appointed, and to whom the
expressions of Saint Paul applied.3
These high pretensions gave scandal to Protestants as well as to
Catholics; and the scandal was greatly increased when the
supremacy, which Mary had resigned back to the Pope, was again
annexed to the crown, on the accession of Elizabeth. It seemed
monstrous that a woman should be the chief bishop of a Church in
which an apostle had forbidden her even to let her voice be
heard. The Queen, therefore, found it necessary expressly to
disclaim that sacerdotal character which her father had assumed,
and which, according to Cranmer, had been inseparably joined, by
divine ordinance, to the regal function. When the Anglican
confession of faith was revised in her reign, the supremacy was
explained in a manner somewhat different from that which had been
fashionable at the court of Henry. Cranmer had declared, in
emphatic terms, that God had immediately committed to Christian
princes the whole cure of all their subjects, as well concerning
the administration of God's word for the cure of souls, as
concerning the administration of things political.4 The
thirty-seventh article of religion, framed under Elizabeth,
declares, in terms as emphatic, that the ministering of God's
word does not belong to princes. The Queen, however, still had
over the Church a visitatorial power of vast and undefined
extent. She was entrusted by Parliament with the office of
restraining and punishing heresy and every sort of ecclesiastical
abuse, and was permitted to delegate her authority to
commissioners. The Bishops were little more than her ministers.
Rather than grant to the civil magistrate the absolute power of
nominating spiritual pastors, the Church of Rome, in the eleventh
century, set all Europe on fire. Rather than grant to the civil
magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors,
the ministers of the Church of Scotland, in our time, resigned
their livings by hundreds. The Church of England had no such
scruples. By the royal authority alone her prelates were
appointed. By the royal authority alone her Convocations were
summoned, regulated, prorogued, and dissolved. Without the royal
sanction her canons had no force. One of the articles of her
faith was that without the royal consent no ecclesiastical
council could lawfully assemble. From all her judicatures an
appeal lay, in the last resort, to the sovereign, even when the
question was whether an opinion ought to be accounted heretical,
or whether the administration of a sacrament had been valid. Nor
did the Church grudge this extensive power to our princes. By
them she had been called into existence, nursed through a feeble
infancy, guarded from Papists on one side and from Puritans on
the other, protected against Parliaments which bore her no good
will, and avenged on literary assailants whom she found it hard
to answer. Thus gratitude, hope, fear, common attachments, common
enmities, bound her to the throne. All her traditions, all her
tastes, were monarchical. Loyalty became a point of professional
honour among her clergy, the peculiar badge which distinguished
them at once from Calvinists and from Papists. Both the
Calvinists and the Papists, widely as they differed in other
respects, regarded with extreme jealousy all encroachments of the
temporal power on the domain of the spiritual power. Both
Calvinists and Papists maintained that subjects might justifiably
draw the sword against ungodly rulers. In France Calvinists
resisted Charles the Ninth: Papists resisted Henry the Fourth:
both Papists and Calvinists resisted Henry the Third. In Scotland
Calvinists led Mary captive. On the north of the Trent Papists
took arms against the English throne. The Church of England
meantime condemned both Calvinists and Papists, and loudly
boasted that no duty was more constantly or earnestly inculcated
by her than that of submission to princes.
The advantages which the crown derived from this close alliance
with the Established Church were great; but they were not without
serious drawbacks. The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from
the first been considered by a large body of Protestants as a
scheme for serving two masters, as an attempt to unite the
worship of the Lord with the worship of Baal. In the days of
Edward the Sixth the scruples of this party had repeatedly thrown
great difficulties in the way of the government. When Elizabeth
came to the throne, those difficulties were much increased.
Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of
Protestantism was therefore far fiercer and more intolerant after
the cruelties of Mary than before them. Many persons who were
warmly attached to the new opinions had, during the evil days,
taken refuge in Switzerland and Germany. They had been hospitably
received by their brethren in the faith, had sate at the feet of
the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich, and Geneva, and had been,
during, some years, accustomed to a more simple worship, and to a
more democratical form of church government, than England had yet
seen. These men returned to their country convinced that the
reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far
less searching and extensive than the interests of pure religion
required. But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any
concession from Elizabeth. Indeed her system, wherever it
differed from her brother's, seemed to them to differ for the
worse. They were little disposed to submit, in matters of faith,
to any human authority. They had recently, in reliance on their
own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against a Church strong
in immemorial antiquity and catholic consent. It was by no common
exertion of intellectual energy that they had thrown off the yoke
of that gorgeous and imperial superstition; and it was vain to
expect that, immediately after such an emancipation, they would
patiently submit to a new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed,
when the priest lifted up the host, to bow down with their faces
to the earth, as before a present God, they had learned to treat
the mass as an idolatrous mummery. Long accustomed to regard the
Pope as the successor of the chief of the apostles, as the bearer
of the keys of earth and heaven, they had learned to regard him
as the Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of Sin. It was not to be
expected that they would immediately transfer to an upstart
authority the homage which they had withdrawn from the Vatican;
that they would submit their private judgment to the authority of
a Church founded on private judgment alone; that they would be
afraid to dissent from teachers who themselves dissented from
what had lately been the universal faith of western Christendom.
It is easy to conceive the indignation which must have been felt
by bold and inquisitive spirits, glorying in newly acquired
freedom, when an institution younger by many years than
themselves, an institution which had, under their own eyes,
gradually received its form from the passions and interest of a
court, began to mimic the lofty style of Rome.
Since these men could not be convinced, it was determined that
they should be persecuted. Persecution produced its natural
effect on them. It found them a sect: it made them a faction. To
their hatred of the Church was now added hatred of the Crown. The
two sentiments were intermingled; and each embittered the other.
The opinions of the Puritan concerning the relation of ruler and
subject were widely different from those which were inculcated in
the Homilies. His favourite divines had, both by precept and by
example, encouraged resistance to tyrants and persecutors. His
fellow Calvinists in France, in Holland, and in Scotland, were in
arms against idolatrous and cruel princes. His notions, too,
respecting, the government of the state took a tinge from his
notions respecting the government of the Church. Some of the
sarcasms which were popularly thrown on episcopacy might, without
much difficulty, be turned against royalty; and many of the
arguments which were used to prove that spiritual power was best
lodged in a synod seemed to lead to the conclusion that temporal
power was best lodged in a parliament.
Thus, as the priest of the Established Church was, from interest,
from principle, and from passion, zealous for the royal
prerogatives, the Puritan was, from interest, from principle, and
from passion, hostile to them. The power of the discontented
sectaries was great. They were found in every rank; but they were
strongest among the mercantile classes in the towns, and among
the small proprietors in the country. Early in the reign of
Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of
Commons. And doubtless had our ancestors been then at liberty to
fix their attention entirely on domestic questions, the strife
between the Crown and the Parliament would instantly have
commenced. But that was no season for internal dissensions. It
might, indeed, well be doubted whether the firmest union among
all the orders of the state could avert the common danger by
which all were threatened. Roman Catholic Europe and reformed
Europe were struggling for death or life. France divided against
herself, had, for a time, ceased to be of any account in
Christendom. The English Government was at the head of the
Protestant interest, and, while persecuting Presbyterians at
home, extended a powerful protection to Presbyterian Churches
abroad. At the head of the opposite party was the mightiest
prince of the age, a prince who ruled Spain, Portugal, Italy, the
East and the West Indies, whose armies repeatedly marched to
Paris, and whose fleets kept the coasts of Devonshire and Sussex
in alarm. It long seemed probable that Englishmen would have to
fight desperately on English ground for their religion and
independence. Nor were they ever for a moment free from
apprehensions of some great treason at home. For in that age it
had become a point of conscience and of honour with many men of
generous natures to sacrifice their country to their religion. A
succession of dark plots, formed by Roman Catholics against the
life of the Queen and the existence of the nation, kept society
in constant alarm. Whatever might be the faults of Elizabeth, it
was plain that, to speak humanly, the fate of the realm and of
all reformed Churches was staked on the security of her person
and on the success of her administration. To strengthen her hands
was, therefore, the first duty of a patriot and a Protestant; and
that duty was well performed. The Puritans, even in the depths of
the prisons to which she had sent them, prayed, and with no
simulated fervour, that she might be kept from the dagger of the
assassin, that rebellion might be put down under her feet, and
that her arms might be victorious by sea and land. One of the
most stubborn of the stubborn sect, immediately after his hand
had been lopped off for an offence into which he had been hurried
by his intemperate zeal, waved his hat with the hand which was
still left him, and shouted "God save the Queen!" The sentiment
with which these men regarded her has descended to their
posterity. The Nonconformists, rigorously as she treated them,
have, as a body, always venerated her memory.5
During the greater part of her reign, therefore, the Puritans in
the House of Commons, though sometimes mutinous, felt no
disposition to array themselves in systematic opposition to the
government. But, when the defeat of the Armada, the successful
resistance of the United Provinces to the Spanish power, the firm
establishment of Henry the Fourth on the throne of France, and
the death of Philip the Second, had secured the State and the
Church against all danger from abroad, an obstinate struggle,
destined to last during several generations, instantly began at
home.
It was in the Parliament of 1601 that the opposition which had,
during forty years, been silently gathering and husbanding
strength, fought its first great battle and won its first
victory. The ground was well chosen. The English Sovereigns had
always been entrusted with the supreme direction of commercial
police. It was their undoubted prerogative to regulate coin,
weights, and measures, and to appoint fairs, markets, and ports.
The line which bounded their authority over trade had, as usual,
been but loosely drawn. They therefore, as usual, encroached on
the province which rightfully belonged to the legislature. The
encroachment was, as usual, patiently borne, till it became
serious. But at length the Queen took upon herself to grant
patents of monopoly by scores. There was scarcely a family in the
realm which did not feel itself aggrieved by the oppression and
extortion which this abuse naturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar,
coal, saltpetre, lead, starch, yarn, skins, leather, glass, could
be bought only at exorbitant prices. The House of Commons met in
an angry and determined mood. It was in vain that a courtly
minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts of the Queen's
Highness to be called in question. The language of the
discontented party was high and menacing, and was echoed by the
voice of the whole nation. The coach of the chief minister of the
crown was surrounded by an indignant populace, who cursed the
monopolies, and exclaimed that the prerogative should not be
suffered to touch the old liberties of England. There seemed for
a moment to be some danger that the long and glorious reign of
Elizabeth would have a shameful and disastrous end. She, however,
with admirable judgment and temper, declined the contest, put
herself at the head of the reforming party, redressed the
grievance, thanked the Commons, in touching and dignified
language, for their tender care of the general weal, brought back
to herself the hearts of the people, and left to her successors a
memorable example of the way in which it behoves a ruler to deal
with public movements which he has not the means of resisting.
In the year 1603 the great Queen died. That year is, on many
accounts, one of the most important epochs in our history. It was
then that both Scotland and Ireland became parts of the same
empire with England. Both Scotland and Ireland, indeed, had been
subjugated by the Plantagenets; but neither country had been
patient under the yoke. Scotland had, with heroic energy,
vindicated her independence, had, from the time of Robert Bruce,
been a separate kingdom, and was now joined to the southern part
of the island in a manner which rather gratified than wounded her
national pride. Ireland had never, since the days of Henry the
Second, been able to expel the foreign invaders; but she had
struggled against them long and fiercely. During, the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries the English power in that island was
constantly declining, and in the days of Henry the Seventh, sank
to the lowest point. The Irish dominions of that prince consisted
only of the counties of Dublin and Louth, of some parts of Meath
and Kildare, and of a few seaports scattered along the coast. A
large portion even of Leinster was not yet divided into counties.
Munster, Ulster, and Connaught were ruled by petty sovereigns,
partly Celts, and partly degenerate Normans, who had forgotten
their origin and had adopted the Celtic language and manners. But
during the sixteenth century, the English power had made great
progress. The half savage chieftains who reigned beyond the pale
had submitted one after another to the lieutenants of the Tudors.
At length, a few weeks before the death of Elizabeth, the
conquest, which had been begun more than four hundred years
before by Strongbow, was completed by Mountjoy. Scarcely had
James the First mounted the English throne when the last O'Donnel
and O'Neil who have held the rank of independent princes kissed
his hand at Whitehall. Thenceforward his writs ran and his judges
held assizes in every part of Ireland; and the English law
superseded the customs which had prevailed among the aboriginal
tribes.
In extent Scotland and Ireland were nearly equal to each other,
and were together nearly equal to England, but were much less
thickly peopled than England, and were very far behind England in
wealth and civilisation. Scotland had been kept back by the
sterility of her soil; and, in the midst of light, the thick
darkness of the middle ages still rested on Ireland.
The population of Scotland, with the exception of the Celtic
tribes which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides and over the
mountainous parts of the northern shires, was of the same blood
with the population of England, and spoke a tongue which did not
differ from the purest English more than the dialects of
Somersetshire and Lancashire differed from each other. In
Ireland, on the contrary, the population, with the exception of
the small English colony near the coast, was Celtic, and still
kept the Celtic speech and manners.
In natural courage and intelligence both the nations which now
became connected with England ranked high. In perseverance, in
selfcommand, in forethought, in all the virtues which conduce to
success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed. The Irish,
on the other hand, were distinguished by qualities which tend to
make men interesting rather than prosperous. They were an ardent
and impetuous race, easily moved to tears or to laughter, to fury
or to love. Alone among the nations of northern Europe they had
the susceptibility, the vivacity, the natural turn for acting and
rhetoric, which are indigenous on the shores of the Mediterranean
Sea. In mental cultivation Scotland had an indisputable
superiority. Though that kingdom was then the poorest in
Christendom, it already vied in every branch of learning with the
most favoured countries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food
were as wretched as those of the Icelanders of our time, wrote
Latin verse with more than the delicacy of Vida, and made
discoveries in science which would have added to the renown of
Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or Napier. The
genius, with which her aboriginal inhabitants were largely
endowed' showed itself as yet only in ballads which wild and
rugged as they were, seemed to the judging eye of Spenser to
contain a portion of the pure gold of poetry.
Scotland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, preserved her
dignity. Having, during many generations, courageously withstood
the English arms, she was now joined to her stronger neighbour on
the most honourable terms. She gave a King instead of receiving
one. She retained her own constitution and laws. Her tribunals
and parliaments remained entirely independent of the tribunals
and parliaments which sate at Westminster. The administration of
Scotland was in Scottish hands; for no Englishman had any motive
to emigrate northward, and to contend with the shrewdest and most
pertinacious of all races for what was to be scraped together in
the poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland by no means
escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected,
but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.
Though in name an independent kingdom, she was, during more than
a century, really treated, in many respects, as a subject
province.
Ireland was undisguisedly governed as a dependency won by the
sword. Her rude national institutions had perished. The English
colonists submitted to the dictation of the mother country,
without whose support they could not exist, and indemnified
themselves by trampling on the people among whom they had
settled. The parliaments which met at Dublin could pass no law
which had not been previously approved by the English Privy
Council. The authority of the English legislature extended over
Ireland. The executive administration was entrusted to men taken
either from England or from the English pale, and, in either
case, regarded as foreigners, and even as enemies, by the Celtic
population.
But the circumstance which, more than any other, has made Ireland
to differ from Scotland remains to be noticed. Scotland was
Protestant. In no part of Europe had the movement of the popular
mind against the Roman Catholic Church been so rapid and violent.
The Reformers had vanquished, deposed, and imprisoned their
idolatrous sovereign. They would not endure even such a
compromise as had been effected in England. They had established
the Calvinistic doctrine, discipline, and worship; and they made
little distinction between Popery and Prelacy, between the Mass
and the Book of Common Prayer. Unfortunately for Scotland, the
prince whom she sent to govern a fairer inheritance had been so
much annoyed by the pertinacity with which her theologians had
asserted against him the privileges of the synod and the pulpit
that he hated the ecclesiastical polity to which she was fondly
attached as much as it was in his effeminate nature to hate
anything, and had no sooner mounted the English throne than he
began to show an intolerant zeal for the government and ritual of
the English Church.
The Irish were the only people of northern Europe who had
remained true to the old religion. This is to be partly ascribed
to the circumstance that they were some centuries behind their
neighbours in knowledge. But other causes had cooperated. The
Reformation had been a national as well as a moral revolt. It had
been, not only an insurrection of the laity against the clergy,
but also an insurrection of all the branches of the great German
race against an alien domination. It is a most significant
circumstance that no large society of which the tongue is not
Teutonic has ever turned Protestant, and that, wherever a
language derived from that of ancient Rome is spoken, the
religion of modern Rome to this day prevails. The patriotism of
the Irish had taken a peculiar direction. The object of their
animosity was not Rome, but England; and they had especial reason
to abhor those English sovereigns who had been the chiefs of the
great schism, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. During the vain
struggle which two generations of Milesian princes maintained
against the Tudors, religious enthusiasm and national enthusiasm
became inseparably blended in the minds of the vanquished race.
The new feud of Protestant and Papist inflamed the old feud of
Saxon and Celt. The English conquerors. meanwhile, neglected all
legitimate means of conversion. No care was taken to provide the
vanquished nation with instructors capable of making themselves
understood. No translation of the Bible was put forth in the
Irish language. The government contented itself with setting up a
vast hierarchy of Protestant archbishops, bishops, and rectors,
who did nothing, and who, for doing nothing, were paid out of the
spoils of a Church loved and revered by the great body of the
people.
There was much in the state both of Scotland and of Ireland which
might well excite the painful apprehensions of a farsighted
statesman. As yet, however, there was the appearance of
tranquillity. For the first time all the British isles were
peaceably united under one sceptre.
It should seem that the weight of England among European nations
ought, from this epoch, to have greatly increased. The territory
which her new King governed was, in extent, nearly double that
which Elizabeth had inherited. His empire was the most complete
within itself and the most secure from attack that was to be
found in the world. The Plantagenets and Tudors had been
repeatedly under the necessity of defending themselves against
Scotland while they were engaged in continental war. The long
conflict in Ireland had been a severe and perpetual drain on
their resources. Yet even under such disadvantages those
sovereigns had been highly considered throughout Christendom. It
might, therefore, not unreasonably be expected that England,
Scotland, and Ireland combined would form a state second to none
that then existed.
All such expectations were strangely disappointed. On the day of
the accession of James the First, England descended from the rank
which she had hitherto held, and began to he regarded as a power
hardly of the second order. During many years the great British
monarchy, under four successive princes of the House of Stuart,
was scarcely a more important member of the European system than
the little kingdom of Scotland had previously been. This,
however, is little to be regretted. Of James the First, as of
John, it may be said that, if his administration had been able
and splendid, it would probably have been fatal to our country,
and that we owe more to his weakness and meanness than to the
wisdom and courage of much better sovereigns. He came to the
throne at a critical moment. The time was fast approaching when
either the King must become absolute, or the parliament must
control the whole executive administration. Had James been, like
Henry the Fourth, like Maurice of Nassau, or like Gustavus
Adolphus, a valiant, active, and politic ruler, had he put
himself at the head of the Protestants of Europe, had he gained
great victories over Tilly and Spinola, had he adorned
Westminster with the spoils of Bavarian monasteries and Flemish
cathedrals, had he hung Austrian and Castilian banners in Saint
Paul's, and had he found himself, after great achievements, at
the head of fifty thousand troops, brave, well disciplined, and
devotedly attached to his person, the English Parliament would
soon have been nothing more than a name. Happily he was not a man
to play such a part. He began his administration by putting an
end to the war which had raged during many years between England
and Spain; and from that time he shunned hostilities with a
caution which was proof against the insults of his neighbours and
the clamours of his subjects. Not till the last year of his life
could the influence of his son, his favourite, his Parliament,
and his people combined, induce him to strike one feeble blow in
defence of his family and of his religion. It was well for those
whom he governed that he in this matter disregarded their wishes.
The effect of his pacific policy was that, in his time, no
regular troops were needed, and that, while France, Spain, Italy,
Belgium, and Germany swarmed with mercenary soldiers, the defence
of our island was still confided to the militia.
As the King had no standing army, and did not even attempt to
form one, it would have been wise in him to avoid any conflict
with his people. But such was his indiscretion that, while he
altogether neglected the means which alone could make him really
absolute, he constantly put forward, in the most offensive form,
claims of which none of his predecessors had ever dreamed. It was
at this time that those strange theories which Filmer afterwards
formed into a system and which became the badge of the most
violent class of Tories and high churchmen, first emerged into
notice. It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being regarded
hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government,
with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of
primogeniture was a divine institution, anterior to the
Christian, and even to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human
power, not even that of the whole legislature, no length of
adverse possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could
deprive a legitimate prince of his rights, that the authority of
such a prince was necessarily always despotic; that the laws, by
which, in England and in other countries, the prerogative was
limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions which the
sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume; and
that any treaty which a king might conclude with his people was
merely a declaration of his present intentions, and not a
contract of which the performance could be demanded. It is
evident that this theory, though intended to strengthen the
foundations of government, altogether unsettles them. Does the
divine and immutable law of primogeniture admit females, or
exclude them? On either supposition half the sovereigns of Europe
must be usurpers, reigning in defiance of the law of God, and
liable to be dispossessed by the rightful heirs. The doctrine
that kingly government is peculiarly favoured by Heaven receives
no countenance from the Old Testament; for in the Old Testament
we read that the chosen people were blamed and punished for
desiring a king, and that they were afterwards commanded to
withdraw their allegiance from him. Their whole history, far from
countenancing the notion that succession in order of
primogeniture is of divine institution, would rather seem to
indicate that younger brothers are under the especial protection
of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob of
Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse nor Solomon of
David Nor does the system of Filmer receive any countenance from
those passages of the New Testament which describe government as
an ordinance of God: for the government under which the writers
of the New Testament lived was not a hereditary monarchy. The
Roman Emperors were republican magistrates, named by the senate.
None of them pretended to rule by right of birth; and, in fact,
both Tiberius, to whom Christ commanded that tribute should be
given, and Nero, whom Paul directed the Romans to obey, were,
according to the patriarchal theory of government, usurpers. In
the middle ages the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right
would have been regarded as heretical: for it was altogether
incompatible with the high pretensions of the Church of Rome. It
was a doctrine unknown to the founders of the Church of England.
The Homily on Wilful Rebellion had strongly, and indeed too
strongly, inculcated submission to constituted authority, but had
made no distinction between hereditary end elective monarchies,
or between monarchies and republics. Indeed most of the
predecessors of James would, from personal motives, have regarded
the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. William
Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry
the Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, and Henry the
Seventh, had all reigned in defiance of the strict rule of
descent. A grave doubt hung over the legitimacy both of Mary and
of Elizabeth. It was impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and
Anne Boleyn could have been lawfully married to Henry the Eighth;
and the highest authority in the realm had pronounced that
neither was so. The Tudors, far from considering the law of
succession as a divine and unchangeable institution, were
constantly tampering with it. Henry the Eighth obtained an act of
parliament, giving him power to leave the crown by will, and
actually made a will to the prejudice of the royal family of
Scotland. Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a
similar power, with the full approbation of the most eminent
Reformers. Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to
grave objection, and unwilling to admit even a reversionary right
in her rival and enemy the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament
to pass a law, enacting that whoever should deny the competency
of the reigning sovereign, with the assent of the Estates of the
realm, to alter the succession, should suffer death as a traitor:
But the situation of James was widely different from that of
Elizabeth. Far inferior to her in abilities and in popularity,
regarded by the English as an alien, and excluded from the throne
by the testament of Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots was yet
the undoubted heir of William the Conqueror and of Egbert. He
had, therefore, an obvious interest in inculcating the
superstitions notion that birth confers rights anterior to law,
and unalterable by law. It was a notion, moreover, well suited to
his intellect and temper. It soon found many advocates among
those who aspired to his favour, and made rapid progress among
the clergy of the Established Church.
Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit began to
manifest itself strongly in the Parliament and in the country,
the claims of the monarch took a monstrous form which would have
disgusted the proudest and most arbitrary of those who had
preceded him on the throne.
James was always boasting of his skill in what he called
kingcraft; and yet it is hardly possible even to imagine a course
more directly opposed to all the rules of kingcraft, than that
which he followed. The policy of wise rulers has always been to
disguise strong acts under popular forms. It was thus that
Augustus and Napoleon established absolute monarchies, while the
public regarded them merely as eminent citizens invested with
temporary magistracies. The policy of James was the direct
reverse of theirs. He enraged and alarmed his Parliament by
constantly telling them that they held their privileges merely
during his pleasure and that they had no more business to inquire
what he might lawfully do than what the Deity might lawfully do.
Yet he quailed before them, abandoned minister after minister to
their vengeance, and suffered them to tease him into acts
directly opposed to his strongest inclinations. Thus the
indignation excited by his claims and the scorn excited by his
concessions went on growing together. By his fondness for
worthless minions, and by the sanction which he gave to their
tyranny and rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His
cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person,
his provincial accent, made him an object of derision. Even in
his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently
unkingly. Throughout the whole course of his reign, all the
venerable associations by which the throng had long been fenced
were gradually losing their strength. During two hundred years
all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the exception of
Henry the Sixth, had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous,
and of princely bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above
the ordinary level. It was no light thing that on the very eve of
the decisive struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments,
royalty should be exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering,
shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking
in the style alternately of a buffoon and of a pedagogue.
In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from the
days of Edward the Sixth, the Protestant body had been
distracted, had become more formidable than ever. The interval
which had separated the first generation of Puritans from Cranmer
and Jewel was small indeed when compared with the interval which
separated the third generation of Puritans from Laud and Hammond.
While the recollection of Mary's cruelties was still fresh, while
the powers of the Roman Catholic party still inspired
apprehension, while Spain still retained ascendency and aspired
to universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they had
a strong common interest and a deadly common enemy. The animosity
which they felt towards each other was languid when compared with
the animosity which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists and
Nonconformists had heartily joined in enacting penal laws of
extreme severity against the Papists. But when more than half a
century of undisturbed possession had given confidence to the
Established Church, when nine tenths of the nation had become
heartily Protestant, when England was at peace with all the
world, when there was no danger that Popery would be forced by
foreign arms on the nation, when the last confessors who had
stood before Bonner had passed away, a change took place in the
feeling of the Anglican clergy. Their hostility to the Roman
Catholic doctrine and discipline was considerably mitigated.
Their dislike of the Puritans, on the other hand, increased
daily. The controversies which had from the beginning divided the
Protestant party took such a form as made reconciliation
hopeless; and new controversies of still greater importance were
added to the old subjects of dispute.
The founders of the Anglican Church had retained episcopacy as an
ancient, a decent, and a convenient ecclesiastical polity, but
had not declared that form of church government to be of divine
institution. We have already seen how low an estimate Cranmer had
formed of the office of a Bishop. In the reign of Elizabeth,
Jewel, Cooper, Whitgift, and other eminent doctors defended
prelacy, as innocent, as useful, as what the state might lawfully
establish, as what, when established by the state, was entitled
to the respect of every citizen. But they never denied that a
Christian community without a Bishop might be a pure Church.6 On
the contrary, they regarded the Protestants of the Continent as
of the same household of faith with themselves. Englishmen in
England were indeed bound to acknowledge the authority of the
Bishop, as they were bound to acknowledge the authority of the
Sheriff and of the Coroner: but the obligation was purely local.
An English churchman, nay even an English prelate, if he went to
Holland, conformed without scruple to the established religion of
Holland. Abroad the ambassadors of Elizabeth and James went in
state to the very worship which Elizabeth and James persecuted at
home, and carefully abstained from decorating their private
chapels after the Anglican fashion, lest scandal should be given
to weaker brethren. An instrument is still extant by which the
Primate of all England, in the year 1582, authorised a Scotch
minister, ordained, according to the laudable forms of the Scotch
Church, by the Synod of East Lothian, to preach and administer
the sacraments in any part of the province of Canterbury.7 In the
year 1603, the Convocation solemnly recognised the Church of
Scotland, a Church in which episcopal control and episcopal
ordination were then unknown, as a branch of the Holy Catholic
Church of Christ.8 It was even held that Presbyterian ministers
were entitled to place and voice in oecumenical councils. When
the States General of the United Provinces convoked at Dort a
synod of doctors not episcopally ordained, an English Bishop and
an English Dean, commissioned by the head of the English Church,
sate with those doctors, preached to them, and voted with them on
the gravest questions of theology.9 Nay, many English benefices
were held by divines who had been admitted to the ministry in the
Calvinistic form used on the Continent; nor was reordination by a
Bishop in such cases then thought necessary, or even lawful.10
But a new race of divines was already rising in the Church of
England. In their view the episcopal office was essential to the
welfare of a Christian society and to the efficacy of the most
solemn ordinances of religion. To that office belonged certain
high and sacred privileges, which no human power could give or
take away. A church might as well be without the doctrine of the
Trinity, or the doctrine of the Incarnation, as without the
apostolical orders; and the Church of Rome, which, in the midst
of all her corruptions, had retained the apostolical orders, was
nearer to primitive purity than those reformed societies which
had rashly set up, in opposition to the divine model, a system
invented by men.
In the days of Edward the Sixth and of Elizabeth, the defenders
of the Anglican ritual had generally contented themselves with
saying that it might be used without sin, and that, therefore,
none but a perverse and undutiful subject would refuse to use it
when enjoined to do so by the magistrate. Now, however, that
rising party which claimed for the polity of the Church a
celestial origin began to ascribe to her services a new dignity
and importance. It was hinted that, if the established worship
had any fault, that fault was extreme simplicity, and that the
Reformers had, in the heat of their quarrel with Rome, abolished
many ancient ceremonies which might with advantage have been
retained. Days and places were again held in mysterious
veneration. Some practices which had long been disused, and which
were commonly regarded as superstitious mummeries, were revived.
Paintings and carvings, which had escaped the fury of the first
generation of Protestants, became the objects of a respect such
as to many seemed idolatrous.
No part of the system of the old Church had been more detested by
the Reformers than the honour paid to celibacy. They held that
the doctrine of Rome on this subject had been prophetically
condemned by the apostle Paul, as a doctrine of devils; and they
dwelt much on the crimes and scandals which seemed to prove the
justice of this awful denunciation. Luther had evinced his own
opinion in the clearest manner, by espousing a nun. Some of the
most illustrious bishops and priests who had died by fire during
the reign of Mary had left wives and children. Now, however, it
began to be rumoured that the old monastic spirit had reappeared
in the Church of England; that there was in high quarters a
prejudice against married priests; that even laymen, who called
themselves Protestants, had made resolutions of celibacy which
almost amounted to vows; nay, that a minister of the established
religion had set up a nunnery, in which the psalms were chaunted
at midnight, by a company of virgins dedicated to God.11
Nor was this all. A class of questions, as to which the founders
of the Anglican Church and the first generation of Puritans had
differed little or not at all, began to furnish matter for fierce
disputes. The controversies which had divided the Protestant body
in its infancy had related almost exclusively to Church
government and to ceremonies. There had been no serious quarrel
between the contending parties on points of metaphysical
theology. The doctrines held by the chiefs of the hierarchy
touching original sin, faith, grace, predestination, and
election, were those which are popularly called Calvinistic.
Towards the close of Elizabeth's reign her favourite prelate,
Archbishop Whitgift, drew up, in concert with the Bishop of
London and other theologians, the celebrated instrument known by
the name of the Lambeth Articles. In that instrument the most
startling of the Calvinistic doctrines are affirmed with a
distinctness which would shock many who, in our age, are reputed
Calvinists. One clergyman, who took the opposite side, and spoke
harshly of Calvin, was arraigned for his presumption by the
University of Cambridge, and escaped punishment only by
expressing his firm belief in the tenets of reprobation and final
perseverance, and his sorrow for the offence which he had given
to pious men by reflecting on the great French reformer. The
school of divinity of which Hooker was the chief occupies a
middle place between the school of Cranmer and the school of
Laud; and Hooker has, in modern times, been claimed by the
Arminians as an ally. Yet Hooker pronounced Calvin to have been a
man superior in wisdom to any other divine that France had
produced, a man to whom thousands were indebted for the knowledge
of divine truth, but who was himself indebted to God alone. When
the Arminian controversy arose in Holland, the English government
and the English Church lent strong support to the Calvinistic
party; nor is the English name altogether free from the stain
which has been left on that party by the imprisonment of Grocius
and the judicial murder of Barneveldt.
But, even before the meeting of the Dutch synod, that part of the
Anglican clergy which was peculiarly hostile to the Calvinistic
Church government and to the Calvinistic worship had begun to
regard with dislike the Calvinistic metaphysics; and this feeling
was very naturally strengthened by the gross injustice,
insolence, and cruelty of the party which was prevalent at Dort.
The Arminian doctrine, a doctrine less austerely logical than
that of the early Reformers, but more agreeable to the popular
notions of the divine justice and benevolence, spread fast and
wide. The infection soon reached the court. Opinions which at the
time of the accession of James, no clergyman could have avowed
without imminent risk of being stripped of his gown, were now the
best title to preferment. A divine of that age, who was asked by
a simple country gentleman what the Arminians held, answered,
with as much truth as wit, that they held all the best bishoprics
and deaneries in England.
While the majority of the Anglican clergy quitted, in one
direction, the position which they had originally occupied, the
majority of the Puritan body departed, in a direction
diametrically opposite, from the principles and practices of
their fathers. The persecution which the separatists had
undergone had been severe enough to irritate, but not severe
enough to destroy. They had been, not tamed into submission, but
baited into savageness and stubborness. After the fashion of
oppressed sects, they mistook their own vindictive feelings for
emotions of piety, encouraged in themselves by reading and
meditation, a disposition to brood over their wrongs, and, when
they had worked themselves up into hating their enemies, imagined
that they were only hating the enemies of heaven. In the New
Testament there was little indeed which, even when perverted by
the most disingenuous exposition, could seem to countenance the
indulgence of malevolent passions. But the Old Testament
contained the history of a race selected by God to be witnesses
of his unity and ministers of his vengeance, and specially
commanded by him to do many things which, if done without his
special command, would have been atrocious crimes. In such a
history it was not difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to
find much that might be distorted to suit their wishes. The
extreme Puritans therefore began to feel for the Old Testament a
preference, which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avow even to
themselves; but which showed itself in all their sentiments and
habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which they
refused to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the
epistles of Paul have come down to us. They baptized their
children by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew
patriarchs and warriors. In defiance of the express and
reiterated declarations of Luther and Calvin, they turned the
weekly festival by which the Church had, from the primitive
times, commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into a Jewish
Sabbath. They sought for principles of jurisprudence in the
Mosaic law, and for precedents to guide their ordinary conduct in
the books of Judges and Kings. Their thoughts and discourse ran
much on acts which were assuredly not recorded as examples for
our imitation. The prophet who hewed in pieces a captive king,
the rebel general who gave the blood of a queen to the dogs, the
matron who, in defiance of plighted faith, and of the laws of
eastern hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of the
fugitive ally who had just fed at her board, and who was sleeping
under the shadow of her tent, were proposed as models to
Christians suffering under the tyranny of princes and prelates.
Morals and manners were subjected to a code resembling that of
the synagogue, when the synagogue was in its worst state. The
dress, the deportment, the language, the studies, the amusements
of the rigid sect were regulated on principles not unlike those
of the Pharisees who, proud of their washed hands and broad
phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbath-breaker and a
winebibber. It was a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink
a friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at
chess, to wear love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch
the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these,
rules which would have appeared insupportable to the free and
joyous spirit of Luther, and contemptible to the serene and
philosophical intellect of Zwingle, threw over all life a more
than monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence by which the
great Reformers had been eminently distinguished, and to which
they had been, in no small measure, indebted for their success,
were regarded by the new school of Protestants with suspicion, if
not with aversion. Some precisians had scruples about teaching
the Latin grammar, because the names of Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo
occurred in it. The fine arts were all but proscribed. The solemn
peal of the organ was superstitious. The light music of Ben
Jonson's masques was dissolute. Half the fine paintings in
England were idolatrous, and the other half indecent. The extreme
Puritan was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb,
his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the upturned white
of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all,
by his peculiar dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the
imagery and style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced
into the English language, and metaphors borrowed from the
boldest lyric poetry of a remote age and country, and applied to
the common concerns of English life, were the most striking
peculiarities of this cant, which moved, not without cause, the
derision both of Prelatists and libertines.
Thus the political and religious schism which had originated in
the sixteenth century was, during the first quarter of the
seventeenth century, constantly widening. Theories tending to
Turkish despotism were in fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending
to republicanism were in favour with a large portion of the House
of Commons. The violent Prelatists who were, to a man, zealous
for prerogative, and the violent Puritans who were, to a man,
zealous for the privileges of Parliament, regarded each other
with animosity more intense than that which, in the preceding
generation, had existed between Catholics and Protestants.
While the minds of men were in this state, the country, after a
peace of many years, at length engaged in a war which required
strenuous exertions. This war hastened the approach of the great
constitutional crisis. It was necessary that the King should have
a large military force. He could not have such a force without
money. He could not legally raise money without the consent of
Parliament. It followed, therefore, that he either must
administer the government in conformity with the sense of the
House of Commons, or must venture on such a violation of the
fundamental laws of the land as had been unknown during several
centuries. The Plantagenets and the Tudors had, it is true,
occasionally supplied a deficiency in their revenue by a
benevolence or a forced loan: but these expedients were always of
a temporary nature. To meet the regular charge of a long war by
regular taxation, imposed without the consent of the Estates of
the realm, was a course which Henry the Eighth himself would not
have dared to take. It seemed, therefore, that the decisive hour
was approaching, and that the English Parliament would soon
either share the fate of the senates of the Continent, or obtain
supreme ascendency in the state.
Just at this conjuncture James died. Charles the First succeeded
to the throne. He had received from nature a far better
understanding, a far stronger will, and a far keener and firmer
temper than his father's. He had inherited his father's political
theories, and was much more disposed than his father to carry
them into practice. He was, like his father, a zealous
Episcopalian. He was, moreover, what his father had never been, a
zealous Arminian, and, though no Papist, liked a Papist much
better than a Puritan. It would be unjust to deny that Charles
had some of the qualities of a good, and even of a great prince.
He wrote and spoke, not, like his father, with the exactness of a
professor, but after the fashion of intelligent and well educated
gentlemen. His taste in literature and art was excellent, his
manner dignified, though not gracious, his domestic life without
blemish. Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters, and
is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in truth, impelled by
an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem
strange that his conscience, which, on occasions of little
moment, was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached
him with this great vice. But there is reason to believe that he
was perfidious, not only from constitution and from habit, but
also on principle. He seems to have learned from the theologians
whom he most esteemed that between him and his subjects there
could be nothing of the nature of mutual contract; that he could
not, even if he would, divest himself of his despotic authority;
and that, in every promise which he made, there was an implied
reservation that such promise might be broken in case of
necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole judge.
And now began that hazardous game on which were staked the
destinies of the English people. It was played on the side of the
House of Commons with keenness, but with admirable dexterity,
coolness, and perseverance. Great statesmen who looked far behind
them and far before them were at the head of that assembly. They
were resolved to place the King in such a situation that he must
either conduct the administration in conformity with the wishes
of his Parliament, or make outrageous attacks on the most sacred
principles of the constitution. They accordingly doled out
supplies to him very sparingly. He found that he must govern
either in harmony with the House of Commons or in defiance of all
law. His choice was soon made. He dissolved his first Parliament,
and levied taxes by his own authority. He convoked a second
Parliament, and found it more intractable than the first. He
again resorted to the expedient of dissolution, raised fresh
taxes without any show of legal right, and threw the chiefs of
the opposition into prison At the same time a new grievance,
which the peculiar feelings and habits of the English nation made
insupportably painful, and which seemed to all discerning men to
be of fearful augury, excited general discontent and alarm.
Companies of soldiers were billeted on the people; and martial
law was, in some places, substituted for the ancient
jurisprudence of the realm.
The King called a third Parliament, and soon perceived that the
opposition was stronger and fiercer than ever. He now determined
on a change of tactics. Instead of opposing an inflexible
resistance to the demands of the Commons, he, after much
altercation and many evasions, agreed to a compromise which, if
he had faithfully adhered to it, would have averted a long series
of calamities. The Parliament granted an ample supply. The King
ratified, in the most solemn manner, that celebrated law, which
is known by the name of the Petition of Right, and which is the
second Great Charter of the liberties of England. By ratifying
that law he bound himself never again to raise. money without the
consent of the Houses, never again to imprison any person, except
in due course of law, and never again to subject his people to
the jurisdiction of courts martial.
The day on which the royal sanction was, after many delays,
solemnly given to this great Act, was a day of joy and hope. The
Commons, who crowded the bar of the House of Lords, broke forth
into loud acclamations as soon as the clerk had pronounced the
ancient form of words by which our princes have, during many
ages, signified their assent to the wishes of the Estates of the
realm. Those acclamations were reechoed by the voice of the
capital and of the nation; but within three weeks it became
manifest that Charles had no intention of observing the compact
into which he had entered. The supply given by the
representatives of the nation was collected. The promise by which
that supply had been obtained was broken. A violent contest
followed. The Parliament was dissolved with every mark of royal
displeasure. Some of the most distinguished members were
imprisoned; and one of them, Sir John Eliot, after years of
suffering, died in confinement.
Charles, however, could not venture to raise, by his own
authority, taxes sufficient for carrying on war. He accordingly
hastened to make peace with his neighbours, and thenceforth gave
his whole mind to British politics.
Now commenced a new era. Many English Kings had occasionally
committed unconstitutional acts: but none had ever systematically
attempted to make himself a despot, and to reduce the Parliament
to a nullity. Such was the end which Charles distinctly proposed
to himself. From March 1629 to April 1640, the Houses were not
convoked. Never in our history had there been an interval of
eleven years between Parliament and Parliament. Only once had
there been an interval of even half that length. This fact alone
is sufficient to refute those who represent Charles as having
merely trodden in the footsteps of the Plantagenets and Tudors.
It is proved, by the testimony of the King's most strenuous
supporters, that, during this part of his reign, the provisions
of the Petition of Right were violated by him, not occasionally,
but constantly, and on system; that a large part of the revenue
was raised without any legal authority; and that persons
obnoxious to the government languished for years in prison,
without being ever called upon to plead before any tribunal.
For these things history must hold the King himself chiefly
responsible. From the time of his third Parliament he was his own
prime minister. Several persons, however, whose temper and
talents were suited to his purposes, were at the head of
different departments of the administration.
Thomas Wentworth, successively created Lord Wentworth and Earl of
Strafford, a man of great abilities, eloquence, and courage, but
of a cruel and imperious nature, was the counsellor most trusted
in political and military affairs. He had been one of the most
distinguished members of the opposition, and felt towards those
whom he had deserted that peculiar malignity which has, in all
ages, been characteristic of apostates. He perfectly understood
the feelings, the resources, and the policy of the party to which
he had lately belonged, and had formed a vast and deeply
meditated scheme which very nearly confounded even the able
tactics of the statesmen by whom the House of Commons had been
directed. To this scheme, in his confidential correspondence, he
gave the expressive name of Thorough. His object was to do in
England all, and more than all, that Richelieu was doing in
France; to make Charles a monarch as absolute as any on the
Continent; to put the estates and the personal liberty of the
whole people at the disposal of the crown; to deprive the courts
of law of all independent authority, even in ordinary questions
of civil right between man and man; and to punish with merciless
rigour all who murmured at the acts of the government, or who
applied, even in the most decent and regular manner, to any
tribunal for relief against those acts.12
This was his end; and he distinctly saw in what manner alone this
end could be attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions
a clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been
pursuing an object pernicious to his country and to his kind,
would have justly entitled him to high admiration. He saw that
there was one instrument, and only one, by which his vast and
daring projects could be carried into execution. That instrument
was a standing army. To the forming of such an army, therefore,
he directed all the energy of his strong mind. In Ireland, where
he was viceroy, he actually succeeded in establishing a military
despotism, not only over the aboriginal population, but also over
the English colonists, and was able to boast that, in that
island, the King was as absolute as any prince in the whole world
could be.13
The ecclesiastical administration was, in the meantime,
principally directed by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Of all the prelates of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed
farthest from the principles of the Reformation, and had drawn
nearest to Rome. His theology was more remote than even that of
the Dutch Arminians from the theology of the Calvinists. His
passion for ceremonies, his reverence for holidays, vigils, and
sacred places, his ill concealed dislike of the marriage of
ecclesiastics, the ardent and not altogether disinterested zeal
with which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence
of the laity, would have made him an object of aversion to the
Puritans, even if he had used only legal and gentle means for the
attainment of his ends. But his understanding was narrow; and his
commerce with the world had been small. He was by nature rash,
irritable, quick to feel for his own dignity, slow to sympathise
with the sufferings of others, and prone to the error, common in
superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevish and malignant
moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his direction every
corner of the realm was subjected to a constant and minute
inspection. Every little congregation of separatists was tracked
out and broken up. Even the devotions of private families could
not escape the vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigour
inspire that the deadly hatred of the Church, which festered in
innumerable bosoms, was generally disguised under an outward show
of conformity. On the very eve of troubles, fatal to himself and
to his order, the Bishops of several extensive dioceses were able
to report to him that not a single dissenter was to be found
within their jurisdiction.14
The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against the
civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of
the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure of
the King, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they
were, they were less ready and less efficient instruments of
arbitrary power than a class of courts, the memory of which is
still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep
abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts in power
and in infamy were the Star Chamber and the High Commission, the
former a political, the latter a religious inquisition. Neither
was a part of the old constitution of England. The Star Chamber
had been remodelled, and the High Commission created, by the
Tudors. The power which these boards had possessed before the
accession of Charles had been extensive and formidable, but had
been small indeed when compared with that which they now usurped.
Guided chiefly by the violent spirit of the primate, and free
from the control of Parliament, they displayed a rapacity, a
violence, a malignant energy, which had been unknown to any
former age. The government was able through their
instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without
restraint. A separate council which sate at York, under the
presidency of Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure
act of prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern
counties. All these tribunals insulted and defied the authority
of Westminster Hall, and daily committed excesses which the most
distinguished Royalists have warmly condemned. We are informed by
Clarendon that there was hardly a man of note in the realm who
had not personal experience of the harshness and greediness of
the Star Chamber, that the High Commission had so conducted
itself that it had scarce a friend left in the kingdom, and that
the tyranny of the Council of York had made the Great Charter a
dead letter on the north of the Trent.
The government of England was now, in all points but one, as
despotic as that of France. But that one point was all important.
There was still no standing army. There was therefore, no
security that the whole fabric of tyranny might not be subverted
in a single day; and, if taxes were imposed by the royal
authority for the support of an army, it was probable that there
would be an immediate and irresistible explosion. This was the
difficulty which more than any other perplexed Wentworth. The
Lord Keeper Finch, in concert with other lawyers who were
employed by the government, recommended an expedient which was
eagerly adopted. The ancient princes of England, as they called
on the inhabitants of the counties near Scotland to arm and array
themselves for the defence of the border, had sometimes called on
the maritime counties to furnish ships for the defence of the
coast. In the room of ships money had sometimes been accepted.
This old practice it was now determined, after a long interval,
not only to revive but to extend. Former princes had raised
shipmoney only in time of war: it was now exacted in a time of
profound peace. Former princes, even in the most perilous wars,
had raised shipmoney only along the coasts: it was now exacted
from the inland shires. Former princes had raised shipmoney only
for the maritime defence of the country: It was now exacted, by
the admission of the Royalists themselves. With the object, not
of maintaining a navy, but of furnishing the King with supplies
which might be increased at his discretion to any amount, and
expended at his discretion for any purpose.
The whole nation was alarmed and incensed. John Hampden, an
opulent and well born gentleman of Buckinghamshire, highly
considered in his own neighbourhood, but as yet little known to
the kingdom generally, had the courage to step forward, to
confront the whole power of the government, and take on himself
the cost and the risk of disputing the prerogative to which the
King laid claim. The case was argued before the judges in the
Exchequer Chamber. So strong were the arguments against the
pretensions of the crown that, dependent and servile as the
judges were, the majority against Hampden was the smallest
possible. Still there was a majority. The interpreters of the law
had pronounced that one great and productive tax might be imposed
by the royal authority. Wentworth justly observed that it was
impossible to vindicate their judgment except by reasons directly
leading to a conclusion which they had not ventured to draw. If
money might legally be raised without the consent of Parliament
for the support of a fleet, it was not easy to deny that money
might, without consent of Parliament, be legally raised for the
support of an army.
The decision of the judges increased the irritation of the
people. A century earlier, irritation less serious would have
produced a general rising. But discontent did not now so readily
as in an earlier age take the form of rebellion. The nation had
been long steadily advancing in wealth and in civilisation. Since
the great northern Earls took up arms against Elizabeth seventy
years had elapsed; and during those seventy years there had been
no civil war. Never, during the whole existence of the English
nation, had so long a period passed without intestine
hostilities. Men had become accustomed to the pursuits of
peaceful industry, and, exasperated as they were, hesitated long
before they drew the sword.
This was the conjuncture at which the liberties of the nation
were in the greatest peril. The opponents of the government began
to despair of the destiny of their country; and many looked to
the American wilderness as the only asylum in which they could
enjoy civil and spiritual freedom. There a few resolute Puritans,
who, in the cause of their religion, feared neither the rage of
the ocean nor the hardships of uncivilised life, neither the
fangs of savage beasts nor the tomahawks of more savage men, had
built, amidst the primeval forests, villages which are now great
and opulent cities, but which have, through every change,
retained some trace of the character derived from their founders.
The government regarded these infant colonies with aversion, and
attempted violently to stop the stream of emigration, but could
not prevent the population of New England from being largely
recruited by stouthearted and Godfearing men from every part of
the old England. And now Wentworth exulted in the near prospect
of Thorough. A few years might probably suffice for the execution
of his great design. If strict economy were observed, if all
collision with foreign powers were carefully avoided, the debts
of the crown would be cleared off: there would be funds available
for the support of a large military force; and that force would
soon break the refractory spirit of the nation.
At this crisis an act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the
whole face of public affairs. Had the King been wise, he would
have pursued a cautious and soothing policy towards Scotland till
he was master in the South. For Scotland was of all his kingdoms
that in which there was the greatest risk that a spark might
produce a flame, and that a flame might become a conflagration.
Constitutional opposition, indeed, such as he had encountered at
Westminster, he had not to apprehend at Edinburgh. The Parliament
of his northern kingdom was a very different body from that which
bore the same name in England. It was ill constituted: it was
little considered; and it had never imposed any serious restraint
on any of his predecessors. The three Estates sate in one house.
The commissioners of the burghs were considered merely as
retainers of the great nobles. No act could be introduced till it
had been approved by the Lords of Articles. a committee which was
really, though not in form, nominated by the crown. But, though
the Scottish Parliament was obsequious, the Scottish people had
always been singularly turbulent and ungovernable. They had
butchered their first James in his bedchamber: they had
repeatedly arrayed themselves in arms against James the Second;
they had slain James the Third on the field of battle: their
disobedience had broken the heart of James the Fifth: they had
deposed and imprisoned Mary: they had led her son captive; and
their temper was still as intractable as ever. Their habits were
rude and martial. All along the southern border, and all along
the line between the highlands and the lowlands, raged an
incessant predatory war. In every part of the country men were
accustomed to redress their wrongs by the strong hand. Whatever
loyalty the nation had anciently felt to the Stuarts had cooled
during their long absence. The supreme influence over the public
mind was divided between two classes of malecontents, the lords
of the soil and the preachers; lords animated by the same spirit
which had often impelled the old Douglasses to withstand the
royal house, and preachers who had inherited the republican
opinions and the unconquerable spirit of Knox. Both the national
and religious feelings of the population had been wounded. All
orders of men complained that their country, that country which
had, with so much glory, defended her independence against the
ablest and bravest Plantagenets, had, through the instrumentality
of her native princes, become in effect, though not in name, a
province of England. In no part of Europe had the Calvinistic
doctrine and discipline taken so strong a hold on the public
mind. The Church of Rome was regarded by the great body of the
people with a hatred which might justly be called ferocious; and
the Church of England, which seemed to be every day becoming more
and more like the Church of Rome, was an object of scarcely less
aversion.
The government had long wished to extend the Anglican system over
the whole island, and had already, with this view, made several
changes highly distasteful to every Presbyterian. One innovation,
however, the most hazardous of all, because it was directly
cognisable by the senses of the common people, had not yet been
attempted. The public worship of God was still conducted in the
manner acceptable to the nation. Now, however, Charles and Laud
determined to force on the Scots the English liturgy, or rather a
liturgy which, wherever it differed from that of England,
differed, in the judgment of all rigid Protestants, for the
worse.
To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in
criminal ignorance or more criminal contempt of public feeling,
our country owes her freedom. The first performance of the
foreign ceremonies produced a riot. The riot rapidly became a
revolution. Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were mingled in one
headlong torrent. The whole nation was in arms. The power of
England was indeed, as appeared some years later, sufficient to
coerce Scotland: but a large part of the English people
sympathised with the religious feelings of the insurgents; and
many Englishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and
genuflexions, altars and surplices, saw with pleasure the
progress of a rebellion which seemed likely to confound the
arbitrary projects of the court, and to make the calling of a
Parliament necessary.
For the senseless freak which had produced these effects
Wentworth is not responsible.15 It had, in fact, thrown all his
plans into confusion. To counsel submission, however, was not in
his nature. An attempt was made to put down the insurrection by
the sword: but the King's military means and military talents
were unequal to the task. To impose fresh taxes on England in
defiance of law, would, at this conjuncture, have been madness.
No resource was left but a Parliament; and in the spring of 1640
a Parliament was convoked.
The nation had been put into good humour by the prospect of
seeing constitutional government restored, and grievances
redressed. The new House of Commons was more temperate and more
respectful to the throne than any which had sate since the death
of Elizabeth. The moderation of this assembly has been highly
extolled by the most distinguished Royalists and seems to have
caused no small vexation and disappointment to the chiefs of the
opposition: but it was the uniform practice of Charles, a
practice equally impolitic and ungenerous, to refuse all
compliance with the desires of his people, till those desires
were expressed in a menacing tone. As soon as the Commons showed
a disposition to take into consideration the grievances under
which the country had suffered during eleven years, the King
dissolved the Parliament with every mark of displeasure.
Between the dissolution of this shortlived assembly and the
meeting of that ever memorable body known by the name of the Long
Parliament, intervened a few months, during which the yoke was
pressed down more severely than ever on the nation, while the
spirit of the nation rose up more angrily than ever against the
yoke. Members of the House of Commons were questioned by the
Privy Council touching their parliamentary conduct, and thrown
into prison for refusing to reply. Shipmoney was levied with
increased rigour. The Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs of London were
threatened with imprisonment for remissness in collecting the
payments. Soldiers were enlisted by force. Money for their
support was exacted from their counties. Torture, which had
always been illegal, and which had recently been declared illegal
even by the servile judges of that age, was inflicted for the
last time in England in the month of May, 1610.
Everything now depended on the event of the King's military
operations against the Scots. Among his troops there was little
of that feeling which separates professional soldiers from the
mass of a nation, and attaches them to their leaders. His army,
composed for the most part of recruits, who regretted the plough
from which they had been violently taken, and who were imbued
with the religious and political sentiments then prevalent
throughout the country, was more formidable to himself than to
the enemy. The Scots, encouraged by the heads of the English
opposition, and feebly resisted by the English forces, marched
across the Tweed and the Tyne, and encamped on the borders of
Yorkshire. And now the murmurs of discontent swelled into an
uproar by which all spirits save one were overawed.
But the voice of Strafford was still for Thorough; and he even,
in this extremity, showed a nature so cruel and despotic, that
his own pikemen were ready to tear him in pieces.
There was yet one last expedient which, as the King flattered
himself, might save him from the misery of facing another House
of Commons. To the House of Lords he was less averse. The Bishops
were devoted to him; and though the temporal peers were generally
dissatisfied with his administration, they were, as a class, so
deeply interested in the maintenance of order, and in the
stability of ancient institutions, that they were not likely to
call for extensive reforms. Departing from the uninterrupted
practice of centuries, he called a Great Council consisting of
Lords alone. But the Lords were too prudent to assume the
unconstitutional functions with which he wished to invest them.
Without money, without credit, without authority even in his own
camp, he yielded to the pressure of necessity. The Houses were
convoked; and the elections proved that, since the spring, the
distrust and hatred with which the government was regarded had
made fearful progress.
In November, 1640, met that renowned Parliament which, in spite
of many errors and disasters, is justly entitled to the reverence
and gratitude of all who, in any part of the world. enjoy the
blessings of constitutional government.
During the year which followed, no very important division of
opinion appeared in the Houses. The civil and ecclesiastical
administration had, through a period of nearly twelve years, been
so oppressive and so unconstitutional that even those classes of
which the inclinations are generally on the side of order and
authority were eager to promote popular reforms and to bring the
instruments of tyranny to justice. It was enacted that no
interval of more than three years should ever elapse between
Parliament and Parliament, and that, if writs under the Great
Seal were not issued at the proper time, the returning officers
should, without such writs, call the constituent bodies together
for the choice of representatives. The Star Chamber, the High
Commission, the Council of York were swept away. Men who, after
suffering cruel mutilations, had been confined in remote
dungeons, regained their liberty. On the chief ministers of the
crown the vengeance of the nation was unsparingly wreaked. The
Lord Keeper, the Primate, the Lord Lieutenant were impeached.
Finch saved himself by flight. Laud was flung into the Tower.
Strafford was put to death by act of attainder. On the day on
which this act passed, the King gave his assent to a law by which
he bound himself not to adjourn, prorogue, or dissolve the
existing Parliament without its own consent.
After ten months of assiduous toil, the Houses, in September
1641, adjourned for a short vacation; and the King visited
Scotland. He with difficulty pacified that kingdom by consenting,
not only to relinquish his plans of ecclesiastical reform, but
even to pass, with a very bad grace, an act declaring that
episcopacy was contrary to the word of God.
The recess of the English Parliament lasted six weeks. The day on
which the Houses met again is one of the most remarkable epochs
in our history. From that day dates the corporate existence of
the two great parties which have ever since alternately governed
the country. In one sense, indeed, the distinction which then
became obvious had always existed, and always must exist. For it
has its origin in diversities of temper, of understanding, and of
interest, which are found in all societies, and which will be
found till the human mind ceases to be drawn in opposite
directions by the charm of habit and by the charm of novelty. Not
only in politics but in literature, in art, in science, in
surgery and mechanics, in navigation and agriculture, nay, even
in mathematics, we find this distinction. Everywhere there is a
class of men who cling with fondness to whatever is ancient, and
who, even when convinced by overpowering reasons that innovation
would be beneficial, consent to it with many misgivings and
forebodings. We find also everywhere another class of men,
sanguine in hope, bold in speculation, always pressing forward,
quick to discern the imperfections of whatever exists, disposed
to think lightly of the risks and inconveniences which attend
improvements and disposed to give every change credit for being
an improvement. In the sentiments of both classes there is
something to approve. But of both the best specimens will be
found not far from the common frontier. The extreme section of
one class consists of bigoted dotards: the extreme section of the
other consists of shallow and reckless empirics.
There can be no doubt that in our very first Parliaments might
have been discerned a body of members anxious to preserve, and a
body eager to reform. But, while the sessions of the legislature
were short, these bodies did not take definite and permanent
forms, array themselves under recognised leaders, or assume
distinguishing names, badges, and war cries. During the first
months of the Long Parliament, the indignation excited by many
years of lawless oppression was so strong and general that the
House of Commons acted as one man. Abuse after abuse disappeared
without a struggle. If a small minority of the representative
body wished to retain the Star Chamber and the High Commission,
that minority, overawed by the enthusiasm and by the numerical
superiority of the reformers, contented itself with secretly
regretting institutions which could not, with any hope of
success, be openly defended. At a later period the Royalists
found it convenient to antedate the separation between themselves
and their opponents, and to attribute the Act which restrained
the King from dissolving or proroguing the Parliament, the
Triennial Act, the impeachment of the ministers, and the
attainder of Strafford, to the faction which afterwards made war
on the King. But no artifice could be more disingenuous. Every
one of those strong measures was actively promoted by the men who
were afterward foremost among the Cavaliers. No republican spoke
of the long misgovernment of Charles more severely than
Colepepper. The most remarkable speech in favour of the Triennial
Bill was made by Digby. The impeachment of the Lord Keeper was
moved by Falkland. The demand that the Lord Lieutenant should be
kept close prisoner was made at the bar of the Lords by Hyde. Not
till the law attainting Strafford was proposed did the signs of
serious disunion become visible. Even against that law, a law
which nothing but extreme necessity could justify, only about
sixty members of the House of Commons voted. It is certain that
Hyde was not in the minority, and that Falkland not only voted
with the majority, but spoke strongly for the bill. Even the few
who entertained a scruple about inflicting death by a
retrospective enactment thought it necessary to express the
utmost abhorrence of Strafford's character and administration.
But under this apparent concord a great schism was latent; and
when, in October, 1641, the Parliament reassembled after a short
recess, two hostile parties, essentially the same with those
which, under different names, have ever since contended, and are
still contending, for the direction of public affairs, appeared
confronting each other. During some years they were designated as
Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were subsequently called Tories
and Whigs; nor does it seem that these appellations are likely
soon to become obsolete.
It would not be difficult to compose a lampoon or panegyric on
either of these renowned factions. For no man not utterly
destitute of judgment and candor will deny that there are many
deep stains on the fame of the party to which he belongs, or that
the party to which he is opposed may justly boast of many
illustrious names, of many heroic actions, and of many great
services rendered to the state. The truth is that, though both
parties have often seriously erred, England could have spared
neither. If, in her institutions, freedom and order, the
advantages arising from innovation and the advantages arising
from prescription, have been combined to an extent elsewhere
unknown, we may attribute this happy peculiarity to the strenuous
conflicts and alternate victories of two rival confederacies of
statesmen, a confederacy zealous for authority and antiquity, and
a confederacy zealous for liberty and progress.
It ought to be remembered that the difference between the two
great sections of English politicians has always been a
difference rather of degree than of principle. There were certain
limits on the right and on the left, which were very rarely
overstepped. A few enthusiasts on one side were ready to lay all
our laws and franchises at the feet of our Kings. A few
enthusiasts on the other side were bent on pursuing, through
endless civil troubles, their darling phantom of a republic. But
the great majority of those who fought for the crown were averse
to despotism; and the great majority of the champions of popular
rights were averse to anarchy. Twice, in the course of the
seventeenth century, the two parties suspended their dissensions,
and united their strength in a common cause. Their first
coalition restored hereditary monarchy. Their second coalition
rescued constitutional freedom.
It is also to be noted that these two parties have never been the
whole nation, nay, that they have never, taken together, made up
a majority of the nation. Between them has always been a great
mass, which has not steadfastly adhered to either, which has
sometimes remained inertly neutral, and which has sometimes
oscillated to and fro. That mass has more than once passed in a
few years from one extreme to the other, and back again.
Sometimes it has changed sides, merely because it was tired of
supporting the same men, sometimes because it was dismayed by its
own excesses, sometimes because it had expected impossibilities,
and had been disappointed. But whenever it has leaned with its
whole weight in either direction, that weight has, for the time,
been irresistible.
When the rival parties first appeared in a distinct form, they
seemed to be not unequally matched. On the side of the government
was a large majority of the nobles, and of those opulent and well
descended gentlemen to whom nothing was wanting of nobility but
the name. These, with the dependents whose support they could
command, were no small power. in the state. On the same side were
the great body of the clergy, both the Universities, and all
those laymen who were strongly attached to episcopal government
and to the Anglican ritual. These respectable classes found
themselves in the company of some allies much less decorous than
themselves. The Puritan austerity drove to the king's faction all
who made pleasure their business, who affected gallantry,
splendour of dress, or taste in the higher arts. With these went
all who live by amusing the leisure of others, from the painter
and the comic poet, down to the ropedancer and the Merry Andrew.
For these artists well knew that they might thrive under a superb
and luxurious despotism, but must starve under the rigid rule of
the precisians. In the same interest were the Roman Catholics to
a man. The Queen, a daughter of France, was of their own faith.
Her husband was known to be strongly attached to her, and not a
little in awe of her. Though undoubtedly a Protestant on
conviction, he regarded the professors of the old religion with
no ill-will, and would gladly have granted them a much larger
toleration than he was disposed to concede to the Presbyterians.
If the opposition obtained the mastery, it was probable that the
sanguinary laws enacted against Papists in the reign of
Elizabeth, would be severely enforced. The Roman Catholics were
therefore induced by the strongest motives to espouse the cause
of the court. They in general acted with a caution which brought
on them the reproach of cowardice and lukewarmness; but it is
probable that, in maintaining great reserve, they consulted the
King's interest as well as their own. It was not for his service
that they should be conspicuous among his friends.
The main strength of the opposition lay among the small
freeholders in the country, and among the merchants and
shopkeepers of the towns. But these were headed by a formidable
minority of the aristocracy, a minority which included the rich
and powerful Earls of Northumberland, Bedford, Warwick, Stamford,
and Essex, and several other Lords of great wealth and influence.
In the same ranks was found the whole body of Protestant
Nonconformists, and most of those members of the Established
Church who still adhered to the Calvinistic opinions which, forty
years before, had been generally held by the prelates and clergy.
The municipal corporations took, with few exceptions, the same
side. In the House of Commons the opposition preponderated, but
not very decidedly.
Neither party wanted strong arguments for the course which it was
disposed to take. The reasonings of the most enlightened
Royalists may be summed up thus:-"It is true that great abuses
have existed; but they have been redressed. It is true that
precious rights have been invaded; but they have been vindicated
and surrounded with new securities. The sittings of the Estates
of the realm have been, in defiance of all precedent and of the
spirit of the constitution, intermitted during eleven years; but
it has now been provided that henceforth three years shall never
elapse without a Parliament. The Star Chamber the High
Commission, the Council of York, oppressed end plundered us; but
those hateful courts have now ceased to exist. The Lord
Lieutenant aimed at establishing military despotism; but he has
answered for his treason with his head. The Primate tainted our
worship with Popish rites and punished our scruples with Popish
cruelty; but he is awaiting in the Tower the judgment of his
peers. The Lord Keeper sanctioned a plan by which the property of
every man in England was placed at the mercy of the Crown; but he
has been disgraced, ruined, and compelled to take refuge in a
foreign land. The ministers of tyranny have expiated their
crimes. The victims of tyranny have been compensated for their
sufferings. It would therefore be most unwise to persevere
further in that course which was justifiable and necessary when
we first met, after a long interval, and found the whole
administration one mass of abuses. It is time to take heed that
we do not so pursue our victory over despotism as to run into
anarchy. It was not in our power to overturn the bad institutions
which lately afflicted our country, without shocks which have
loosened the foundations of government. Now that those
institutions have fallen, we must hasten to prop the edifice
which it was lately our duty to batter. Henceforth it will be our
wisdom to look with jealousy on schemes of innovation, and to
guard from encroachment all the prerogatives with which the law
has, for the public good, armed the sovereign."
Such were the views of those men of whom the excellent Falkland
may be regarded as the leader. It was contended on the other side
with not less force, by men of not less ability and virtue, that
the safety which the liberties of the English people enjoyed was
rather apparent than real, and that the arbitrary projects of the
court would be resumed as soon as the vigilance of the Commons
was relaxed. True it was,-such was the reasoning of Pym, of
Hollis, and of Hampden-that many good laws had been passed: but,
if good laws had been sufficient to restrain the King, his
subjects would have had little reason ever to complain of his
administration. The recent statutes were surely not of more
authority than the Great Charter or the Petition of Right. Yet
neither the Great Charter, hallowed by the veneration of four
centuries, nor the Petition of Right, sanctioned, after mature
reflection, and for valuable consideration, by Charles himself,
had been found effectual for the protection of the people. If
once the check of fear were withdrawn, if once the spirit of
opposition were suffered to slumber, all the securities for
English freedom resolved themselves into a single one, the royal
word; and it had been proved by a long and severe experience that
the royal word could not be trusted.
The two parties were still regarding each other with cautious
hostility, and had not yet measured their strength, when news
arrived which inflamed the passions and confirmed the opinions of
both. The great chieftains of Ulster, who, at the time of the
accession of James, had, after a long struggle, submitted to the
royal authority, had not long brooked the humiliation of
dependence. They had conspired against the English government,
and had been attainted of treason. Their immense domains had been
forfeited to the crown, and had soon been peopled by thousands of
English and Scotch emigrants. The new settlers were, in
civilisation and intelligence, far superior to the native
population, and sometimes abused their superiority. The animosity
produced by difference of race was increased by difference of
religion. Under the iron rule of Wentworth, scarcely a murmur was
heard: but, when that strong pressure was withdrawn, when
Scotland had set the example of successful resistance, when
England was distracted by internal quarrels, the smothered rage
of the Irish broke forth into acts of fearful violence. On a
sudden, the aboriginal population rose on the colonists. A war,
to which national and theological hatred gave a character of
peculiar ferocity, desolated Ulster, and spread to the
neighbouring provinces. The castle of Dublin was scarcely thought
secure. Every post brought to London exaggerated accounts of
outrages which, without any exaggeration. were sufficient to move
pity end horror. These evil tidings roused to the height the zeal
of both the great parties which were marshalled against each
other at Westminster. The Royalists maintained that it was the
first duty of every good Englishman and Protestant, at such a
crisis, to strengthen the hands of the sovereign. To the
opposition it seemed that there were now stronger reasons than
ever for thwarting and restraining him. That the commonwealth was
in danger was undoubtedly a good reason for giving large powers
to a trustworthy magistrate: but it was a good reason for taking
away powers from a magistrate who was at heart a public enemy. To
raise a great army had always been the King's first object. A
great army must now be raised. It was to be feared that, unless
some new securities were devised, the forces levied for the
reduction of Ireland would be employed against the liberties of
England. Nor was this all. A horrible suspicion, unjust indeed,
but not altogether unnatural, had arisen in many minds. The Queen
was an avowed Roman Catholic: the King was not regarded by the
Puritans, whom he had mercilessly persecuted, as a sincere
Protestant; and so notorious was his duplicity, that there was no
treachery of which his subjects might not, with some show of
reason, believe him capable. It was soon whispered that the
rebellion of the Roman Catholics of Ulster was part of a vast
work of darkness which had been planned at Whitehall.
After some weeks of prelude, the first great parliamentary
conflict between the parties, which have ever since contended,
and are still contending, for the government of the nation, took
place on the twenty-second of November, 1641. It was moved by the
opposition, that the House of Commons should present to the King
a remonstrance, enumerating the faults of his administration from
the time of his accession, and expressing the distrust with which
his policy was still regarded by his people. That assembly, which
a few months before had been unanimous in calling for the reform
of abuses, was now divided into two fierce and eager factions of
nearly equal strength. After a hot debate of many hours, the
remonstrance was carried by only eleven votes.
The result of this struggle was highly favourable to the
conservative party. It could not be doubted that only some great
indiscretion could prevent them from shortly obtaining the
predominance in the Lower House. The Upper House was already
their own. Nothing was wanting to ensure their success, but that
the King should, in all his conduct, show respect for the laws
and scrupulous good faith towards his subjects.
His first measures promised well. He had, it seemed, at last
discovered that an entire change of system was necessary, and had
wisely made up his mind to what could no longer be avoided. He
declared his determination to govern in harmony with the Commons,
and, for that end, to call to his councils men in whose talents
and character the Commons might place confidence. Nor was the
selection ill made. Falkland, Hyde, and Colepepper, all three
distinguished by the part which they had taken in reforming
abuses and in punishing evil ministers, were invited to become
the confidential advisers of the Crown, and were solemnly assured
by Charles that he would take no step in any way affecting the
Lower House of Parliament without their privity.
Had he kept this promise, it cannot be doubted that the reaction
which was already in progress would very soon have become quite
as strong as the most respectable Royalists would have desired.
Already the violent members of the opposition had begun to
despair of the fortunes of their party, to tremble for their own
safety, and to talk of selling their estates and emigrating to
America. That the fair prospects which had begun to open before
the King were suddenly overcast, that his life was darkened by
adversity, and at length shortened by violence, is to be
attributed to his own faithlessness and contempt of law.
The truth seems to be that he detested both the parties into
which the House of Commons was divided: nor is this strange; for
in both those parties the love of liberty and the love of order
were mingled, though in different proportions. The advisers whom
necessity had compelled him to call round him were by no means
after his own heart. They had joined in condemning his tyranny,
in abridging his power, and in punishing his instruments. They
were now indeed prepared to defend in a strictly legal way his
strictly legal prerogative; but they would have recoiled with
horror from the thought of reviving Wentworth's projects of
Thorough. They were, therefore, in the King's opinion, traitors,
who differed only in the degree of their seditious malignity from
Pym and Hampden.
He accordingly, a few days after he had promised the chiefs of
the constitutional Royalists that no step of importance should be
taken without their knowledge, formed a resolution the most
momentous of his whole life, carefully concealed that resolution
from them, and executed it in a manner which overwhelmed them
with shame and dismay. He sent the Attorney General to impeach
Pym, Hollis, Hampden, and other members of the House of Commons
of high treason at the bar of the House of Lords. Not content
with this flagrant violation of the Great Charter and of the
uninterrupted practice of centuries, he went in person,
accompanied by armed men, to seize the leaders of the opposition
within the walls of Parliament.
The attempt failed. The accused members had left the House a
short time before Charles entered it. A sudden and violent
revulsion of feeling, both in the Parliament and in the country,
followed. The most favourable view that has ever been taken of
the King's conduct on this occasion by his most partial advocates
is that he had weakly suffered himself to be hurried into a gross
indiscretion by the evil counsels of his wife and of his
courtiers. But the general voice loudly charged him with far
deeper guilt. At the very moment at which his subjects, after a
long estrangement produced by his maladministration, were
returning to him with feelings of confidence and affection, he
had aimed a deadly blow at all their dearest rights, at the
privileges of Parliament, at the very principle of trial by jury.
He had shown that he considered opposition to his arbitrary
designs as a crime to be expiated only by blood. He had broken
faith, not only with his Great Council and with his people, but
with his own adherents. He had done what, but for an unforeseen
accident, would probably have produced a bloody conflict round
the Speaker's chair. Those who had the chief sway in the Lower
House now felt that not only their power and popularity, but
their lands and their necks, were staked on the event of the
struggle in which they were engaged. The flagging zeal of the
party opposed to the court revived in an instant. During the
night which followed the outrage the whole city of London was in
arms. In a few hours the roads leading to the capital were
covered with multitudes of yeomen spurring hard to Westminster
with the badges of the parliamentary cause in their hats. In the
House of Commons the opposition became at once irresistible, and
carried, by more than two votes to one, resolutions of
unprecedented violence. Strong bodies of the trainbands,
regularly relieved, mounted guard round Westminster Hall. The
gates of the King's palace were daily besieged by a furious
multitude whose taunts and execrations were heard even in the
presence chamber, and who could scarcely be kept out of the royal
apartments by the gentlemen of the household. Had Charles
remained much longer in his stormy capital, it is probable that
the Commons would have found a plea for making him, under outward
forms of respect, a state prisoner.
He quitted London, never to return till the day of a terrible and
memorable reckoning had arrived. A negotiation began which
occupied many months. Accusations and recriminations passed
backward and forward between the contending parties. All
accommodation had become impossible. The sure punishment which
waits on habitual perfidy had at length overtaken the King. It
was to no purpose that he now pawned his royal word, and invoked
heaven to witness the sincerity of his professions. The distrust
with which his adversaries regarded him was not to be removed by
oaths or treaties. They were convinced that they could be safe
only when he was utterly helpless. Their demand, therefore, was,
that he should surrender, not only those prerogatives which he
had usurped in violation of ancient laws and of his own recent
promises, but also other prerogatives which the English Kings had
always possessed, and continue to possess at the present day. No
minister must be appointed, no peer created, without the consent
of the Houses. Above all, the sovereign must resign that supreme
military authority which, from time beyond all memory, had
appertained to the regal office.
That Charles would comply with such demands while he had any
means of resistance, was not to be expected. Yet it will be
difficult to show that the Houses could safely have exacted less.
They were truly in a most embarrassing position. The great
majority of the nation was firmly attached to hereditary
monarchy. Those who held republican opinions were as yet few, and
did not venture to speak out. It was therefore impossible to
abolish kingly government. Yet it was plain that no confidence
could be placed in the King. It would have been absurd in those
who knew, by recent proof, that he was bent on destroying them,
to content themselves with presenting to him another Petition of
Right, and receiving from him fresh promises similar to those
which he had repeatedly made and broken. Nothing but the want of
an army had prevented him from entirely subverting the old
constitution of the realm. It was now necessary to levy a great
regular army for the conquest of Ireland; and it would therefore
have been mere insanity to leave him in possession of that
plenitude of military authority which his ancestors had enjoyed.
When a country is in the situation in which England then was,
when the kingly office is regarded with love and veneration, but
the person who fills that office is hated and distrusted, it
should seem that the course which ought to be taken is obvious.
The dignity of the office should be preserved: the person should
be discarded. Thus our ancestors acted in 1399 and in 1689. Had
there been, in 1642, any man occupying a position similar to that
which Henry of Lancaster occupied at the time of the deposition
of Richard the Second, and which William of Orange occupied at
the time of the deposition of James the Second, it is probable
that the Houses would have changed the dynasty, and would have
made no formal change in the constitution. The new King, called
to the throne by their choice, and dependent on their support,
would have been under the necessity of governing in conformity
with their wishes and opinions. But there was no prince of the
blood royal in the parliamentary party; and, though that party
contained many men of high rank and many men of eminent ability,
there was none who towered so conspicously above the rest that he
could be proposed as a candidate for the crown. As there was to
be a King, and as no new King could be found, it was necessary to
leave the regal title to Charles. Only one course, therefore, was
left: and that was to disjoin the regal title from the regal
prerogatives.
The change which the Houses proposed to make in our institutions,
though it seems exorbitant, when distinctly set forth and
digested into articles of capitulation, really amounts to little
more than the change which, in the next generation, was effected
by the Revolution. It is true that, at the Revolution, the
sovereign was not deprived by law of the power of naming his
ministers: but it is equally true that, since the Revolution, no
minister has been able to retain office six months in opposition
to the sense of the House of Commons. It is true that the
sovereign still possesses the power of creating peers, and the
more important power of the sword: but it is equally true that in
the exercise of these powers the sovereign has, ever since the
Revolution, been guided by advisers who possess the confidence of
the representatives of the nation. In fact, the leaders of the
Roundhead party in 1642, and the statesmen who, about half a
century later, effected the Revolution, had exactly the same
object in view. That object was to terminate the contest between
the Crown and the Parliament, by giving to the Parliament a
supreme control over the executive administration. The statesmen
of the Revolution effected this indirectly by changing the
dynasty. The Roundheads of 1642, being unable to change the
dynasty, were compelled to take a direct course towards their
end.
We cannot, however, wonder that the demands of the opposition,
importing as they did a complete and formal transfer to the
Parliament of powers which had always belonged to the Crown,
should have shocked that great party of which the characteristics
are respect for constitutional authority and dread of violent
innovation. That party had recently been in hopes of obtaining by
peaceable means the ascendency in the House of Commons; but every
such hope had been blighted. The duplicity of Charles had made
his old enemies irreconcileable, had driven back into the ranks
of the disaffected a crowd of moderate men who were in the very
act of coming over to his side, and had so cruelly mortified his
best friends that they had for a time stood aloof in silent shame
and resentment. Now, however, the constitutional Royalists were
forced to make their choice between two dangers; and they thought
it their duty rather to rally round a prince whose past conduct
they condemned, and whose word inspired them with little
confidence, than to suffer the regal office to be degraded, and
the polity of the realm to be entirely remodelled. With such
feelings, many men whose virtues and abilities would have done
honour to any cause, ranged themselves on the side of the King.
In August 1642 the sword was at length drawn; and soon, in almost
every shire of the kingdom, two hostile factions appeared in arms
against each other. It is not easy to say which of the contending
parties was at first the more formidable. The Houses commanded
London and the counties round London, the fleet, the navigation
of the Thames, and most of the large towns and seaports. They had
at their disposal almost all the military stores of the kingdom,
and were able to raise duties, both on goods imported from
foreign countries, and on some important products of domestic
industry. The King was ill provided with artillery and
ammunition. The taxes which he laid on the rural districts
occupied by his troops produced, it is probable, a sum far less
than that which the Parliament drew from the city of London
alone. He relied, indeed, chiefly, for pecuniary aid, on the
munificence of his opulent adherents. Many of these mortgaged
their land, pawned their jewels, and broke up their silver
chargers and christening bowls, in order to assist him. But
experience has fully proved that the voluntary liberality of
individuals, even in times of the greatest excitement, is a poor
financial resource when compared with severe and methodical
taxation, which presses on the willing and unwilling alike.
Charles, however, had one advantage, which, if he had used it
well, would have more than compensated for the want of stores and
money, and which, notwithstanding his mismanagement, gave him,
during some months, a superiority in the war. His troops at first
fought much better than those of the Parliament. Both armies, it
is true, were almost entirely composed of men who had never seen
a field of battle. Nevertheless, the difference was great. The
Parliamentary ranks were filled with hirelings whom want and
idleness had induced to enlist. Hampden's regiment was regarded
as one of the best; and even Hampden's regiment was described by
Cromwell as a mere rabble of tapsters and serving men out of
place. The royal army, on the other hand, consisted in great part
of gentlemen, high spirited, ardent, accustomed to consider
dishonour as more terrible than death, accustomed to fencing, to
the use of fire arms, to bold riding, and to manly and perilous
sport, which has been well called the image of war. Such
gentlemen, mounted on their favourite horses, and commanding
little bands composed of their younger brothers, grooms,
gamekeepers, and huntsmen, were, from the very first day on which
they took the field, qualified to play their part with credit in
a skirmish. The steadiness, the prompt obedience, the mechanical
precision of movement, which are characteristic of the regular
soldier, these gallant volunteers never attained. But they were
at first opposed to enemies as undisciplined as themselves, and
far less active, athletic, and daring. For a time, therefore, the
Cavaliers were successful in almost every encounter.
The Houses had also been unfortunate in the choice of a general.
The rank and wealth of the Earl of Essex made him one of the most
important members of the parliamentary party. He had borne arms
on the Continent with credit, and, when the war began, had as
high a military reputation as any man in the country. But it soon
appeared that he was unfit for the post of Commander in Chief. He
had little energy and no originality. The methodical tactics
which he had learned in the war of the Palatinate did not save
him from the disgrace of being surprised and baffled by such a
Captain as Rupert, who could claim no higher fame than that of an
enterprising partisan.
Nor were the officers who held the chief commissions under Essex
qualified to supply what was wanting in him. For this, indeed,
the Houses are scarcely to be blamed. In a country which had not,
within the memory of the oldest person living, made war on a
great scale by land, generals of tried skill and valour were not
to be found. It was necessary, therefore, in the first instance,
to trust untried men; and the preference was naturally given to
men distinguished either by their station, or by the abilities
which they had displayed in Parliament. In scarcely a single
instance, however, was the selection fortunate. Neither the
grandees nor the orators proved good soldiers. The Earl of
Stamford, one of the greatest nobles of England, was routed by
the Royalists at Stratton. Nathaniel Fiennes, inferior to none of
his contemporaries in talents for civil business, disgraced
himself by the pusillanimous surrender of Bristol. Indeed, of all
the statesmen who at this juncture accepted high military
commands, Hampden alone appears to have carried into the camp the
capacity and strength of mind which had made him eminent in
politics.
When the war had lasted a year, the advantage was decidedly with
the Royalists. They were victorious, both in the western and in
the northern counties. They had wrested Bristol, the second city
in the kingdom, from the Parliament. They had won several
battles, and had not sustained a single serious or ignominious
defeat. Among the Roundheads adversity had begun to produce
dissension and discontent. The Parliament was kept in alarm,
sometimes by plots, and sometimes by riots. It was thought
necessary to fortify London against the royal army, and to hang
some disaffected citizens at their own doors. Several of the most
distinguished peers who had hitherto remained at Westminster fled
to the court at Oxford; nor can it be doubted that, if the
operations of the Cavaliers had, at this season, been directed by
a sagacious and powerful mind, Charles would soon have marched in
triumph to Whitehall.
But the King suffered the auspicious moment to pass away; and it
never returned. In August 1643 he sate down before the city of
Gloucester. That city was defended by the inhabitants and by the
garrison, with a determination such as had not, since the
commencement of the war, been shown by the adherents of the
Parliament. The emulation of London was excited. The trainbands
of the City volunteered to march wherever their services might be
required. A great force was speedily collected, and began to move
westward. The siege of Gloucester was raised: the Royalists in
every part of the kingdom were disheartened: the spirit of the
parliamentary party revived: and the apostate Lords, who had
lately fled from Westminster to Oxford, hastened back from Oxford
to Westminster.
And now a new and alarming class of symptoms began to appear in
the distempered body politic. There had been, from the first, in
the parliamentary party, some men whose minds were set on objects
from which the majority of that party would have shrunk with
horror. These men were, in religion, Independents. They conceived
that every Christian congregation had, under Christ, supreme
jurisdiction in things spiritual; that appeals to provincial and
national synods were scarcely less unscriptural than appeals to
the Court of Arches, or to the Vatican; and that Popery, Prelacy,
and Presbyterianism were merely three forms of one great
apostasy. In politics, the Independents were, to use the phrase
of their time, root and branch men, or, to use the kindred phrase
of our own time, radicals. Not content with limiting the power of
the monarch, they were desirous to erect a commonwealth on the
ruins of the old English polity. At first they had been
inconsiderable, both in numbers and in weight; but before the war
had lasted two years they became, not indeed the largest, but the
most powerful faction in the country. Some of the old
parliamentary leaders had been removed by death; and others had
forfeited the public confidence. Pym had been borne, with
princely honours, to a grave among the Plantagenets. Hampden had
fallen, as became him, while vainly endeavouring, by his heroic
example, to inspire his followers with courage to face the fiery
cavalry of Rupert. Bedford had been untrue to the cause.
Northumberland was known to be lukewarm. Essex and his
lieutenants had shown little vigour and ability in the conduct of
military operations. At such a conjuncture it was that the
Independent party, ardent, resolute, and uncompromising, began to
raise its head, both in the camp and in the House of Commons.
The soul of that party was Oliver Cromwell. Bred to peaceful
occupations, he had, at more than forty years of age, accepted a
commission in the parliamentary army. No sooner had he become a
soldier than he discerned, with the keen glance of genius, what
Essex, and men like Essex, with all their experience, were unable
to perceive. He saw precisely where the strength of the Royalists
lay, and by what means alone that strength could be overpowered.
He saw that it was necessary to reconstruct the army of the
Parliament. He saw also that there were abundant and excellent
materials for the purpose, materials less showy, indeed, but more
solid, than those of which the gallant squadrons of the King were
composed. It was necessary to look for recruits who were not mere
mercenaries, for recruits of decent station and grave character,
fearing God and zealous for public liberty. With such men he
filled his own regiment, and, while he subjected them to a
discipline more rigid than had ever before been known in England,
he administered to their intellectual and moral nature stimulants
of fearful potency.
The events of the year 1644 fully proved the superiority of his
abilities. In the south, where Essex held the command, the
parliamentary forces underwent a succession of shameful
disasters; but in the north the victory of Marston Moor fully
compensated for all that had been lost elsewhere. That victory
was not a more serious blow to the Royalists than to the party
which had hitherto been dominant at Westminster, for it was
notorious that the day, disgracefully lost by the Presbyterians,
had been retrieved by the energy of Cromwell, and by the steady
valour of the warriors whom he had trained.
These events produced the Selfdenying Ordinance and the new model
of the army. Under decorous pretexts, and with every mark of
respect, Essex and most of those who had held high posts under
him were removed; and the conduct of the war was intrusted to
very different hands. Fairfax, a brave soldier, but of mean
understanding and irresolute temper, was the nominal Lord General
of the forces; but Cromwell was their real head.
Cromwell made haste to organise the whole army on the same
principles on which he had organised his own regiment. As soon as
this process was complete, the event of the war was decided. The
Cavaliers had now to encounter natural courage equal to their
own, enthusiasm stronger than their own, and discipline such as
was utterly wanting to them. It soon became a proverb that the
soldiers of Fairfax and Cromwell were men of a different breed
from the soldiers of Essex. At Naseby took place the first great
encounter between the Royalists and the remodelled army of the
Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was complete and decisive.
It was followed by other triumphs in rapid succession. In a few
months the authority of the Parliament was fully established over
the whole kingdom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was by them, in
a manner which did not much exalt their national character,
delivered up to his English subjects.
While the event of the war was still doubtful, the Houses had put
the Primate to death, had interdicted, within the sphere of their
authority, the use of the Liturgy, and had required all men to
subscribe that renowned instrument known by the name of the
Solemn League and Covenant. Covenanting work, as it was called,
went on fast. Hundreds of thousands affixed their names to the
rolls, and, with hands lifted up towards heaven, swore to
endeavour, without respect of persons, the extirpation of Popery
and Prelacy, heresy and schism, and to bring to public trial and
condign punishment all who should hinder the reformation of
religion. When the struggle was over, the work of innovation and
revenge was pushed on with increased ardour. The ecclesiastical
polity of the kingdom was remodelled. Most of the old clergy were
ejected from their benefices. Fines, often of ruinous amount,
were laid on the Royalists, already impoverished by large aids
furnished to the King. Many estates were confiscated. Many
proscribed Cavaliers found it expedient to purchase, at an
enormous cost, the projection of eminent members of the
victorious party. Large domains, belonging to the crown, to the
bishops, and to the chapters, were seized, and either granted
away or put up to auction. In consequence of these spoliations, a
great part of the soil of England was at once offered for sale.
As money was scarce, as the market was glutted, as the title was
insecure and as the awe inspired by powerful bidders prevented
free competition, the prices were often merely nominal. Thus many
old and honourable families disappeared and were heard of no
more; and many new men rose rapidly to affluence.
But, while the Houses were employing their authority thus, it
suddenly passed out of their hands. It had been obtained by
calling into existence a power which could not be controlled. In
the summer of 1647, about twelve months after the last fortress
of the Cavaliers had submitted to the Parliament, the Parliament
was compelled to submit to its own soldiers.
Thirteen years followed, during which England was, under various
names and forms, really governed by the sword. Never before that
time, or since that time, was the civil power in our country
subjected to military dictation.
The army which now became supreme in the state was an army very
different from any that has since been seen among us. At present
the pay of the common soldier is not such as can seduce any but
the humblest class of English labourers from their calling. A
barrier almost impassable separates him from the commissioned
officer. The great majority of those who rise high in the service
rise by purchase. So numerous and extensive are the remote
dependencies of England, that every man who enlists in the line
must expect to pass many years in exile, and some years in
climates unfavourable to the health and vigour of the European
race. The army of the Long Parliament was raised for home
service. The pay of the private soldier was much above the wages
earned by the great body of the people; and, if he distinguished
himself by intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high
commands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons superior
in station and education to the multitude. These persons, sober,
moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to
take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of
novelty and license, not by the arts of recruiting officers, but
by religious and political zeal, mingled with the desire of
distinction and promotion. The boast of the soldiers, as we find
it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was that they had not
been forced into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly for the
sake of lucre. That they were no janissaries, but freeborn
Englishmen, who had, of their own accord, put their lives in
jeopardy for the liberties and religion of England, and whose
right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation
which they had saved.
A force thus composed might, without injury to its efficiency, be
indulged in some liberties which, if allowed to any other troops,
would have proved subversive of all discipline. In general,
soldiers who should form themselves into political clubs, elect
delegates, and pass resolutions on high questions of state, would
soon break loose from all control, would cease to form an army,
and would become the worst and most dangerous of mobs. Nor would
it be safe, in our time, to tolerate in any regiment religious
meetings, at which a corporal versed in Scripture should lead the
devotions of his less gifted colonel, and admonish a backsliding
major. But such was the intelligence, the gravity, and the
selfcommand of the warriors whom Cromwell had trained, that in
their camp a political organisation and a religious organisation
could exist without destroying military organisation. The same
men, who, off duty, were noted as demagogues and field preachers,
were distinguished by steadiness, by the spirit of order, and by
prompt obedience on watch, on drill, and on the field of battle.
In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn courage
characteristic of the English people was, by the system of
Cromwell, at once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have
maintained orders as strict. Other leaders have inspired their
followers with zeal as ardent. But in his camp alone the most
rigid discipline was found in company with the fiercest
enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the precision of
machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of Crusaders.
From the time when the army was remodelled to the time when it
was disbanded, it never found, either in the British islands or
on the Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England,
Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often
surrounded by difficulties, sometimes contending against
threefold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but never
failed to destroy and break in pieces whatever force was opposed
to them. They at length came to regard the day of battle as a day
of certain triumph, and marched against the most renowned
battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne was
startled by the shout of stern exultation with which his English
allies advanced to the combat, and expressed the delight of a
true soldier, when he learned that it was ever the fashion of
Cromwell's pikemen to rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy;
and the banished Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride,
when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered by foes
and abandoned by friends, drive before it in headlong rout the
finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counterscarp
which had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the
Marshals of France.
But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from
other armies was the austere morality and the fear of God which
pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous
Royalists that, in that singular camp, no oath was heard, no
drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that, during the long
dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen
and the honour of woman were held sacred. If outrages were
committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from those
of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girl
complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an ounce
of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths. But a
Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and Child were
painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excitement which it
required the utmost exertions of the officers to quell. One of
Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain his musketeers and
dragoons from invading by main force the pulpits of ministers
whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not
savoury; and too many of our cathedrals still bear the marks of
the hatred with which those stern spirits regarded every vestige
of Popery.
To keep down the English people was no light task even for that
army. No sooner was the first pressure of military tyranny felt,
than the nation, unbroken to such servitude, began to struggle
fiercely. Insurrections broke out even in those counties which,
during the recent war, had been the most submissive to the
Parliament. Indeed, the Parliament itself abhorred its old
defenders more than its old enemies, and was desirous to come to
terms of accommodation with Charles at the expense of the troops.
In Scotland at the same time, a coalition was formed between the
Royalists and a large body of Presbyterians who regarded the
doctrines of the Independents with detestation. At length the
storm burst. There were risings in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent,
Wales. The fleet in the Thames suddenly hoisted the royal
colours, stood out to sea, and menaced the southern coast. A
great Scottish force crossed the frontier and advanced into
Lancashire. It might well be suspected that these movements were
contemplated with secret complacency by a majority both of the
Lords and of the Commons.
But the yoke of the army was not to be so shaken off. While
Fairfax suppressed the risings in the neighbourhood of the
capital, Oliver routed the Welsh insurgents, and, leaving their
castles in ruins, marched against the Scots. His troops were few,
when compared with the invaders; but he was little in the habit
of counting his enemies. The Scottish army was utterly destroyed.
A change in the Scottish government followed. An administration,
hostile to the King, was formed at Edinburgh; and Cromwell, more
than ever the darling of his soldiers, returned in triumph to
London.
And now a design, to which, at the commencement of the civil war,
no man would have dared to allude, and which was not less
inconsistent with the Solemn League and Covenant than with the
old law of England, began to take a distinct form. The austere
warriors who ruled the nation had, during some months, meditated
a fearful vengeance on the captive King. When and how the scheme
originated; whether it spread from the general to the ranks, or
from the ranks to the general; whether it is to be ascribed to
policy using fanaticism as a tool, or to fanaticism bearing down
policy with headlong impulse, are questions which, even at this
day, cannot be answered with perfect confidence. It seems,
however, on the whole, probable that he who seemed to lead was
really forced to follow, and that, on this occasion, as on
another great occasion a few years later, he sacrificed his own
judgment and his own inclinations to the wishes of the army. For
the power which he had called into existence was a power which
even he could not always control; and, that he might ordinarily
command, it was necessary that he should sometimes obey. He
publicly protested that he was no mover in the matter, that the
first steps had been taken without his privity, that he could not
advise the Parliament to strike the blow, but that he submitted
his own feelings to the force of circumstances which seemed to
him to indicate the purposes of Providence. It has been the
fashion to consider these professions as instances of the
hypocrisy which is vulgarly imputed to him. But even those who
pronounce him a hypocrite will scarcely venture to call him a
fool. They are therefore bound to show that he had some purpose
to serve by secretly stimulating the army to take that course
which he did not venture openly to recommend. It would be absurd
to suppose that he who was never by his respectable enemies
represented as wantonly cruel or implacably vindictive, would
have taken the most important step of his life under the
influence of mere malevolence. He was far too wise a man not to
know, when he consented to shed that august blood, that he was
doing a deed which was inexpiable, and which would move the grief
and horror, not only of the Royalists, but of nine tenths of
those who had stood by the Parliament. Whatever visions may have
deluded others, he was assuredly dreaming neither of a republic
on the antique pattern, nor of the millennial reign of the
Saints. If he already aspired to be himself the founder of a new
dynasty, it was plain that Charles the First was a less
formidable competitor than Charles the Second would be. At the
moment of the death of Charles the First the loyalty of every
Cavalier would be transferred, unimpaired, to Charles the Second.
Charles the First was a captive: Charles the Second would be at
liberty. Charles the First was an object of suspicion and dislike
to a large proportion of those who yet shuddered at the thought
of slaying him: Charles the Second would excite all the interest
which belongs to distressed youth and innocence. It is impossible
to believe that considerations so obvious, and so important,
escaped the most profound politician of that age. The truth is
that Cromwell had, at one time, meant to mediate between the
throne and the Parliament, and to reorganise the distracted State
by the power of the sword, under the sanction of the royal name.
In this design he persisted till he was compelled to abandon it
by the refractory temper of the soldiers, and by the incurable
duplicity of the King. A party in the camp began to clamour for
the head of the traitor, who was for treating with Agag.
Conspiracies were formed. Threats of impeachment were loudly
uttered. A mutiny broke out, which all the vigour and resolution
of Oliver could hardly quell. And though, by a judicious mixture
of severity and kindness, he succeeded in restoring order, he saw
that it would be in the highest degree difficult and perilous to
contend against the rage of warriors, who regarded the fallen
tyrant as their foe, and as the foe of their God. At the same
time it became more evident than ever that the King could not be
trusted. The vices of Charles had grown upon him. They were,
indeed, vices which difficulties and perplexities generally bring
out in the strongest light. Cunning is the natural defence of the
weak. A prince, therefore, who is habitually a deceiver when at
the height of power, is not likely to learn frankness in the
midst of embarrassments and distresses. Charles was not only a
most unscrupulous but a most unlucky dissembler. There never was
a politician to whom so many frauds and falsehoods were brought
home by undeniable evidence. He publicly recognised the Houses at
Westminster as a legal Parliament, and, at the same time, made a
private minute in council declaring the recognition null. He
publicly disclaimed all thought of calling in foreign aid against
his people: he privately solicited aid from France, from Denmark,
and from Lorraine. He publicly denied that he employed Papists:
at the same time he privately sent to his generals directions to
employ every Papist that would serve. He publicly took the
sacrament at Oxford, as a pledge that he never would even connive
at Popery. He privately assured his wife, that he intended to
tolerate Popery in England; and he authorised Lord Glamorgan to
promise that Popery should be established in Ireland. Then he
attempted to clear himself at his agent's expense. Glamorgan
received, in the Royal handwriting, reprimands intended to be
read by others, and eulogies which were to be seen only by
himself. To such an extent, indeed, had insincerity now tainted
the King's whole nature, that his most devoted friends could not
refrain from complaining to each other, with bitter grief and
shame, of his crooked politics. His defeats, they said, gave them
less pain than his intrigues. Since he had been a prisoner, there
was no section of the victorious party which had not been the
object both of his flatteries and of his machinations; but never
was he more unfortunate than when he attempted at once to cajole
and to undermine Cromwell.
Cromwell had to determine whether he would put to hazard the
attachment of his party, the attachment of his army, his own
greatness, nay his own life, in an attempt which would probably
have been vain, to save a prince whom no engagement could bind.
With many struggles and misgivings, and probably not without many
prayers, the decision was made. Charles was left to his fate. The
military saints resolved that, in defiance of the old laws of the
realm, and of the almost universal sentiment of the nation, the
King should expiate his crimes with his blood. He for a time
expected a death like that of his unhappy predecessors, Edward
the Second and Richard the Second. But he was in no danger of
such treason. Those who had him in their gripe were not midnight
stabbers. What they did they did in order that it might be a
spectacle to heaven and earth, and that it might be held in
everlasting remembrance. They enjoyed keenly the very scandal
which they gave. That the ancient constitution and the public
opinion of England were directly opposed to regicide made
regicide seem strangely fascinating to a party bent on effecting
a complete political and social revolution. In order to
accomplish their purpose, it was necessary that they should first
break in pieces every part of the machinery of the government;
and this necessity was rather agreeable than painful to them. The
Commons passed a vote tending to accommodation with the King. The
soldiers excluded the majority by force. The Lords unanimously
rejected the proposition that the King should be brought to
trial. Their house was instantly closed. No court, known to the
law, would take on itself the office of judging the fountain of
justice. A revolutionary tribunal was created. That tribunal
pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public
enemy; and his head was severed from his shoulders, before
thousands of spectators, in front of the banqueting hall of his
own palace.
In no long time it became manifest that those political and
religious zealots, to whom this deed is to be ascribed, had
committed, not only a crime, but an error. They had given to a
prince, hitherto known to his people chiefly by his faults, an
opportunity of displaying, on a great theatre, before the eyes of
all nations and all ages, some qualities which irresistibly call
forth the admiration and love of mankind, the high spirit of a
gallant gentleman, the patience and meekness of a penitent
Christian. Nay, they had so contrived their revenge that the very
man whose life had been a series of attacks on the liberties of
England now seemed to die a martyr in the cause of those
liberties. No demagogue ever produced such an impression on the
public mind as the captive King, who, retaining in that extremity
all his regal dignity, and confronting death with dauntless
courage, gave utterance to the feelings of his oppressed people,
manfully refused to plead before a court unknown to the law,
appealed from military violence to the principles of the
constitution, asked by what right the House of Commons had been
purged of its most respectable members and the House of Lords
deprived of its legislative functions, and told his weeping
hearers that he was defending, not only his own cause, but
theirs. His long misgovernment, his innumerable perfidies, were
forgotten. His memory was, in the minds of the great majority of
his subjects, associated with those free institutions which he
had, during many years, laboured to destroy: for those free
institutions had perished with him, and, amidst the mournful
silence of a community kept down by arms, had been defended by
his voice alone. From that day began a reaction in favour of
monarchy and of the exiled house, reaction which never ceased
till the throne had again been set up in all its old dignity.
At first, however, the slayers of the King seemed to have derived
new energy from that sacrament of blood by which they had bound
themselves closely together, and separated themselves for ever
from the great body of their countrymen. England was declared a
commonwealth. The House of Commons, reduced to a small number of
members, was nominally the supreme power in the state. In fact,
the army and its great chief governed everything. Oliver had made
his choice. He had kept the hearts of his soldiers, and had
broken with almost every other class of his fellow citizens.
Beyond the limits of his camps and fortresses he could scarcely
be said to have a party. Those elements of force which, when the
civil war broke out, had appeared arrayed against each other,
were combined against him; all the Cavaliers, the great majority
of the Roundheads, the Anglican Church, the Presbyterian Church,
the Roman Catholic Church, England, Scotland, Ireland. Yet such,
was his genius and resolution that he was able to overpower and
crush everything that crossed his path, to make himself more
absolute master of his country than any of her legitimate Kings
had been, and to make his country more dreaded and respected than
she had been during many generations under the rule of her
legitimate Kings.
England had already ceased to struggle. But the two other
kingdoms which had been governed by the Stuarts were hostile to
the new republic. The Independent party was equally odious to the
Roman Catholics of Ireland and to the Presbyterians of Scotland.
Both those countries, lately in rebellion against Charles the
First, now acknowledged the authority of Charles the Second.
But everything yielded to the vigour and ability of Cromwell. In
a few months he subjugated Ireland, as Ireland had never been
subjugated during the five centuries of slaughter which had
elapsed since the landing of the first Norman settlers. He
resolved to put an end to that conflict of races and religions
which had so long distracted the island, by making the English
and Protestant population decidedly predominant. For this end he
gave the rein to the fierce enthusiasm of his followers, waged
war resembling that which Israel waged on the Canaanites, smote
the idolaters with the edge of the sword, so that great cities
were left without inhabitants, drove many thousands to the
Continent, shipped off many thousands to the West Indies, and
supplied the void thus made by pouring in numerous colonists, of
Saxon blood, and of Calvinistic faith. Strange to say, under that
iron rule, the conquered country began to wear an outward face of
prosperity. Districts, which had recently been as wild as those
where the first white settlers of Connecticut were contending
with the red men, were in a few years transformed into the
likeness of Kent and Norfolk. New buildings, roads, and
plantations were everywhere seen. The rent of estates rose fast;
and soon the English landowners began to complain that they were
met in every market by the products of Ireland, and to clamour
for protecting laws.
From Ireland the victorious chief, who was now in name, as he had
long been in reality, Lord General of the armies of the
Commonwealth, turned to Scotland. The Young King was there. He
had consented to profess himself a Presbyterian, and to subscribe
the Covenant; and, in return for these concessions, the austere
Puritans who bore sway at Edinburgh had permitted him to assume
the crown, and to hold, under their inspection and control, a
solemn and melancholy court. This mock royalty was of short
duration. In two great battles Cromwell annihilated the military
force of Scotland. Charles fled for his life, and, with extreme
difficulty, escaped the fate of his father. The ancient kingdom
of the Stuarts was reduced, for the first time, to profound
submission. Of that independence, so manfully defended against
the mightiest and ablest of the Plantagenets, no vestige was
left. The English Parliament made laws for Scotland. English
judges held assizes in Scotland. Even that stubborn Church, which
has held its own against so many governments, scarce dared to
utter an audible murmur.
Thus far there had been at least the semblance of harmony between
the warriors who had subjugated Ireland and Scotland and the
politicians who sate at Westminster: but the alliance which had
been cemented by danger was dissolved by victory. The Parliament
forgot that it was but the creature of the army. The army was
less disposed than ever to submit to the dictation of the
Parliament. Indeed the few members who made up what was
contemptuously called the Rump of the House of Commons had no
more claim than the military chiefs to be esteemed the
representatives of the nation. The dispute was soon brought to a
decisive issue. Cromwell filled the House with armed men. The
Speaker was pulled out of his chair, the mace taken from the
table, the room cleared, and the door locked. The nation, which
loved neither of the contending parties, but which was forced, in
its own despite, to respect the capacity and resolution of the
General, looked on with patience, if not with complacency.
King, Lords, and Commons, had now in turn been vanquished and
destroyed; and Cromwell seemed to be left the sole heir of the
powers of all three. Yet were certain limitations still imposed
on him by the very army to which he owed his immense authority.
That singular body of men was, for the most part, composed of
zealous republicans. In the act of enslaving their country, they
had deceived themselves into the belief that they were
emancipating her. The book which they venerated furnished them
with a precedent which was frequently in their mouths. It was
true that the ignorant and ungrateful nation murmured against its
deliverers. Even so had another chosen nation murmured against
the leader who brought it, by painful and dreary paths, from the
house of bondage to the land flowing with milk and honey. Yet had
that leader rescued his brethren in spite of themselves; nor had
he shrunk from making terrible examples of those who contemned
the proffered freedom, and pined for the fleshpots, the
taskmasters, and the idolatries of Egypt. The object of the
warlike saints who surrounded Cromwell was the settlement of a
free and pious commonwealth. For that end they were ready to
employ, without scruple, any means, however violent and lawless.
It was not impossible, therefore, to establish by their aid a
dictatorship such as no King had ever exercised: but it was
probable that their aid would be at once withdrawn from a ruler
who, even under strict constitutional restraints, should venture
to assume the kingly name and dignity.
The sentiments of Cromwell were widely different. He was not what
he had been; nor would it be just to consider the change which
his views had undergone as the effect merely of selfish ambition.
He had, when he came up to the Long Parliament, brought with him
from his rural retreat little knowledge of books, no experience
of great affairs, and a temper galled by the long tyranny of the
government and of the hierarchy. He had, during the thirteen
years which followed, gone through a political education of no
common kind. He had been a chief actor in a succession of
revolutions. He had been long the soul, and at last the head, of
a party. He had commanded armies, won battles, negotiated
treaties, subdued, pacified, and regulated kingdoms. It would
have been strange indeed if his notions had been still the same
as in the days when his mind was principally occupied by his
fields and his religion, and when the greatest events which
diversified the course of his life were a cattle fair or a prayer
meeting at Huntingdon. He saw that some schemes of innovation for
which he had once been zealous, whether good or bad in
themselves, were opposed to the general feeling of the country,
and that, if he persevered in those schemes, he had nothing
before him but constant troubles, which must he suppressed by the
constant use of the sword. He therefore wished to restore, in all
essentials, that ancient constitution which the majority of the
people had always loved, and for which they now pined. The course
afterwards taken by Monk was not open to Cromwell. The memory of
one terrible day separated the great regicide for ever from the
House of Stuart. What remained was that he should mount the
ancient English throne, and reign according to the ancient
English polity. If he could effect this, he might hope that the
wounds of the lacerated State would heal fast. Great numbers of
honest and quiet men would speedily rally round him. Those
Royalists whose attachment was rather to institutions than to
persons, to the kingly office than to King Charles the First or
King Charles the Second, would soon kiss the hand of King Oliver.
The peers, who now remained sullenly at their country houses, and
refused to take any part in public affairs, would, when summoned
to their House by the writ of a King in possession, gladly resume
their ancient functions. Northumberland and Bedford, Manchester
and Pembroke, would be proud to bear the crown and the spurs, the
sceptre and the globe, before the restorer of aristocracy. A
sentiment of loyalty would gradually bind the people to the new
dynasty; and, on the decease of the founder of that dynasty, the
royal dignity might descend with general acquiescence to his
posterity.
The ablest Royalists were of opinion that these views were
correct, and that, if Cromwell had been permitted to follow his
own judgment, the exiled line would never have been restored. But
his plan was directly opposed to the feelings of the only class
which he dared not offend. The name of King was hateful to the
soldiers. Some of them were indeed unwilling to see the
administration in the hands of any single person. The great
majority, however, were disposed to support their general, as
elective first magistrate of a commonwealth, against all factions
which might resist his authority: but they would not consent that
he should assume the regal title, or that the dignity, which was
the just reward of his personal merit, should be declared
hereditary in his family. All that was left to him was to give to
the new republic a constitution as like the constitution of the
old monarchy as the army would bear. That his elevation to power
might not seem to be merely his own act, he convoked a council,
composed partly of persons on whose support he could depend, and
partly of persons whose opposition he might safely defy. This
assembly, which he called a Parliament, and which the populace
nicknamed, from one of the most conspicuous members, Barebonesa's
Parliament, after exposing itself during a short time to the
public contempt, surrendered back to the General the powers which
it had received from him, and left him at liberty to frame a plan
of government.
His plan bore, from the first, a considerable resemblance to the
old English constitution: but, in a few years, he thought it safe
to proceed further, and to restore almost every part of the
ancient system under hew names and forms. The title of King was
not revived; but the kingly prerogatives were intrusted to a Lord
High Protector. The sovereign was called not His Majesty, but His
Highness. He was not crowned and anointed in Westminster Abbey,
but was solemnly enthroned, girt with a sword of state, clad in a
robe of purple, and presented with a rich Bible, in Westminster
Hall. His office was not declared hereditary: but he was
permitted to name his successor; and none could doubt that he
would name his Son.
A House of Commons was a necessary part of the new polity. In
constituting this body, the Protector showed a wisdom and a
public spirit which were not duly appreciated by his
contemporaries. The vices of the old representative system,
though by no means so serious as they afterwards became, had
already been remarked by farsighted men. Cromwell reformed that
system on the same principles on which Mr. Pitt, a hundred and
thirty years later, attempted to reform it, and on which it was
at length reformed in our own times. Small boroughs were
disfranchised even more unsparingly than in 1832; and the number
of county members was greatly increased. Very few unrepresented
towns had yet grown into importance. Of those towns the most
considerable were Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax. Representatives
were given to all three. An addition was made to the number of
the members for the capital. The elective franchise was placed on
such a footing that every man of substance, whether possessed of
freehold estates in land or not, had a vote for the county in
which he resided. A few Scotchmen and a few of the English
colonists settled in Ireland were summoned to the assembly which
was to legislate, at Westminster, for every part of the British
isles.
To create a House of Lords was a less easy task. Democracy does
not require the support of prescription. Monarchy has often stood
without that support. But a patrician order is the work of time.
Oliver found already existing a nobility, opulent, highly
considered, and as popular with the commonalty as any nobility
has ever been. Had he, as King of England, commanded the peers to
meet him in Parliament according to the old usage of the realm,
many of them would undoubtedly have obeyed the call. This he
could not do; and it was to no purpose that he offered to the
chiefs of illustrious families seats in his new senate. They
conceived that they could not accept a nomination to an upstart
assembly without renouncing their birthright and betraying their
order. The Protector was, therefore, under the necessity of
filling his Upper House with new men who, during the late
stirring times, had made themselves conspicuous. This was the
least happy of his contrivances, and displeased all parties. The
Levellers were angry with him for instituting a privileged class.
The multitude, which felt respect and fondness for the great
historical names of the land, laughed without restraint at a
House of Lords, in which lucky draymen and shoemakers were
seated, to which few of the old nobles were invited, and from
which almost all those old nobles who were invited turned
disdainfully away.
How Oliver's Parliaments were constituted, however, was
practically of little moment: for he possessed the means of
conducting the administration without their support, and in
defiance of their opposition. His wish seems to have been to
govern constitutionally, and to substitute the empire of the laws
for that of the sword. But he soon found that, hated as he was,
both by Royalists and Presbyterians, he could be safe only by
being absolute. The first House of Commons which the people
elected by his command, questioned his authority, and was
dissolved without having passed a single act. His second House of
Commons, though it recognised him as Protector, and would gladly
have made him King, obstinately refused to acknowledge his new
Lords. He had no course left but to dissolve the Parliament.
"God," he exclaimed, at parting, "be judge between you and me!"
Yet was the energy of the Protector's administration in nowise
relaxed by these dissensions. Those soldiers who would not suffer
him to assume the kingly title stood by him when he ventured on
acts of power, as high as any English King has ever attempted.
The government, therefore, though in form a republic, was in
truth a despotism, moderated only by the wisdom, the sobriety,
and the magnanimity of the despot. The country was divided into
military districts. Those districts were placed under the command
of Major Generals. Every insurrectionary movement was promptly
put down and punished. The fear inspired by the power of the
sword, in so strong, steady, and expert a hand, quelled the
spirit both of Cavaliers and Levellers. The loyal gentry declared
that they were still as ready as ever to risk their lives for the
old government and the old dynasty, if there were the slightest
hope of success: but to rush, at the head of their serving men
and tenants, on the pikes of brigades victorious in a hundred
battles and sieges, would be a frantic waste of innocent and
honourable blood. Both Royalists and Republicans, having no hope
in open resistance, began to revolve dark schemes of
assassination: but the Protector's intelligence was good: his
vigilance was unremitting; and, whenever he moved beyond the
walls of his palace, the drawn swords and cuirasses of his trusty
bodyguards encompassed him thick on every side.
Had he been a cruel, licentious, and rapacious prince, the nation
might have found courage in despair, and might have made a
convulsive effort to free itself from military domination. But
the grievances which the country suffered, though such as excited
serious discontent, were by no means such as impel great masses
of men to stake their lives, their fortunes, and the welfare of
their families against fearful odds. The taxation, though heavier
than it had been under the Stuarts, was not heavy when compared
with that of the neighbouring states and with the resources of
England. Property was secure. Even the Cavalier, who refrained
from giving disturbance to the new settlement, enjoyed in peace
whatever the civil troubles had left hem. The laws were violated
only in cases where the safety of the Protector's person and
government was concerned. Justice was administered between man
and man with an exactness and purity not before known. Under no
English government since the Reformation, had there been so
little religious persecution. The unfortunate Roman Catholics,
indeed, were held to be scarcely within the pale of Christian
charity. But the clergy of the fallen Anglican Church were
suffered to celebrate their worship on condition that they would
abstain from preaching about politics. Even the Jews, whose
public worship had, ever since the thirteenth century, been
interdicted, were, in spite of the strong opposition of jealous
traders and fanatical theologians, permitted to build a synagogue
in London.
The Protector's foreign policy at the same time extorted the
ungracious approbation of those who most detested him. The
Cavaliers could scarcely refrain from wishing that one who had
done so much to raise the fame of the nation had been a
legitimate King; and the Republicans were forced to own that the
tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his country, and that,
if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least given her glory
in exchange. After half a century during which England had been
of scarcely more weight in European politics than Venice or
Saxony, she at once became the most formidable power in the
world, dictated terms of peace to the United Provinces, avenged
the common injuries of Christendom on the pirates of Barbary,
vanquished the Spaniards by land and sea, seized one of the
finest West Indian islands, and acquired on the Flemish coast a
fortress which consoled the national pride for the loss of
Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the
Protestant interest. All the reformed Churches scattered over
Roman Catholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian.
The Huguenots of Languedoc, the shepherds who, in the hamlets of
the Alps. professed a Protestantism older than that of Augsburg,
were secured from oppression by the mere terror of his great name
The Pope himself was forced to preach humanity and moderation to
Popish princes. For a voice which seldom threatened in vain had
declared that, unless favour were shown to the people of God, the
English guns should be heard in the Castle of Saint Angelo. In
truth, there was nothing which Cromwell had, for his own sake and
that of his family, so much reason to desire as a general
religious war in Europe. In such a war he must have been the
captain of the Protestant armies. The heart of England would have
been with him. His victories would have been hailed with an
unanimous enthusiasm unknown in the country since the rout of the
Armada, and would have effaced the stain which one act, condemned
by the general voice of the nation, has left on his splendid
fame. Unhappily for him he had no opportunity of displaying his
admirable military talents, except against the inhabitants of the
British isles.
While he lived his power stood firm, an object of mingled
aversion, admiration, and dread to his subjects. Few indeed loved
his government; but those who hated it most hated it less than
they feared it. Had it been a worse government, it might perhaps
have been overthrown in spite of all its strength. Had it been a
weaker government, it would certainly have been overthrown in
spite of all its merits. But it had moderation enough to abstain
from those oppressions which drive men mad; and it had a force
and energy which none but men driven mad by oppression would
venture to encounter.
It has often been affirmed, but with little reason, that Oliver
died at a time fortunate for his renown, and that, if his life
had been prolonged, it would probably have closed amidst
disgraces and disasters. It is certain that he was, to the last,
honoured by his soldiers, obeyed by the whole population of the
British islands, and dreaded by all foreign powers, that he was
laid among the ancient sovereigns of England with funeral pomp
such as London had never before seen, and that he was succeeded
by his son Richard as quietly as any King had ever been succeeded
by any Prince of Wales.
During five months, the administration of Richard Cromwell went
on so tranquilly and regularly that all Europe believed him to be
firmly established on the chair of state. In truth his situation
was in some respects much more advantageous than that of his
father. The young man had made no enemy. His hands were unstained
by civil blood. The Cavaliers themselves allowed him to be an
honest, good-natured gentleman. The Presbyterian party, powerful
both in numbers and in wealth, had been at deadly feud with the
late Protector, but was disposed to regard the present Protector
with favour. That party had always been desirous to see the old
civil polity of the realm restored with some clearer definitions
and some stronger safeguards for public liberty, but had many
reasons for dreading the restoration of the old family. Richard
was the very man for politicians of this description. His
humanity, ingenuousness, and modesty, the mediocrity of his
abilities, and the docility with which he submitted to the
guidance of persons wiser than himself, admirably qualified him
to be the head of a limited monarchy.
For a time it seemed highly probable that he would, under the
direction of able advisers, effect what his father had attempted
in vain. A Parliament was called, and the writs were directed
after the old fashion. The small boroughs which had recently been
disfranchised regained their lost privilege: Manchester, Leeds,
and Halifax ceased to return members; and the county of York was
again limited to two knights. It may seem strange to a generation
which has been excited almost to madness by the question of
parliamentary reform that great shires and towns should have
submitted with patience and even with complacency, to this
change: but though speculative men might, even in that age,
discern the vices of the old representative system, and predict
that those vices would, sooner or later, produce serious
practical evil, the practical evil had not yet been felt.
Oliver's representative system, on the other hand, though
constructed on sound principles, was not popular. Both the events
in which it originated, and the effects which it had produced,
prejudiced men against it. It had sprung from military violence.
It had been fruitful of nothing but disputes. The whole nation
was sick of government by the sword, and pined for government by
the law. The restoration, therefore, even of anomalies and
abuses, which were in strict conformity with the law, and which
had been destroyed by the sword, gave general satisfaction.
Among the Commons there was a strong opposition, consisting
partly of avowed Republicans, and partly of concealed Royalists:
but a large and steady majority appeared to be favourable to the
plan of reviving the old civil constitution under a new dynasty.
Richard was solemnly recognised as first magistrate. The Commons
not only consented to transact business with Oliver's Lords, but
passed a vote acknowledging the right of those nobles who had, in
the late troubles, taken the side of public liberty, to sit in
the Upper House of Parliament without any new creation.
Thus far the statesmen by whose advice Richard acted had been
successful. Almost all the parts of the government were now
constituted as they had been constituted at the commencement of
the civil war. Had the Protector and the Parliament been suffered
to proceed undisturbed, there can be little doubt that an order
of things similar to that which was afterwards established under
the House of Hanover would have been established under the House
of Cromwell. But there was in the state a power more than
sufficient to deal with Protector and Parliament together. Over
the soldiers Richard had no authority except that which he
derived from the great name which he had inherited. He had never
led them to victory. He had never even borne arms. All his tastes
and habits were pacific. Nor were his opinions and feelings on
religious subjects approved by the military saints. That he was a
good man he evinced by proofs more satisfactory than deep groans
or long sermons, by humility and suavity when he was at the
height of human greatness, and by cheerful resignation under
cruel wrongs and misfortunes: but the cant then common in every
guardroom gave him a disgust which he had not always the prudence
to conceal. The officers who had the principal influence among
the troops stationed near London were not his friends. They were
men distinguished by valour and conduct in the field, but
destitute of the wisdom and civil courage which had been
conspicuous in their deceased leader. Some of them were honest,
but fanatical, Independents and Republicans. Of this class
Fleetwood was the representative. Others were impatient to be
what Oliver had been. His rapid elevation, his prosperity and
glory, his inauguration in the Hall, and his gorgeous obsequies
in the Abbey, had inflamed their imagination. They were as well
born as he, and as well educated: they could not understand why
they were not as worthy to wear the purple robe, and to wield the
sword of state; and they pursued the objects of their wild
ambition, not, like him, with patience, vigilance, sagacity, and
determination, but with the restlessness and irresolution
characteristic of aspiring mediocrity. Among these feeble copies
of a great original the most conspicuous was Lambert.
On the very day of Richard's accession the officers began to
conspire against their new master. The good understanding which
existed between him and his Parliament hastened the crisis. Alarm
and resentment spread through the camp. Both the religious and
the professional feelings of the army were deeply wounded. It
seemed that the Independents were to be subjected to the
Presbyterians, and that the men of the sword were to be subjected
to the men of the gown. A coalition was formed between the
military malecontents and the republican minority of the House of
Commons. It may well be doubted whether Richard could have
triumphed over that coalition, even if he had inherited his
father's clear judgment and iron courage. It is certain that
simplicity and meekness like his were not the qualities which the
conjuncture required. He fell ingloriously, and without a
struggle. He was used by the army as an instrument for the
purpose of dissolving the Parliament, and was then contemptuously
thrown aside. The officers gratified their republican allies by
declaring that the expulsion of the Rump had been illegal, and by
inviting that assembly to resume its functions. The old Speaker
and a quorum of the old members came together, and were
proclaimed, amidst the scarcely stifled derision and execration
of the whole nation, the supreme power in the commonwealth. It
was at the same time expressly declared that there should be no
first magistrate, and no House of Lords.
But this state of things could not last. On the day on which the
long Parliament revived, revived also its old quarrel with the
army. Again the Rump forgot that it owed its existence to the
pleasure of the soldiers, and began to treat them as subjects.
Again the doors of the House of Commons were closed by military
violence; and a provisional government, named by the officers,
assumed the direction of affairs.
Meanwhile the sense of great evils, and the strong apprehension
of still greater evils close at hand, had at length produced an
alliance between the Cavaliers and the Presbyterians. Some
Presbyterians had, indeed, been disposed to such an alliance even
before the death of Charles the First: but it was not till after
the fall of Richard Cromwell that the whole party became eager
for the restoration of the royal house. There was no longer any
reasonable hope that the old constitution could be reestablished
under a new dynasty. One choice only was left, the Stuarts or the
army. The banished family had committed great faults; but it had
dearly expiated those faults, and had undergone a long, and, it
might be hoped, a salutary training in the school of adversity.
It was probable that Charles the Second would take warning by the
fate of Charles the First. But, be this as it might, the dangers
which threatened the country were such that, in order to avert
them, some opinions might well be compromised, and some risks
might well be incurred. It seemed but too likely that England
would fall under the most odious and degrading of all kinds of
government, under a government uniting all the evils of despotism
to all the evils of anarchy. Anything was preferable to the yoke
of a succession of incapable and inglorious tyrants, raised to
power, like the Deys of Barbary, by military revolutions
recurring at short intervals. Lambert seemed likely to be the
first of these rulers; but within a year Lambert might give place
to Desborough, and Desborough to Harrison. As often as the
truncheon was transferred from one feeble hand to another, the
nation would be pillaged for the purpose of bestowing a fresh
donative on the troops. If the Presbyterians obstinately stood
aloof from the Royalists, the state was lost; and men might well
doubt whether, by the combined exertions of Presbyterians and
Royalists, it could be saved. For the dread of that invincible
army was on all the inhabitants of the island; and the Cavaliers,
taught by a hundred disastrous fields how little numbers can
effect against discipline, were even more completely cowed than
the Roundheads.
While the soldiers remained united, all the plots and risings of
the malecontents were ineffectual. But a few days after the
second expulsion of the Rump, came tidings which gladdened the
hearts of all who were attached either to monarchy or to liberty:
That mighty force which had, during many years, acted as one man,
and which, while so acting, had been found irresistible, was at
length divided against itself. The army of Scotland had done good
service to the Commonwealth, and was in the highest state of
efficiency. It had borne no part in the late revolutions, and had
seen them with indignation resembling the indignation which the
Roman legions posted on the Danube and the Euphrates felt, when
they learned that the empire had been put up to sale by the
Praetorian Guards. It was intolerable that certain regiments
should, merely because they happened to be quartered near
Westminster, take on themselves to make and unmake several
governments in the course of half a year. If it were fit that the
state should be regulated by the soldiers, those soldiers who
upheld the English ascendency on the north of the Tweed were as
well entitled to a voice as those who garrisoned the Tower of
London. There appears to have been less fanaticism among the
troops stationed in Scotland than in any other part of the army;
and their general, George Monk, was himself the very opposite of
a zealot. He had at the commencement of the civil war, borne arms
for the King, had been made prisoner by the Roundheads, had then
accepted a commission from the Parliament, and, with very slender
pretensions to saintship, had raised himself to high commands by
his courage and professional skill. He had been an useful servant
to both the Protectors, and had quietly acquiesced when the
officers at Westminster had pulled down Richard and restored the
Long Parliament, and would perhaps have acquiesced as quietly in
the second expulsion of the Long Parliament, if the provisional
government had abstained from giving him cause of offence and
apprehension. For his nature was cautious and somewhat sluggish;
nor was he at all disposed to hazard sure and moderate advantages
for the chalice of obtaining even the most splendid success. He
seems to have been impelled to attack the new rulers of the
Commonwealth less by the hope that, if he overthrew them, he
should become great, than by the fear that, if he submitted to
them, he should not even be secure. Whatever were his motives, he
declared himself the champion of the oppressed civil power,
refused to acknowledge the usurped authority of the provisional
government, and, at the head of seven thousand veterans, marched
into England.
This step was the signal for a general explosion. The people
everywhere refused to pay taxes. The apprentices of the City
assembled by thousands and clamoured for a free Parliament. The
fleet sailed up the Thames, and declared against the tyranny of
the soldiers. The soldiers, no longer under the control of one
commanding mind, separated into factions. Every regiment, afraid
lest it should be left alone a mark for the vengeance of the
oppressed nation, hastened to make a separate peace. Lambert, who
had hastened northward to encounter the army of Scotland, was
abandoned by his troops, and became a prisoner. During thirteen
years the civil power had, in every conflict, been compelled to
yield to the military power. The military power now humbled
itself before the civil power. The Rump, generally hated and
despised, but still the only body in the country which had any
show of legal authority, returned again to the house from which
it had been twice ignominiously expelled.
In the mean time Monk was advancing towards London. Wherever he
came, the gentry flocked round him, imploring him to use his
power for the purpose of restoring peace and liberty to the
distracted nation. The General, coldblooded, taciturn, zealous
for no polity and for no religion, maintained an impenetrable
reserve. What were at this time his plans, and whether he had any
plan, may well be doubted. His great object, apparently, was to
keep himself, as long as possible, free to choose between several
lines of action. Such, indeed, is commonly the policy of men who
are, like him, distinguished rather by wariness than by
farsightedness. It was probably not till he had been some days in
the capital that he had made up his mind. The cry of the whole
people was for a free Parliament; and there could be no doubt
that a Parliament really free would instantly restore the exiled
family. The Rump and the soldiers were still hostile to the House
of Stuart. But the Rump was universally detested and despised.
The power of the soldiers was indeed still formidable, but had
been greatly diminished by discord. They had no head. They had
recently been, in many parts of the country, arrayed against each
other. On the very day before Monk reached London, there was a
fight in the Strand between the cavalry and the infantry. An
united army had long kept down a divided nation; but the nation
was now united, and the army was divided.
During a short time the dissimulation or irresolution of Monk
kept all parties in a state of painful suspense. At length he
broke silence, and declared for a free Parliament.
As soon as his declaration was known, the whole nation was wild
with delight. Wherever he appeared thousands thronged round him,
shouting and blessing his name. The bells of all England rang
joyously: the gutters ran with ale; and, night after night, the
sky five miles round London was reddened by innumerable bonfires.
Those Presbyterian members of the House of Commons who had many
years before been expelled by the army, returned to their seats,
and were hailed with acclamations by great multitudes, which
filled Westminster Hall and Palace Yard. The Independent leaders
no longer dared to show their faces in the streets, and were
scarcely safe within their own dwellings. Temporary provision was
made for the government: writs were issued for a general
election; and then that memorable Parliament, which had, in the
course of twenty eventful years, experienced every variety of
fortune, which had triumphed over its sovereign, which had been
enslaved and degraded by its servants, which had been twice
ejected and twice restored, solemnly decreed its own dissolution.
The result of the elections was such as might have been expected
from the temper of the nation. The new House of Commons
consisted, with few exceptions, of persons friendly to the royal
family. The Presbyterians formed the majority.
That there would be a restoration now seemed almost certain; but
whether there would be a peaceable restoration was matter of
painful doubt. The soldiers were in a gloomy and savage mood.
They hated the title of King. They hated the name of Stuart. They
hated Presbyterianism much, and Prelacy more. They saw with
bitter indignation that the close of their long domination was
approaching, and that a life of inglorious toil and penury was
before them. They attributed their ill fortune to the weakness of
some generals, and to the treason of others. One hour of their
beloved Oliver might even now restore the glory which had
departed. Betrayed, disunited, and left without any chief in whom
they could confide, they were yet to be dreaded. It was no light
thing to encounter the rage and despair of fifty thousand
fighting men, whose backs no enemy had ever seen. Monk, and those
with whom he acted, were well aware that the crisis was most
perilous. They employed every art to soothe and to divide the
discontented warriors. At the same time vigorous preparation was
made for a conflict. The army of Scotland, now quartered in
London, was kept in good humour by bribes, praises, and promises.
The wealthy citizens grudged nothing to a redcoat, and were
indeed so liberal of their best wine, that warlike saints were
sometimes seen in a condition not very honourable either to their
religious or to their military character. Some refractory
regiments Monk ventured to disband. In the mean time the greatest
exertions were made by the provisional government, with the
strenuous aid of the whole body of the gentry and magistracy, to
organise the militia. In every county the trainbands were held
ready to march; and this force cannot be estimated at less than a
hundred and twenty thousand men. In Hyde Park twenty thousand
citizens, well armed and accoutred, passed in review, and showed
a spirit which justified the hope that, in case of need, they
would fight manfully for their shops and firesides. The fleet was
heartily with the nation. It was a stirring time, a time of
anxiety, yet of hope. The prevailing opinion was that England
would be delivered, but not without a desperate and bloody
struggle, and that the class which had so long ruled by the sword
would perish by the sword.
Happily the dangers of a conflict were averted. There was indeed
one moment of extreme peril. Lambert escaped from his
confinement, and called his comrades to arms. The flame of civil
war was actually rekindled; but by prompt and vigorous exertion
it was trodden out before it had time to spread. The luckless
imitator of Cromwell was again a prisoner. The failure of his
enterprise damped the spirit of the soldiers; and they sullenly
resigned themselves to their fate.
The new Parliament, which, having been called without the royal
writ, is more accurately described as a Convention, met at
Westminster. The Lords repaired to the hall, from which they had,
during more than eleven years, been excluded by force. Both
Houses instantly invited the King to return to his country. He
was proclaimed with pomp never before known. A gallant fleet
convoyed him from Holland to the coast of Kent. When he landed,
the cliffs of Dover were covered by thousands of gazers, among
whom scarcely one could be found who was not weeping with
delight. The journey to London was a continued triumph. The whole
road from Rochester was bordered by booths and tents, and looked
like an interminable fair. Everywhere flags were flying, bells
and music sounding, wine and ale flowing in rivers to the health
of him whose return was the return of peace, of law, and of
freedom. But in the midst of the general joy, one spot presented
a dark and threatening aspect. On Blackheath the army was drawn
up to welcome the sovereign. He smiled, bowed, and extended his
hand graciously to the lips of the colonels and majors. But all
his courtesy was vain. The countenances of the soldiers were sad
and lowering; and had they given way to their feelings, the
festive pageant of which they reluctantly made a part would have
had a mournful and bloody end. But there was no concert among
them. Discord and defection had left them no confidence in their
chiefs or in each other. The whole array of the City of London
was under arms. Numerous companies of militia had assembled from
various parts of the realm, under the command of loyal noblemen
and gentlemen, to welcome the King. That great day closed in
peace; and the restored wanderer reposed safe in the palace of
his ancestors.
CHAPTER II.
THE history of England, during the seventeenth century, is the
history of the transformation of a limited monarchy, constituted
after the fashion of the middle ages, into a limited monarchy
suited to that more advanced state of society in which the public
charges can no longer be borne by the estates of the crown, and
in which the public defence can no longer be entrusted to a
feudal militia. We have seen that the politicians who were at the
head of the Long Parliament made, in 1642, a great effort to
accomplish this change by transferring, directly and formally, to
the estates of the realm the choice of ministers, the command of
the army, and the superintendence of the whole executive
administration. This scheme was, perhaps, the best that could
then be contrived: but it was completely disconcerted by the
course which the civil war took. The Houses triumphed, it is
true; but not till after such a struggle as made it necessary for
them to call into existence a power which they could not control,
and which soon began to domineer over all orders and all parties:
During a few years, the evils inseparable from military
government were, in some degree, mitigated by the wisdom and
magnanimity of the great man who held the supreme command. But,
when the sword, which he had wielded, with energy indeed, but
with energy always guided by good sense and generally tempered by
good nature, had passed to captains who possessed neither his
abilities nor his virtues. it seemed too probable that order and
liberty would perish in one ignominious ruin.
That ruin was happily averted. It has been too much the practice
of writers zealous for freedom to represent the Restoration as a
disastrous event, and to condemn the folly or baseness of that
Convention, which recalled the royal family without exacting new
securities against maladministration. Those who hold this
language do not comprehend the real nature of the crisis which
followed the deposition of Richard Cromwell. England was in
imminent danger of falling under the tyranny of a succession of
small men raised up and pulled down by military caprice. To
deliver the country from the domination of the soldiers was the
first object of every enlightened patriot: but it was an object
which, while the soldiers were united, the most sanguine could
scarcely expect to attain. On a sudden a gleam of hope appeared.
General was opposed to general, army to army. On the use which
might be made of one auspicious moment depended the future
destiny of the nation. Our ancestors used that moment well. They
forgot old injuries, waved petty scruples, adjourned to a more
convenient season all dispute about the reforms which our
institutions needed, and stood together, Cavaliers and
Roundheads, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, in firm union, for
the old laws of the land against military despotism. The exact
partition of power among King, Lords, and Commons might well be
postponed till it had been decided whether England should be
governed by King, Lords, and Commons, or by cuirassiers and
pikemen. Had the statesmen of the Convention taken a different
course, had they held long debates on the principles of
government, had they drawn up a new constitution and sent it to
Charles, had conferences been opened, had couriers been passing
and repassing during some weeks between Westminster and the
Netherlands, with projects and counterprojects, replies by Hyde
and rejoinders by Prynne, the coalition on which the public
safety depended would have been dissolved: the Presbyterians and
Royalists would certainly have quarrelled: the military factions
might possibly have been reconciled; and the misjudging friends
of liberty might long have regretted, under a rule worse than
that of the worst Stuart, the golden opportunity which had been
suffered to escape.
The old civil polity was, therefore, by the general consent of
both the great parties, reestablished. It was again exactly what
it had been when Charles the First, eighteen years before,
withdrew from his capital. All those acts of the Long Parliament
which had received the royal assent were admitted to be still in
full force. One fresh concession, a concession in which the
Cavaliers were even more deeply interested than the Roundheads,
was easily obtained from the restored King. The military tenure
of land had been originally created as a means of national
defence. But in the course of ages whatever was useful in the
institution had disappeared; and nothing was left but ceremonies
and grievances. A landed proprietor who held an estate under the
crown by knight service,-and it was thus that most of the soil
of England was held,-had to pay a large fine on coming to his
property. He could not alienate one acre without purchasing a
license. When he died, if his domains descended to an infant, the
sovereign was guardian, and was not only entitled to great part
of the rents during the minority, but could require the ward,
under heavy penalties, to marry any person of suitable rank. The
chief bait which attracted a needy sycophant to the court was the
hope of obtaining as the reward of servility and flattery, a
royal letter to an heiress. These abuses had perished with the
monarchy. That they should not revive with it was the wish of
every landed gentleman in the kingdom. They were, therefore,
solemnly abolished by statute; and no relic of the ancient
tenures in chivalry was allowed to remain except those honorary
services which are still, at a coronation, rendered to the person
of the sovereign by some lords of manors.
The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men,
accustomed to the profession of arms, were at once thrown on the
world: and experience seemed to warrant the belief that this
change would produce much misery and crime, that the discharged
veterans would be seen begging in every street, or that they
would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no such result
followed. In a few months there remained not a trace indicating
that the most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed
into the mass of the community. The Royalists themselves
confessed that, in every department of honest industry the
discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was
charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an
alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted
notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability
one of Oliver's old soldiers
The military tyranny had passed away; but it had left deep and
enduring traces in the public mind. The name of standing army was
long held in abhorrence: and it is remarkable that this feeling
was even stronger among the Cavaliers than among the Roundheads.
It ought to be considered as a most fortunate circumstance that,
when our country was, for the first and last time, ruled by the
sword, the sword was in the hands, not of legitimate princes, but
of those rebels who slew the King and demolished the Church. Had
a prince with a title as good as that of Charles, commanded an
army as good as that of Cromwell, there would have been little
hope indeed for the liberties of England. Happily that instrument
by which alone the monarchy could be made absolute became an
object of peculiar horror and disgust to the monarchical party,
and long continued to be inseparably associated in the
imagination of Royalists and Prelatists with regicide and field
preaching. A century after the death of Cromwell, the Tories
still continued to clamour against every augmentation of the
regular soldiery, and to sound the praise of a national militia.
So late as the year 1786, a minister who enjoyed no common
measure of their confidence found it impossible to overcome their
aversion to his scheme of fortifying the coast: nor did they ever
look with entire complacency on the standing army, till the
French Revolution gave a new direction to their apprehensions.
The coalition which had restored the King terminated with the
danger from which it had sprung; and two hostile parties again
appeared ready for conflict. Both, indeed, were agreed as to the
propriety of inflicting punishment on some unhappy men who were,
at that moment, objects of almost universal hatred. Cromwell was
no more; and those who had fled before him were forced to content
themselves with the miserable satisfaction of digging up,
hanging, quartering, and burning the remains of the greatest
prince that has ever ruled England.
Other objects of vengeance, few indeed, yet too many, were found
among the republican chiefs. Soon, however, the conquerors,
glutted with the blood of the regicides, turned against each
other. The Roundheads, while admitting the virtues of the late
King, and while condemning the sentence passed upon him by an
illegal tribunal, yet maintained that his administration had
been, in many things, unconstitutional, and that the Houses had
taken arms against him from good motives and on strong grounds.
The monarchy, these politicians conceived, had no worse enemy
than the flatterer who exalted prerogative above the law, who
condemned all opposition to regal encroachments, and who reviled,
not only Cromwell and Harrison, but Pym and Hampden, as traitors.
If the King wished for a quiet and prosperous reign, he must
confide in those who, though they had drawn the sword in defence
of the invaded privileges of Parliament, had yet exposed
themselves to the rage of the soldiers in order to save his
father, and had taken the chief part in bringing back the royal
family.
The feeling of the Cavaliers was widely different. During
eighteen years they had, through all vicissitudes, been faithful
to the Crown. Having shared the distress of their prince, were
they not to share his triumph? Was no distinction to be made
between them and the disloyal subject who had fought against his
rightful sovereign, who had adhered to Richard Cromwell, and who
had never concurred in the restoration of the Stuarts, till it
appeared that nothing else could save the nation from the tyranny
of the army? Grant that such a man had, by his recent services,
fairly earned his pardon. Yet were his services, rendered at the
eleventh hour, to be put in comparison with the toils and
sufferings of those who had borne the burden and heat of the day?
Was he to be ranked with men who had no need of the royal
clemency, with men who had, in every part of their lives, merited
the royal gratitude? Above all, was he to be suffered to retain a
fortune raised out of the substance of the ruined defenders of
the throne? Was it not enough that his head and his patrimonial
estate, a hundred times forfeited to justice, were secure, and
that he shared, with the rest of the nation, in the blessings of
that mild government of which he had long been the foe? Was it
necessary that he should be rewarded for his treason at the
expense of men whose only crime was the fidelity with which they
had observed their oath of allegiance. And what interest had the
King in gorging his old enemies with prey torn from his old
friends? What confidence could be placed in men who had opposed
their sovereign, made war on him, imprisoned him, and who, even
now, instead of hanging down their heads in shame and contrition,
vindicated all that they had done, and seemed to think that they
had given an illustrious proof of loyalty by just stopping short
of regicide? It was true they had lately assisted to set up the
throne: but it was not less true that they had previously pulled
it down, and that they still avowed principles which might impel
them to pull it down again. Undoubtedly it might he fit that
marks of royal approbation should be bestowed on some converts
who had been eminently useful: but policy, as well as justice and
gratitude, enjoined the King to give the highest place in his
regard to those who, from first to last, through good and evil,
had stood by his house. On these grounds the Cavaliers very
naturally demanded indemnity for all that they had suffered, and
preference in the distribution of the favours of the Crown. Some
violent members of the party went further, and clamoured for
large categories of proscription.
The political feud was, as usual, exasperated by a religious
feud. The King found the Church in a singular state. A short time
before the commencement of the civil war, his father had given a
reluctant assent to a bill, strongly supported by Falkland, which
deprived the Bishops of their seats in the House of Lords: but
Episcopacy and the Liturgy had never been abolished by law. The
Long Parliament, however, had passed ordinances which had made a
complete revolution in Church government and in public worship.
The new system was, in principle, scarcely less Erastian than
that which it displaced. The Houses, guided chiefly by the
counsels of the accomplished Selden, had determined to keep the
spiritual power strictly subordinate to the temporal power. They
had refused to declare that any form of ecclesiastical polity was
of divine origin; and they had provided that, from all the Church
courts, an appeal should lie in the last resort to Parliament.
With this highly important reservation, it had been resolved to
set up in England a hierarchy closely resembling that which now
exists in Scotland. The authority of councils, rising one above
another in regular gradation, was substituted for the authority
of Bishops and Archbishops. The Liturgy gave place to the
Presbyterian Directory. But scarcely had the new regulations been
framed, when the Independents rose to supreme influence in the
state. The Independents had no disposition to enforce the
ordinances touching classical, provincial, and national synods.
Those ordinances, therefore, were never carried into full
execution. The Presbyterian system was fully established nowhere
but in Middlesex and Lancashire. In the other fifty counties
almost every parish seems to have been unconnected with the
neighbouring parishes. In some districts, indeed, the ministers
formed themselves into voluntary associations, for the purpose of
mutual help and counsel; but these associations had no coercive
power. The patrons of livings, being now checked by neither
Bishop nor Presbytery, would have been at liberty to confide the
cure of souls to the most scandalous of mankind, but for the
arbitrary intervention of Oliver. He established, by his own
authority, a board of commissioners, called Triers. Most of these
persons were Independent divines; but a few Presbyterian
ministers and a few laymen had seats. The certificate of the
Triers stood in the place both of institution and of induction;
and without such a certificate no person could hold a benefice.
This was undoubtedly one of the most despotic acts ever done by
any English ruler. Yet, as it was generally felt that, without
some such precaution, the country would be overrun by ignorant
and drunken reprobates, bearing the name and receiving the pay of
ministers, some highly respectable persons, who were not in
general friendly to Cromwell, allowed that, on this occasion, he
had been a public benefactor. The presentees whom the Triers had
approved took possession of the rectories, cultivated the glebe
lands, collected the tithes, prayed without book or surplice, and
administered the Eucharist to communicants seated at long tables.
Thus the ecclesiastical polity of the realm was in inextricable
confusion. Episcopacy was the form of government prescribed by
the old law which was still unrepealed. The form of government
prescribed by parliamentary ordinance was Presbyterian. But
neither the old law nor the parliamentary ordinance was
practically in force. The Church actually established may be
described as an irregular body made up of a few Presbyteries and
many Independent congregations, which were all held down and held
together by the authority of the government.
Of those who had been active in bringing back the King, many were
zealous for Synods and for the Directory, and many were desirous
to terminate by a compromise the religious dissensions which had
long agitated England. Between the bigoted followers of Laud and
the bigoted followers of Knox there could be neither peace nor
truce: but it did not seem impossible to effect an accommodation
between the moderate Episcopalians of the school of Usher and the
moderate Presbyterians of the school of Baxter. The moderate
Episcopalians would admit that a Bishop might lawfully be
assisted by a council. The moderate Presbyterians would not deny
that each provincial assembly might lawfully have a permanent
president, and that this president might lawfully be called a
Bishop. There might be a revised Liturgy which should not exclude
extemporaneous prayer, a baptismal service in which the sign of
the cross might be used or omitted at discretion, a communion
service at which the faithful might sit if their conscience
forbade them to kneel. But to no such plan could the great bodies
of the Cavaliers listen with patience. The religious members of
that party were conscientiously attached to the whole system of
their Church. She had been dear to their murdered King. She had
consoled them in defeat and penury. Her service, so often
whispered in an inner chamber during the season of trial, had
such a charm for them that they were unwilling to part with a
single response. Other Royalists, who made little presence to
piety, yet loved the episcopal church because she was the foe of
their foes. They valued a prayer or a ceremony, not on account of
the comfort which it conveyed to themselves, but on account of
the vexation which it gave to the Roundheads, and were so far
from being disposed to purchase union by concession that they
objected to concession chiefly because it tended to produce
union.
Such feelings, though blamable, were natural, and not wholly
inexcusable. The Puritans had undoubtedly, in the day of their
power, given cruel provocation. They ought to have learned, if
from nothing else, yet from their own discontents, from their own
struggles, from their own victory, from the fall of that proud
hierarchy by which they had been so heavily oppressed, that, in
England, and in the seventeenth century, it was not in the power
of the civil magistrate to drill the minds of men into conformity
with his own system of theology. They proved, however, as
intolerant and as meddling as ever Laud had been. They
interdicted under heavy penalties the use of the Book of Common
Prayer, not only in churches, but even in private houses. It was
a crime in a child to read by the bedside of a sick parent one of
those beautiful collects which had soothed the griefs of forty
generations of Christians. Severe punishments were denounced
against such as should presume to blame the Calvinistic mode of
worship. Clergymen of respectable character were not only ejected
from their benefices by thousands, but were frequently exposed to
the outrages of a fanatical rabble. Churches and sepulchres, fine
works of art and curious remains of antiquity, were brutally
defaced. The Parliament resolved that all pictures in the royal
collection which contained representations of Jesus or of the
Virgin Mother should be burned. Sculpture fared as ill as
painting. Nymphs and Graces, the work of Ionian chisels, were
delivered over to Puritan stonemasons to be made decent. Against
the lighter vices the ruling faction waged war with a zeal little
tempered by humanity or by common sense. Sharp laws were passed
against betting. It was enacted that adultery should be punished
with death. The illicit intercourse of the sexes, even where
neither violence nor seduction was imputed, where no public
scandal was given, where no conjugal right was violated, was made
a misdemeanour. Public amusements, from the masques which were
exhibited at the mansions of the great down to the wrestling
matches and grinning matches on village greens, were vigorously
attacked. One ordinance directed that all the Maypoles in England
should forthwith be hewn down. Another proscribed all theatrical
diversions. The playhouses were to be dismantled, the spectators
fined, the actors whipped at the cart's tail. Rope-dancing,
puppet-shows, bowls, horse-racing, were regarded with no friendly
eye. But bearbaiting, then a favourite diversion of high and low,
was the abomination which most strongly stirred the wrath of the
austere sectaries. It is to be remarked that their antipathy to
this sport had nothing in common with the feeling which has, in
our own time, induced the legislature to interfere for the
purpose of protecting beasts against the wanton cruelty of men.
The Puritan hated bearbaiting, not because it gave pain to the
bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Indeed, he
generally contrived to enjoy the double pleasure of tormenting
both spectators and bear.16
Perhaps no single circumstance more strongly illustrates the
temper of the precisians than their conduct respecting Christmas
day. Christmas had been, from time immemorial, the season of joy
and domestic affection, the season when families assembled, when
children came home from school, when quarrels were made up, when
carols were heard in every street, when every house was decorated
with evergreens, and every table was loaded with good cheer. At
that season all hearts not utterly destitute of kindness were
enlarged and softened. At that season the poor were admitted to
partake largely of the overflowings of the wealth of the rich,
whose bounty was peculiarly acceptable on account of the
shortness of the days and of the severity of the weather. At that
season, the interval between landlord and tenant, master and
servant, was less marked than through the rest of the year. Where
there is much enjoyment there will be some excess: yet, on the
whole, the spirit in which the holiday was kept was not unworthy
of a Christian festival. The long Parliament gave orders, in
1644, that the twenty-fifth of December should be strictly
observed as a fast, and that all men should pass it in humbly
bemoaning the great national sin which they and their fathers had
so often committed on that day by romping under the mistletoe,
eating boar's head, and drinking ale flavored with roasted
apples. No public act of that time seems to have irritated the
common people more. On the next anniversary of the festival
formidable riots broke out in many places. The constables were
resisted, the magistrates insulted, the houses of noted zealots
attacked, and the prescribed service of the day openly read in
the churches.
Such was the spirit of the extreme Puritans, both Presbyterian
and Independent. Oliver, indeed, was little disposed to be either
a persecutor or a meddler. But Oliver, the head of a party, and
consequently, to a great extent, the slave of a party, could not
govern altogether according to his own inclinations. Even under
his administration many magistrates, within their own
jurisdiction, made themselves as odious as Sir Hudibras,
interfered with all the pleasures of the neighbourhood, dispersed
festive meetings, and put fiddlers in the stocks. Still more
formidable was the zeal of the soldiers. In every village where
they appeared there was an end of dancing, bellringing, and
hockey. In London they several times interrupted theatrical
performances at which the Protector had the judgment and good
nature to connive.
With the fear and hatred inspired by such a tyranny contempt was
largely mingled. The peculiarities of the Puritan, his look, his
dress, his dialect, his strange scruples, had been, ever since
the time of Elizabeth, favourite subjects with mockers. But these
peculiarities appeared far more grotesque in a faction which
ruled a great empire than in obscure and persecuted
congregations. The cant, which had moved laughter when it was
heard on the stage from Tribulation Wholesome and
Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, was still more laughable when it proceeded
from the lips of Generals and Councillors of State. It is also to
be noticed that during the civil troubles several sects had
sprung into existence, whose eccentricities surpassed anything
that had before been seen in England. A mad tailor, named
Lodowick Muggleton, wandered from pothouse to pothouse, tippling
ale, and denouncing eternal torments against those who refused to
believe, on his testimony, that the Supreme Being was only six
feet high, and that the sun was just four miles from the earth.17
George Fox had raised a tempest of derision by proclaiming that
it was a violation of Christian sincerity to designate a single
person by a plural pronoun, and that it was an idolatrous homage
to Janus and Woden to talk about January and Wednesday. His
doctrine, a few years later, was embraced by some eminent men,
and rose greatly in the public estimation. But at the time of the
Restoration the Quakers were popularly regarded as the most
despicable of fanatics. By the Puritans they were treated with
severity here, and were persecuted to the death in New England.
Nevertheless the public, which seldom makes nice distinctions,
often confounded the Puritan with the Quaker. Both were
schismatics. Both hated episcopacy and the Liturgy. Both had what
seemed extravagant whimsies about dress, diversions and postures.
Widely as the two differed in opinion, they were popularly
classed together as canting schismatics; and whatever was
ridiculous or odious in either increased the scorn and aversion
which the multitude felt for both.
Before the civil wars, even those who most disliked the opinions
and manners of the Puritan were forced to admit that his moral
conduct was generally, in essentials, blameless; but this praise
was now no longer bestowed, and, unfortunately, was no longer
deserved. The general fate of sects is to obtain a high
reputation for sanctity while they are oppressed, and to lose it
as soon as they become powerful: and the reason is obvious. It is
seldom that a man enrolls himself in a proscribed body from any
but conscientious motives. Such a body, therefore, is composed,
with scarcely an exception, of sincere persons. The most rigid
discipline that can be enforced within a religious society is a
very feeble instrument of purification, when compared with a
little sharp persecution from without. We may be certain that
very few persons, not seriously impressed by religious
convictions, applied for baptism while Diocletian was vexing the
Church, or joined themselves to Protestant congregations at the
risk of being burned by Bonner. But, when a sect becomes
powerful, when its favour is the road to riches and dignities,
worldly and ambitious men crowd into it, talk its language,
conform strictly to its ritual, mimic its peculiarities, and
frequently go beyond its honest members in all the outward
indications of zeal. No discernment, no watchfulness, on the part
of ecclesiastical rulers, can prevent the intrusion of such false
brethren. The tares and wheat must grow together. Soon the world
begins to find out that the godly are not better than other men,
and argues, with some justice, that, if not better, they must be
much worse. In no long time all those signs which were formerly
regarded as characteristic of a saint are regarded as
characteristic of a knave.
Thus it was with the English Nonconformists. They had been
oppressed; and oppression had kept them a pure body. They then
became supreme in the state. No man could hope to rise to
eminence and command but by their favour. Their favour was to be
gained only by exchanging with them the signs and passwords of
spiritual fraternity. One of the first resolutions adopted by
Barebone's Parliament, the most intensely Puritanical of all our
political assemblies, was that no person should be admitted into
the public service till the House should be satisfied of his real
godliness. What were then considered as the signs of real
godliness, the sadcoloured dress, the sour look, the straight
hair, the nasal whine, the speech interspersed with quaint texts,
the Sunday, gloomy as a Pharisaical Sabbath, were easily imitated
by men to whom all religions were the same. The sincere Puritans
soon found themselves lost in a multitude, not merely of men of
the world, but of the very worst sort of men of the world. For
the most notorious libertine who had fought under the royal
standard might justly be thought virtuous when compared with some
of those who, while they talked about sweet experiences and
comfortable scriptures, lived in the constant practice of fraud,
rapacity, and secret debauchery. The people, with a rashness
which we may justly lament, but at which we cannot wonder, formed
their estimate of the whole body from these hypocrites. The
theology, the manners, the dialect of the Puritan were thus
associated in the public mind with the darkest and meanest vices.
As soon as the Restoration had made it safe to avow enmity to the
party which had so long been predominant, a general outcry
against Puritanism rose from every corner of the kingdom, and was
often swollen by the voices of those very dissemblers whose
villany had brought disgrace on the Puritan name.
Thus the two great parties, which, after a long contest, had for
a moment concurred in restoring monarchy, were, both in politics
and in religion, again opposed to each other. The great body of
the nation leaned to the Royalists. The crimes of Strafford and
Laud, the excesses of the Star Chamber and of the High
Commission, the great services which the Long Parliament had,
during the first year of its existence, rendered to the state,
had faded from the minds of men. The execution of Charles the
First, the sullen tyranny of the Rump, the violence of the army,
were remembered with loathing; and the multitude was inclined to
hold all who had withstood the late King responsible for his
death and for the subsequent disasters.
The House of Commons, having been elected while the Presbyterians
were dominant, by no means represented the general sense of the
people. Most of the members, while execrating Cromwell and
Bradshaw, reverenced the memory of Essex and of Pym. One sturdy
Cavalier, who ventured to declare that all who had drawn the
sword against Charles the First were as much traitors as those
who kind cut off his head, was called to order, placed at the
bar, and reprimanded by the Speaker. The general wish of the
House undoubtedly was to settle the ecclesiastical disputes in a
manner satisfactory to the moderate Puritans. But to such a
settlement both the court and the nation were averse.
The restored King was at this time more loved by the people than
any of his predecessors had ever been. The calamities of his
house, the heroic death of his father, his own long sufferings
and romantic adventures, made him an object of tender interest.
His return had delivered the country from an intolerable bondage.
Recalled by the voice of both the contending factions, he was in
a position which enabled him to arbitrate between them; and in
some respects he was well qualified for the task. He had received
from nature excellent parts and a happy temper. His education had
been such as might have been expected to develope his
understanding, and to form him to the practice of every public
and private virtue. He had passed through all varieties of
fortune, and had seen both sides of human nature. He had, while
very young, been driven forth from a palace to a life of exile.
penury, and danger. He had, at the age when the mind and body are
in their highest perfection, and when the first effervescence of
boyish passions should have subsided, been recalled from his
wanderings to wear a crown. He had been taught by bitter
experience how much baseness, perfidy, and ingratitude may lie
hid under the obsequious demeanor of courtiers. He had found, on
the other hand, in the huts of the poorest, true nobility of
soul. When wealth was offered to any who would betray him, when
death was denounced against all who should shelter him, cottagers
and serving men had kept his secret truly, and had kissed his
hand under his mean disguises with as much reverence as if he had
been seated on his ancestral throne. From such a school it might
have been expected that a young man who wanted neither abilities
nor amiable qualities would have come forth a great and good
King. Charles came forth from that school with social habits,
with polite and engaging manners, and with some talent for lively
conversation, addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond
of sauntering and of frivolous amusements, incapable of
selfdenial and of exertion, without faith in human virtue or in
human attachment without desire of renown, and without
sensibility to reproach. According to him, every person was to be
bought: but some people haggled more about their price than
others; and when this haggling was very obstinate and very
skilful it was called by some fine name. The chief trick by which
clever men kept up the price of their abilities was called
integrity. The chief trick by which handsome women kept up the
price of their beauty was called modesty. The love of God, the
love of country, the love of family, the love of friends, were
phrases of the same sort, delicate and convenient synonymes for
the love of self. Thinking thus of mankind, Charles naturally
cared very little what they thought of him. Honour and shame were
scarcely more to him than light and darkness to the blind. His
contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems, when
viewed in connection with the rest of his character, to deserve
no commendation. It is possible to be below flattery as well as
above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One
who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.
It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought of
his species, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little in men
but what was hateful. Yet he did not hate them. Nay, he was so
far humane that it was highly disagreeable to him to see their
sufferings or to hear their complaints. This, however, is a sort
of humanity which, though amiable and laudable in a private man
whose power to help or hurt is bounded by a narrow circle, has in
princes often been rather a vice than a virtue. More than one
well disposed ruler has given up whole provinces to rapine and
oppression, merely from a wish to see none but happy faces round
his own board and in his own walks. No man is fit to govern great
societies who hesitates about disobliging the few who have access
to him, for the sake of the many whom he will never see. The
facility of Charles was such as has perhaps never been found in
any man of equal sense. He was a slave without being a dupe.
Worthless men and women, to the very bottom of whose hearts he
saw, and whom he knew to be destitute of affection for him and
undeserving of his confidence, could easily wheedle him out of
titles, places, domains, state secrets and pardons. He bestowed
much; yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired the fame
of beneficence. He never gave spontaneously; but it was painful
to him to refuse. The consequence was that his bounty generally
went, not to those who deserved it best, nor even to those whom
he liked best, but to the most shameless and importunate suitor
who could obtain an audience.
The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles the
Second differed widely from those by which his predecessor and
his successor were actuated. He was not a man to be imposed upon
by the patriarchal theory of government and the doctrine of
divine right. He was utterly without ambition. He detested
business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have
undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.
Such was his aversion to toil, and such his ignorance of affairs,
that the very clerks who attended him when he sate in council
could not refrain from sneering at his frivolous remarks, and at
his childish impatience. Neither gratitude nor revenge had any
share in determining his course; for never was there a mind on
which both services and injuries left such faint and transitory
impressions. He wished merely to be a King such as Lewis the
Fifteenth of France afterwards was; a King who could draw without
limit on the treasury for the gratification of his private
tastes, who could hire with wealth and honours persons capable of
assisting him to kill the time, and who, even when the state was
brought by maladministration to the depths of humiliation and to
the brink of ruin, could still exclude unwelcome truth from the
purlieus of his own seraglio, and refuse to see and hear whatever
might disturb his luxurious repose. For these ends, and for these
ends alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could be
obtained without risk or trouble. In the religious disputes which
divided his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at all
interested. For his opinions oscillated in contented suspense
between infidelity and Popery. But, though his conscience was
neutral in the quarrel between the Episcopalians and the
Presbyterians, his taste was by no means so. His favourite vices
were precisely those to which the Puritans were least indulgent.
He could not get through one day without the help of diversions
which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As a man eminently well
bred, and keenly sensible of the ridiculous, he was moved to
contemptuous mirth by the Puritan oddities. He had indeed some
reason to dislike the rigid sect. He had, at the age when the
passions are most impetuous and when levity is most pardonable,
spent some months in Scotland, a King in name, but in fact a
state prisoner in the hands of austere Presbyterians. Not content
with requiring him to conform to their worship and to subscribe
their Covenant, they had watched all his motions, and lectured
him on all his youthful follies. He had been compelled to give
reluctant attendance at endless prayers and sermons, and might
think himself fortunate when he was not insolently reminded from
the pulpit of his own frailties, of his father's tyranny, and of
his mother's idolatry. Indeed he had been so miserable during
this part of his life that the defeat which made him again a
wanderer might be regarded as a deliverance rather than as a
calamity. Under the influence of such feelings as these Charles
was desirous to depress the party which had resisted his father.
The King's brother, James Duke of York, took the same side.
Though a libertine, James was diligent, methodical, and fond of
authority and business. His understanding was singularly slow and
narrow, and his temper obstinate, harsh, and unforgiving. That
such a prince should have looked with no good will on the free
institutions of England, and on the party which was peculiarly
zealous for those institutions, can excite no surprise. As yet
the Duke professed himself a member of the Anglican Church but he
had already shown inclinations which had seriously alarmed good
Protestants.
The person on whom devolved at this time the greatest part of the
labour of governing was Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the realm, who
was soon created Earl of Clarendon. The respect which we justly
feel for Clarendon as a writer must not blind us to the faults
which he committed as a statesman. Some of those faults, however,
are explained and excused by the unfortunate position in which he
stood. He had, during the first year of the Long Parliament, been
honourably distinguished among the senators who laboured to
redress the grievances of the nation. One of the most odious of
those grievances, the Council of York, had been removed in
consequence chiefly of his exertions. When the great schism took
place, when the reforming party and the conservative party first
appeared marshalled against each other, he, with many wise and
good men, took the conservative side. He thenceforward followed
the fortunes of the court, enjoyed as large a share of the
confidence of Charles the First as the reserved nature and
tortuous policy of that prince allowed to any minister, and
subsequently shared the exile and directed the political conduct
of Charles the Second. At the Restoration Hyde became chief
minister. In a few months it was announced that he was closely
related by affinity to the royal house. His daughter had become,
by a secret marriage, Duchess of York. His grandchildren might
perhaps wear the crown. He was raised by this illustrious
connection over the heads of the old nobility of the land, and
was for a time supposed to be allpowerful. In some respects he
was well fitted for his great place. No man wrote abler state
papers. No man spoke with more weight and dignity in Council and
in Parliament. No man was better acquainted with general maxims
of statecraft. No man observed the varieties of character with a
more discriminating eye. It must be added that he had a strong
sense of moral and religious obligation, a sincere reverence for
the laws of his country, and a conscientious regard for the
honour and interest of the Crown. But his temper was sour,
arrogant, and impatient of opposition. Above all, he bad been
long an exile; and this circumstance alone would have completely
disqualified him for the supreme direction of affairs. It is
scarcely possible that a politician, who has been compelled by
civil troubles to go into banishment, and to pass many of the
best years of his life abroad, can be fit, on the day on which he
returns to his native land, to be at the head of the government.
Clarendon was no exception to this rule. He had left England with
a mind heated by a fierce conflict which had ended in the
downfall of his party and of his own fortunes. From 1646 to 1660
he had lived beyond sea, looking on all that passed at home from
a great distance, and through a false medium. His notions of
public affairs were necessarily derived from the reports of
plotters, many of whom were ruined and desperate men. Events
naturally seemed to him auspicious, not in proportion as they
increased the prosperity and glory of the nation, but in
proportion as they tended to hasten the hour of his own return.
His wish, a wish which he has not disguised, was that, till his
countrymen brought back the old line, they might never enjoy
quiet or freedom. At length he returned; and, without having a
single week to look about him, to mix with society, to note the
changes which fourteen eventful years had produced in the
national character and feelings, he was at once set to rule the
state. In such circumstances, a minister of the greatest tact and
docility would probably have fallen into serious errors. But tact
and docility made no part of the character of Clarendon. To him
England was still the England of his youth; and he sternly
frowned down every theory and every practice which had sprung up
during his own exile. Though he was far from meditating any
attack on the ancient and undoubted power of the House of
Commons, he saw with extreme uneasiness the growth of that power.
The royal prerogative, for which he had long suffered, and by
which he had at length been raised to wealth and dignity, was
sacred in his eyes. The Roundheads he regarded both with
political and with personal aversion. To the Anglican Church he
had always been strongly attached, and had repeatedly, where her
interests were concerned, separated himself with regret from his
dearest friends. His zeal for Episcopacy and for the Book of
Common Prayer was now more ardent than ever, and was mingled with
a vindictive hatred of the Puritans, which did him little honour
either as a statesman or as a Christian.
While the House of Commons which had recalled the royal family
was sitting, it was impossible to effect the re-establishment of
the old ecclesiastical system. Not only were the intentions of
the court strictly concealed, but assurances which quieted the
minds of the moderate Presbyterians were given by the King in the
most solemn manner. He had promised, before his restoration, that
he would grant liberty of conscience to his subjects. He now
repeated that promise, and added a promise to use his best
endeavours for the purpose of effecting a compromise between the
contending sects. He wished, he said, to see the spiritual
jurisdiction divided between bishops and synods. The Liturgy
should be revised by a body of learned divines, one-half of whom
should be Presbyterians. The questions respecting the surplice,
the posture at the Eucharist, and the sign of the cross in
baptism, should be settled in a way which would set tender
consciences at ease. When the King had thus laid asleep the
vigilance of those whom he most feared, he dissolved the
Parliament. He had already given his assent to an act by which an
amnesty was granted, with few exceptions, to all who, during the
late troubles, had been guilty of political offences. He had also
obtained from the Commons a grant for life of taxes, the annual
product of which was estimated at twelve hundred thousand pounds.
The actual income, indeed, during some years, amounted to little
more than a million: but this sum, together with the hereditary
revenue of the crown, was then sufficient to defray the expenses
of the government in time of peace. Nothing was allowed for a
standing army. The nation was sick of the very name; and the
least mention of such a force would have incensed and alarmed all
parties.
Early in 1661 took place a general election. The people were mad
with loyal enthusiasm. The capital was excited by preparations
for the most splendid coronation that had ever been known. The
result was that a body of representatives was returned, such as
England had never yet seen. A large proportion of the successful
candidates were men who had fought for the Crown and the Church,
and whose minds had been exasperated by many injuries and insults
suffered at the hands of the Roundheads. When the members met,
the passions which animated each individually acquired new
strength from sympathy. The House of Commons was, during some
years, more zealous for royalty than the King, more zealous for
episcopacy than the Bishops. Charles and Clarendon were almost
terrified at the completeness of their own success. They found
themselves in a situation not unlike that in which Lewis the
Eighteenth and the Duke of Richelieu were placed while the
Chamber of 1815 was sitting. Even if the King had been desirous
to fulfill the promises which he had made to the Presbyterians,
it would have been out of his power to do so. It was indeed only
by the strong exertion of his influence that he could prevent the
victorious Cavaliers from rescinding the act of indemnity, and
retaliating without mercy all that they had suffered.
The Commons began by resolving that every member should, on pain
of expulsion, take the sacrament according to the form prescribed
by the old Liturgy, and that the Covenant should be burned by the
hangman in Palace Yard. An act was passed, which not only
acknowledged the power of the sword to be solely in the King, but
declared that in no extremity whatever could the two Houses be
justified in withstanding him by force. Another act was passed
which required every officer of a corporation to receive the
Eucharist according to the rites of the Church of England, and to
swear that he held resistance to the King's authority to be in
all cases unlawful. A few hotheaded men wished to bring in a
bill, which should at once annul all the statutes passed by the
Long Parliament, and should restore the Star Chamber and the High
Commission; but the reaction, violent as it was, did not proceed
quite to this length. It still continued to be the law that a
Parliament should be held every three years: but the stringent
clauses which directed the returning officers to proceed to
election at the proper time, even without the royal writ, were
repealed. The Bishops were restored to their seats in the Upper
House. The old ecclesiastical polity and the old Liturgy were
revived without any modification which had any tendency to
conciliate even the most reasonable Presbyterians. Episcopal
ordination was now, for the first time, made an indispensable
qualification for church preferment. About two thousand ministers
of religion, whose conscience did not suffer them to conform,
were driven from their benefices in one day. The dominant party
exultingly reminded the sufferers that the Long Parliament, when
at the height of power, had turned out a still greater number of
Royalist divines. The reproach was but too well founded: but the
Long Parliament had at least allowed to the divines whom it
ejected a provision sufficient to keep them from starving; and
this example the Cavaliers, intoxicated with animosity, had not
the justice and humanity to follow.
Then came penal statutes against Nonconformists, statutes for
which precedents might too easily be found in the Puritan
legislation, but to which the King could not give his assent
without a breach of promises publicly made, in the most important
crisis of his life, to those on whom his fate depended. The
Presbyterians, in extreme distress and terror, fled to the foot
of the throne, and pleaded their recent services and the royal
faith solemnly and repeatedly plighted. The King wavered. He
could not deny his own hand and seal. He could not but be
conscious that he owed much to the petitioners. He was little in
the habit of resisting importunate solicitation. His temper was
not that of a persecutor. He disliked the Puritans indeed; but in
him dislike was a languid feeling, very little resembling the
energetic hatred which had burned in the heart of Laud. He was,
moreover, partial to the Roman Catholic religion; and he knew
that it would be impossible to grant liberty of worship to the
professors of that religion without extending the same indulgence
to Protestant dissenters. He therefore made a feeble attempt to
restrain the intolerant zeal of the House of Commons; but that
House was under the influence of far deeper convictions and far
stronger passions than his own. After a faint struggle he
yielded, and passed, with the show of alacrity, a series of
odious acts against the separatists. It was made a crime to
attend a dissenting place of worship. A single justice of the
peace might convict without a jury, and might, for the third
offence, pass sentence of transportation beyond sea for seven
years. With refined cruelty it was provided that the offender
should not be transported to New England, where he was likely to
find sympathising friends. If he returned to his own country
before the expiration of his term of exile, he was liable to
capital punishment. A new and most unreasonable test was imposed
on divines who had been deprived of their benefices for
nonconformity; and all who refused to take that test were
prohibited from coming within five miles of any town which was
governed by a corporation, of any town which was represented in
Parliament, or of any town where they had themselves resided as
ministers. The magistrates, by whom these rigorous statutes were
to be enforced, were in general men inflamed by party spirit and
by the remembrance of wrongs suffered in the time of the
commonwealth. The gaols were therefore soon crowded with
dissenters, and, among the sufferers, were some of whose genius
and virtue any Christian society might well be proud.
The Church of England was not ungrateful for the protection which
she received from the government. From the first day of her
existence, she had been attached to monarchy. But, during the
quarter of a century which followed the Restoration, her zeal for
royal authority and hereditary right passed all bounds. She had
suffered with the House of Stuart. She had been restored with
that House. She was connected with it by common interests,
friendships, and enmities. It seemed impossible that a day could
ever come when the ties which bound her to the children of her
august martyr would be sundered, and when the loyalty in which
she gloried would cease to be a pleasing and profitable duty. She
accordingly magnified in fulsome phrase that prerogative which
was constantly employed to defend and to aggrandise her, and
reprobated, much at her ease, the depravity of those whom
oppression, from which she was exempt, had goaded to rebellion.
Her favourite theme was the doctrine of non-resistance. That
doctrine she taught without any qualification, and followed out
to all its extreme consequences. Her disciples were never weary
of repeating that in no conceivable case, not even if England
were cursed with a King resembling Busiris or Phalaris, with a
King who, in defiance of law, and without the presence of
justice, should daily doom hundreds of innocent victims to
torture and death, would all the Estates of the realm united be
justified in withstanding his tyranny by physical force. Happily
the principles of human nature afford abundant security that such
theories will never be more than theories. The day of trial came;
and the very men who had most loudly and most sincerely professed
this extravagant loyalty were, in every county of England arrayed
in arms against the throne.
Property all over the kingdom was now again changing hands. The
national sales, not having been confirmed by Act of Parliament,
were regarded by the tribunals as nullities. The bishops, the
deans, the chapters, the Royalist nobility and gentry, reentered
on their confiscated estates, and ejected even purchasers who had
given fair prices. The losses which the Cavaliers had sustained
during the ascendency of their opponents were thus in part
repaired; but in part only. All actions for mesne profits were
effectually barred by the general amnesty; and the numerous
Royalists, who, in order to discharge fines imposed by the Long
Parliament, or in order to purchase the favour of powerful
Roundheads, had sold lands for much less than the real value,
were not relieved from the legal consequences of their own acts.
While these changes were in progress, a change still more
important took place in the morals and manners of the community.
Those passions and tastes which, under the rule of the Puritans,
had been sternly repressed, and, if gratified at all, had been
gratified by stealth, broke forth with ungovernable violence as
soon as the check was withdrawn. Men flew to frivolous amusements
and to criminal pleasures with the greediness which long and
enforced abstinence naturally produces. Little restraint was
imposed by public opinion. For the nation, nauseated with cant,
suspicious of all pretensions to sanctity and still smarting from
the recent tyranny of rulers austere in life and powerful in
prayer, looked for a time with complacency on the softer and
gayer vices. Still less restraint was imposed by the government.
Indeed there was no excess which was not encouraged by the
ostentatious profligacy of the King and of his favourite
courtiers. A few counsellors of Charles the First, who were now
no longer young, retained the decorous gravity which had been
thirty years before in fashion at Whitehall. Such were Clarendon
himself, and his friends, Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of
Southampton, Lord Treasurer, and James Butler, Duke of Ormond,
who, having through many vicissitudes struggled gallantly for the
royal cause in Ireland, now governed that kingdom as Lord
Lieutenant. But neither the memory of the services of these men,
nor their great power in the state, could protect them from the
sarcasms which modish vice loves to dart at obsolete virtue. The
praise of politeness and vivacity could now scarcely be obtained
except by some violation of decorum. Talents great and various
assisted to spread the contagion. Ethical philosophy had recently
taken a form well suited to please a generation equally devoted
to monarchy and to vice. Thomas Hobbes had, in language more
precise and luminous than has ever been employed by any other
metaphysical writer, maintained that the will of the prince was
the standard of right and wrong, and that every subject ought to
be ready to profess Popery, Mahometanism, or Paganism, at the
royal command. Thousands who were incompetent to appreciate what
was really valuable in his speculations, eagerly welcomed a
theory which, while it exalted the kingly office, relaxed the
obligations of morality, and degraded religion into a mere affair
of state. Hobbism soon became an almost essential part of the
character of the fine gentleman. All the lighter kinds of
literature were deeply tainted by the prevailing licentiousness.
Poetry stooped to be the pandar of every low desire. Ridicule,
instead of putting guilt and error to the blush, turned her
formidable shafts against innocence and truth. The restored
Church contended indeed against the prevailing immorality, but
contended feebly, and with half a heart. It was necessary to the
decorum of her character that she should admonish her erring
children: but her admonitions were given in a somewhat
perfunctory manner. Her attention was elsewhere engaged. Her
whole soul was in the work of crushing the Puritans, and of
teaching her disciples to give unto Caesar the things which were
Caesar's. She had been pillaged and oppressed by the party which
preached an austere morality. She had been restored to opulence
and honour by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion
were disposed to shape their lives according to her precepts,
they were yet ready to fight knee deep in blood for her
cathedrals and places, for every line of her rubric and every
thread of her vestments. If the debauched Cavalier haunted
brothels and gambling houses, he at least avoided conventicles.
If he never spoke without uttering ribaldry and blasphemy, he
made some amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howe to
gaol for preaching and praying. Thus the clergy, for a time,
made war on schism with so much vigour that they had little
leisure to make war on vice. The ribaldry of Etherege and
Wycherley was, in the presence and under the special sanction of
the head of the Church, publicly recited by female lips in female
ears, while the author of the Pilgrim's Progress languished in a
dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospel to the poor. It
is an unquestionable and a most instructive fact that the years
during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy was in
the zenith were precisely the years during which national virtue
was at the lowest point.
Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the
prevailing immorality; but those persons who made politics their
business were perhaps the most corrupt part of the corrupt
society. For they were exposed, not only to the same noxious
influences which affected the nation generally, but also to a
taint of a peculiar and of a most malignant kind. Their character
had been formed amidst frequent and violent revolutions and
counterrevolutions. In the course of a few years they had seen
the ecclesiastical and civil polity of their country repeatedly
changed. They had seen an Episcopal Church persecuting Puritans,
a Puritan Church persecuting Episcopalians, and an Episcopal
Church persecuting Puritans again. They had seen hereditary
monarchy abolished and restored. They had seen the Long
Parliament thrice supreme in the state, and thrice dissolved
amidst the curses and laughter of millions. They had seen a new
dynasty rapidly rising to the height of power and glory, and then
on a sudden hurled down from the chair of state without a
struggle. They had seen a new representative system devised,
tried and abandoned. They had seen a new House of Lords created
and scattered. They had seen great masses of property violently
transferred from Cavaliers to Roundheads, and from Roundheads
back to Cavaliers. During these events no man could be a stirring
and thriving politician who was not prepared to change with every
change of fortune. It was only in retirement that any person
could long keep the character either of a steady Royalist or of a
steady Republican. One who, in such an age, is determined to
attain civil greatness must renounce all thoughts of consistency.
Instead of affecting immutability in the midst of endless
mutation, he must be always on the watch for the indications of a
coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment for deserting a
falling cause. Having gone all lengths with a faction while it
was uppermost, he must suddenly extricate himself from it when
its difficulties begin, must assail it, must persecute it, must
enter on a new career of power and prosperity in company with new
associates. His situation naturally developes in him to the
highest degree a peculiar class of abilities and a peculiar class
of vices. He becomes quick of observation and fertile of
resource. He catches without effort the tone of any sect or party
with which he chances to mingle. He discerns the signs of the
times with a sagacity which to the multitude appears miraculous,
with a sagacity resembling that with which a veteran police
officer pursues the faintest indications of crime, or with which
a Mohawk warrior follows a track through the woods. But we shell
seldom find, in a statesman so trained, integrity, constancy, any
of the virtues of the noble family of Truth. He has no faith in
any doctrine, no zeal for any cause. He has seen so many old
institutions swept away, that he has no reverence for
prescription. He has seen so many new institutions, from which
much had been expected, produce mere disappointment, that he has
no hope of improvement. He sneers alike at those who are anxious
to preserve and at those who are eager to reform. There is
nothing in the state which he could not, without a scruple or a
blush, join in defending or in destroying. Fidelity to opinions
and to friends seems to him mere dulness and wrongheadedness.
Politics he regards, not as a science of which the object is the
happiness of mankind, but as an exciting game of mixed chance and
skill, at which a dexterous and lucky player may win an estate, a
coronet, perhaps a crown, and at which one rash move may lead to
the loss of fortune and of life. Ambition, which, in good times,
and in good minds, is half a virtue, now, disjoined from every
elevated and philanthropic sentiment, becomes a selfish cupidity
scarcely less ignoble than avarice. Among those politicians who,
from the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover,
were at the head of the great parties in the state, very few can
be named whose reputation is not stained by what, in our age,
would be called gross perfidy and corruption. It is scarcely an
exaggeration to say that the most unprincipled public men who
have taken part in affairs within our memory would, if tried by
the standard which was in fashion during the latter part of the
seventeenth century, deserve to be regarded as scrupulous and
disinterested.
While these political, religious, and moral changes were taking
place in England, the Royal authority had been without difficulty
reestablished in every other part of the British islands. In
Scotland the restoration of the Stuarts had been hailed with
delight; for it was regarded as the restoration of national
independence. And true it was that the yoke which Cromwell had
imposed was, in appearance, taken away, that the Scottish Estates
again met in their old hall at Edinburgh, and that the Senators
of the College of Justice again administered the Scottish law
according to the old forms. Yet was the independence of the
little kingdom necessarily rather nominal than real; for, as long
as the King had England on his side, he had nothing to apprehend
from disaffection in his other dominions. He was now in such a
situation that he could renew the attempt which had proved
destructive to his father without any danger of his father's
fate. Charles the First had tried to force his own religion by
his regal power on the Scots at a moment when both his religion
and his regal power were unpopular in England; and he had not
only failed, but had raised troubles which had ultimately cost
him his crown and his head. Times had now changed: England was
zealous for monarchy and prelacy; and therefore the scheme which
had formerly been in the highest degree imprudent might be
resumed with little risk to the throne. The government resolved
to set up a prelatical church in Scotland. The design was
disapproved by every Scotchman whose judgment was entitled to
respect. Some Scottish statesmen who were zealous for the King's
prerogative had been bred Presbyterians. Though little troubled
with scruples, they retained a preference for the religion of
their childhood; and they well knew how strong a hold that
religion had on the hearts of their countrymen. They remonstrated
strongly: but, when they found that they remonstrated in vain,
they had not virtue enough to persist in an opposition which
would have given offence to their master; and several of them
stooped to the wickedness and baseness of persecuting what in
their consciences they believed to be the purest form of
Christianity. The Scottish Parliament was so constituted that it
had scarcely ever offered any serious opposition even to Kings
much weaker than Charles then was. Episcopacy, therefore, was
established by law. As to the form of worship, a large discretion
was left to the clergy. In some churches the English Liturgy was
used. In others, the ministers selected from that Liturgy such
prayers and thanksgivings as were likely to be least offensive to
the people. But in general the doxology was sung at the close of
public worship; and the Apostles' Creed was recited when baptism
was administered. By the great body of the Scottish nation the
new Church was detested both as superstitious and as foreign; as
tainted with the corruptions of Rome, and as a mark of the
predominance of England. There was, however, no general
insurrection. The country was not what it had been twenty-two
years before. Disastrous war and alien domination had tamed the
spirit of the people. The aristocracy, which was held in great
honour by the middle class and by the populace, had put itself at
the head of the movement against Charles the First, but proved
obsequious to Charles the Second. From the English Puritans no
aid was now to be expected. They were a feeble party, proscribed
both by law and by public opinion. The bulk of the Scottish
nation, therefore, sullenly submitted, and, with many misgivings
of conscience, attended the ministrations of the Episcopal
clergy, or of Presbyterian divines who had consented to accept
from the government a half toleration, known by the name of the
Indulgence. But there were, particularly in the western lowlands,
many fierce and resolute men who held that the obligation to
observe the Covenant was paramount to the obligation to obey the
magistrate. These people, in defiance of the law, persisted in
meeting to worship God after their own fashion. The Indulgence
they regarded, not as a partial reparation of the wrongs
inflicted by the State on the Church, but as a new wrong, the
more odious because it was disguised under the appearance of a
benefit. Persecution, they said, could only kill the body; but
the black Indulgence was deadly to the soul. Driven from the
towns, they assembled on heaths and mountains. Attacked by the
civil power, they without scruple repelled force by force. At
every conventicle they mustered in arms. They repeatedly broke
out into open rebellion. They were easily defeated, and
mercilessly punished: but neither defeat nor punishment could
subdue their spirit. Hunted down like wild beasts, tortured till
their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by
scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from
England, abandoned at another time to the mercy of troops of
marauders from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood
so savage that the boldest and mightiest oppressor could not but
dread the audacity of their despair.
Such was, during the reign of Charles the Second, the state of
Scotland. Ireland was not less distracted. In that island existed
feuds, compared with which the hottest animosities of English
politicians were lukewarm. The enmity between the Irish Cavaliers
and the Irish Roundheads was almost forgotten in the fiercer
enmity which raged between the English and the Celtic races. The
interval between the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian seemed to
vanish, when compared with the interval which separated both from
the Papist. During the late civil troubles the greater part of
the Irish soil had been transferred from the vanquished nation to
the victors. To the favour of the Crown few either of the old or
of the new occupants had any pretensions. The despoilers and the
despoiled had, for the most part, been rebels alike. The
government was soon perplexed and wearied by the conflicting
claims and mutual accusations of the two incensed factions. Those
colonists among whom Cromwell had portioned out the conquered
territory, and whose descendants are still called Cromwellians,
asserted that the aboriginal inhabitants were deadly enemies of
the English nation under every dynasty, and of the Protestant
religion in every form. They described and exaggerated the
atrocities which had disgraced the insurrection of Ulster: they
urged the King to follow up with resolution the policy of the
Protector; and they were not ashamed to hint that there would
never be peace in Ireland till the old Irish race should be
extirpated. The Roman Catholics extenuated their offense as they
best might, and expatiated in piteous language on the severity of
their punishment, which, in truth, had not been lenient. They
implored Charles not to confound the innocent with the guilty,
and reminded him that many of the guilty had atoned for their
fault by returning to their allegiance, and by defending his
rights against the murderers of his father. The court, sick of
the importunities of two parties, neither of which it had any
reason to love, at length relieved itself from trouble by
dictating a compromise. That system, cruel, but most complete and
energetic, by which Oliver had proposed to make the island
thoroughly English, was abandoned. The Cromwellians were induced
to relinquish a third part of their acquisitions. The land thus
surrendered was capriciously divided among claimants whom the
government chose to favour. But great numbers who protested that
they were innocent of all disloyalty, and some persons who
boasted that their loyalty had been signally displayed, obtained
neither restitution nor compensation, and filled France and Spain
with outcries against the injustice and ingratitude of the House
of Stuart.
Meantime the government had, even in England, ceased to be
popular. The Royalists had begun to quarrel with the court and
with each other; and the party which had been vanquished,
trampled down, and, as it seemed, annihilated, but which had
still retained a strong principle of life, again raised its head,
and renewed the interminable war.
Had the administration been faultless, the enthusiasm with which
the return of the King and the termination of the military
tyranny had been hailed could not have been permanent. For it is
the law of our nature that such fits of excitement shall always
be followed by remissions. The manner in which the court abused
its victory made the remission speedy and complete. Every
moderate man was shocked by the insolence, cruelty, and perfidy
with which the Nonconformists were treated. The penal laws had
effectually purged the oppressed party of those insincere members
whose vices had disgraced it, and had made it again an honest and
pious body of men. The Puritan, a conqueror, a ruler, a
persecutor, a sequestrator, had been detested. The Puritan,
betrayed and evil entreated, deserted by all the timeservers who,
in his prosperity, had claimed brotherhood with him, hunted from
his home, forbidden under severe penalties to pray or receive the
sacrament according to his conscience, yet still firm in his
resolution to obey God rather than man, was, in spite of some
unpleasing recollections, an object of pity and respect to well
constituted minds. These feelings became stronger when it was
noised abroad that the court was not disposed to treat Papists
with the same rigour which had been shown to Presbyterians. A
vague suspicion that the King and the Duke were not sincere
Protestants sprang up and gathered strength. Many persons too who
had been disgusted by the austerity and hypocrisy of the Saints
of the Commonwealth began to be still more disgusted by the open
profligacy of the court and of the Cavaliers, and were disposed
to doubt whether the sullen preciseness of Praise God Barebone
might not be preferable to the outrageous profaneness and
licentiousness of the Buckinghams and Sedleys. Even immoral men,
who were not utterly destitute of sense and public spirit,
complained that the government treated the most serious matters
as trifles, and made trifles its serious business. A King might
be pardoned for amusing his leisure with wine, wit, and beauty.
But it was intolerable that he should sink into a mere lounger
and voluptuary, that the gravest affairs of state should be
neglected, and that the public service should be starved and the
finances deranged in order that harlots and parasites might grow
rich.
A large body of Royalists joined in these complaints, and added
many sharp reflections on the King's ingratitude. His whole
revenue, indeed, would not have sufficed to reward them all in
proportion to their own consciousness of desert. For to every
distressed gentleman who had fought under Rupert or Derby his own
services seemed eminently meritorious, and his own sufferings
eminently severe. Every one had flattered himself that, whatever
became of the rest, he should be largely recompensed for all that
he had lost during the civil troubles, and that the restoration
of the monarchy would be followed by the restoration of his own
dilapidated fortunes. None of these expectants could restrain his
indignation, when he found that he was as poor under the King as
he had been under the Rump or the Protector. The negligence and
extravagance of the court excited the bitter indignation of these
loyal veterans. They justly said that one half of what His
Majesty squandered on concubines and buffoons would gladden the
hearts of hundreds of old Cavaliers who, after cutting down their
oaks and melting their plate to help his father, now wandered
about in threadbare suits, and did not know where to turn for a
meal.
At the same time a sudden fall of rents took place. The income of
every landed proprietor was diminished by five shillings in the
pound. The cry of agricultural distress rose from every shire in
the kingdom; and for that distress the government was, as usual,
held accountable. The gentry, compelled to retrench their
expenses for a period, saw with indignation the increasing
splendour and profusion of Whitehall, and were immovably fixed in
the belief that the money which ought to have supported their
households had, by some inexplicable process, gone to the
favourites of the King.
The minds of men were now in such a temper that every public act
excited discontent. Charles had taken to wife Catharine Princess
of Portugal. The marriage was generally disliked; and the murmurs
became loud when it appeared that the King was not likely to have
any legitimate posterity. Dunkirk, won by Oliver from Spain, was
sold to Lewis the Fourteenth, King of France. This bargain
excited general indignation. Englishmen were already beginning to
observe with uneasiness the progress of the French power, and to
regard the House of Bourbon with the same feeling with which
their grandfathers had regarded the House of Austria. Was it
wise, men asked, at such a time, to make any addition to the
strength of a monarchy already too formidable? Dunkirk was,
moreover, prized by the people, not merely as a place of arms,
and as a key to the Low Countries, but also as a trophy of
English valour. It was to the subjects of Charles what Calais had
been to an earlier generation, and what the rock of Gibraltar, so
manfully defended, through disastrous and perilous years, against
the fleets and armies of a mighty coalition, is to ourselves. The
plea of economy might have had some weight, if it had been urged
by an economical government. But it was notorious that the
charges of Dunkirk fell far short of the sums which were wasted
at court in vice and folly. It seemed insupportable that a
sovereign, profuse beyond example in all that regarded his own
pleasures, should be niggardly in all that regarded the safety
and honour of the state.
The public discontent was heightened, when it was found that,
while Dunkirk was abandoned on the plea of economy, the fortress
of Tangier, which was part of the dower of Queen Catharine, was
repaired and kept up at an enormous charge. That place was
associated with no recollections gratifying to the national
pride: it could in no way promote the national interests: it
involved us in inglorious, unprofitable, and interminable wars
with tribes of half savage Mussulmans and it was situated in a
climate singularly unfavourable to the health and vigour of the
English race.
But the murmurs excited by these errors were faint, when compared
with the clamours which soon broke forth. The government engaged
in war with the United Provinces. The House of Commons readily
voted sums unexampled in our history, sums exceeding those which
had supported the fleets and armies of Cromwell at the time when
his power was the terror of all the world. But such was the
extravagance, dishonesty, and incapacity of those who had
succeeded to his authority, that this liberality proved worse
than useless. The sycophants of the court, ill qualified to
contend against the great men who then directed the arms of
Holland, against such a statesman as De Witt, and such a
commander as De Ruyter, made fortunes rapidly, while the sailors
mutinied from very hunger, while the dockyards were unguarded,
while the ships were leaky and without rigging. It was at length
determined to abandon all schemes of offensive war; and it soon
appeared that even a defensive war was a task too hard for that
administration. The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames, and burned
the ships of war which lay at Chatham. It was said that, on the
very day of that great humiliation, the King feasted with the
ladies of his seraglio, and amused himself with hunting a moth
about the supper room. Then, at length, tardy justice was done to
the memory of Oliver. Everywhere men magnified his valour,
genius, and patriotism. Everywhere it was remembered how, when he
ruled, all foreign powers had trembled at the name of England,
how the States General, now so haughty, had crouched at his feet,
and how, when it was known that he was no more, Amsterdam was
lighted up as for a great deliverance, and children ran along the
canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead. Even Royalists
exclaimed that the state could be saved only by calling the old
soldiers of the Commonwealth to arms. Soon the capital began to
feel the miseries of a blockade. Fuel was scarcely to be
procured. Tilbury Fort, the place where Elizabeth had, with manly
spirit, hurled foul scorn at Parma and Spain, was insulted by the
invaders. The roar of foreign guns was heard, for the first time,
by the citizens of London. In the Council it was seriously
proposed that, if the enemy advanced, the Tower should be
abandoned. Great multitudes of people assembled in the streets
crying out that England was bought and sold. The houses and
carriages of the ministers were attacked by the populace; and it
seemed likely that the government would have to deal at once with
an invasion and with an insurrection. The extreme danger, it is
true, soon passed by. A treaty was concluded, very different from
the treaties which Oliver had been in the habit of signing; and
the nation was once more at peace, but was in a mood scarcely
less fierce and sullen than in the days of shipmoney.
The discontent engendered by maladministration was heightened by
calamities which the best administration could not have averted.
While the ignominious war with Holland was raging, London
suffered two great disasters, such as never, in so short a space
of time, befel one city. A pestilence, surpassing in horror any
that during three centuries had visited the island, swept away,
in six mouths, more than a hundred thousand human beings. And
scarcely had the dead cart ceased to go its rounds, when a fire,
such as had not been known in Europe since the conflagration of
Rome under Nero, laid in ruins the whole city, from the Tower to
the Temple, and from the river to the purlieus of Smithfield.
Had there been a general election while the nation was smarting
under so many disgraces and misfortunes, it is probable that the
Roundheads would have regained ascendency in the state. But the
Parliament was still the Cavalier Parliament, chosen in the
transport of loyalty which had followed the Restoration.
Nevertheless it soon became evident that no English legislature,
however loyal, would now consent to be merely what the
legislature had been under the Tudors. From the death of
Elizabeth to the eve of the civil war, the Puritans, who
predominated in the representative body, had been constantly, by
a dexterous use of the power of the purse, encroaching on the
province of the executive government. The gentlemen who, after
the Restoration, filled the Lower House, though they abhorred the
Puritan name, were well pleased to inherit the fruit of the
Puritan policy. They were indeed most willing to employ the power
which they possessed in the state for the purpose of making their
King mighty and honoured, both at home and abroad: but with the
power itself they were resolved not to part. The great English
revolution of the seventeenth century, that is to say, the
transfer of the supreme control of the executive administration
from the crown to the House of Commons, was, through the whole
long existence of this Parliament, proceeding noiselessly, but
rapidly and steadily. Charles, kept poor by his follies and
vices, wanted money. The Commons alone could legally grant him
money. They could not be prevented from putting their own price
on their grants. The price which they put on their grants was
this, that they should be allowed to interfere with every one of
the King's prerogatives, to wring from him his consent to laws
which he disliked, to break up cabinets, to dictate the course of
foreign policy, and even to direct the administration of war. To
the royal office, and the royal person, they loudly and sincerely
professed the strongest attachment. But to Clarendon they owed no
allegiance; and they fell on him as furiously as their
predecessors had fallen on Strafford. The minister's virtues and
vices alike contributed to his ruin. He was the ostensible head
of the administration, and was therefore held responsible even
for those acts which he had strongly, but vainly, opposed in
Council. He was regarded by the Puritans, and by all who pitied
them, as an implacable bigot, a second Laud, with much more than
Laud's understanding. He had on all occasions maintained that the
Act of indemnity ought to be strictly observed; and this part of
his conduct, though highly honourable to him, made him hateful to
all those Royalists who wished to repair their ruined fortunes by
suing the Roundheads for damages and mesne profits. The
Presbyterians of Scotland attributed to him the downfall of their
Church. The Papists of Ireland attributed to him the loss of
their lands. As father of the Duchess of York, he had an obvious
motive for wishing that there might be a barren Queen; and he was
therefore suspected of having purposely recommended one. The sale
of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him. For the war with Holland,
he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his
arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he
grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he squandered them,
his picture gallery, filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which
had once been the property of ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which
reared its long and stately front right opposite to the humbler
residence of our Kings, drew on him much deserved, and some
undeserved, censure. When the Dutch fleet was in the Thames, it
was against the Chancellor that the rage of the populace was
chiefly directed. His windows were broken; the trees of his
garden were cut down; and a gibbet was set up before his door.
But nowhere was he more detested than in the House of Commons. He
was unable to perceive that the time was fast approaching when
that House, if it continued to exist at all, must be supreme in
the state, when the management of that House would be the most
important department of politics, and when, without the help of
men possessing the ear of that House, it would be impossible to
carry on the government. He obstinately persisted in considering
the Parliament as a body in no respect differing from the
Parliament which had been sitting when, forty years before, he
first began to study law at the Temple. He did not wish to
deprive the legislature of those powers which were inherent in it
by the old constitution of the realm: but the new development of
those powers, though a development natural, inevitable, and to be
prevented only by utterly destroying the powers themselves,
disgusted and alarmed him. Nothing would have induced him to put
the great seal to a writ for raising shipmoney, or to give his
voice in Council for committing a member of Parliament to the
Tower, on account of words spoken in debate: but, when the
Commons began to inquire in what manner the money voted for the
war had been wasted, and to examine into the maladministration of
the navy, he flamed with indignation. Such inquiry, according to
him, was out of their province. He admitted that the House was a
most loyal assembly, that it had done good service to the crown,
and that its intentions were excellent. But, both in public and
in the closet, he, on every occasion, expressed his concern that
gentlemen so sincerely attached to monarchy should unadvisedly
encroach on the prerogative of the monarch. Widely as they
differed in spirit from the members of the Long Parliament, they
yet, he said, imitated that Parliament in meddling with matters
which lay beyond the sphere of the Estates of the realm, and
which were subject to the authority of the crown alone. The
country, he maintained, would never be well governed till the
knights of shires and the burgesses were content to be what their
predecessors had been in the days of Elizabeth. All the plans
which men more observant than himself of the signs of that time
proposed, for the purpose of maintaining a good understanding
between the Court and the Commons, he disdainfully rejected as
crude projects, inconsistent with the old polity of England.
Towards the young orators, who were rising to distinction and
authority in the Lower House, his deportment was ungracious: and
he succeeded in making them, with scarcely an exception, his
deadly enemies. Indeed one of his most serious faults was an
inordinate contempt for youth: and this contempt was the more
unjustifiable, because his own experience in English politics was
by no means proportioned to his age. For so great a part of his
life had been passed abroad that he knew less of that world in
which he found himself on his return than many who might have
been his sons.
For these reasons he was disliked by the Commons. For very
different reasons he was equally disliked by the Court. His
morals as well as his polities were those of an earlier
generation. Even when he was a young law student, living much
with men of wit and pleasure, his natural gravity and his
religious principles had to a great extent preserved him from the
contagion of fashionable debauchery; and he was by no means
likely, in advanced years and in declining health, to turn
libertine. On the vices of the young and gay he looked with an
aversion almost as bitter and contemptuous as that which he felt
for the theological errors of the sectaries. He missed no
opportunity of showing his scorn of the mimics, revellers, and
courtesans who crowded the palace; and the admonitions which he
addressed to the King himself were very sharp, and, what Charles
disliked still more, very long. Scarcely any voice was raised in
favour of a minister loaded with the double odium of faults which
roused the fury of the people, and of virtues which annoyed and
importuned the sovereign. Southampton was no more. Ormond
performed the duties of friendship manfully and faithfully, but
in vain. The Chancellor fell with a great ruin. The seal was
taken from him: the Commons impeached him: his head was not safe:
he fled from the country: an act was passed which doomed him to
perpetual exile; and those who had assailed and undermined him
began to struggle for the fragments of his power.
The sacrifice of Clarendon in some degree took off the edge of
the public appetite for revenge. Yet was the anger excited by the
profusion and negligence of the government, and by the
miscarriages of the late war, by no means extinguished. The
counsellors of Charles, with the fate of the Chancellor before
their eyes, were anxious for their own safety. They accordingly
advised their master to soothe the irritation which prevailed
both in the Parliament and throughout the country, and for that
end, to take a step which has no parallel in the history of the
House of Stuart, and which was worthy of the prudence and
magnanimity of Oliver.
We have now reached a point at which the history of the great
English revolution begins to be complicated with the history of
foreign politics. The power of Spain had, during many years, been
declining. She still, it is true held in Europe the Milanese and
the two Sicilies, Belgium, and Franche Comte. In America her
dominions still spread, on both sides of the equator, far beyond
the limits of the torrid zone. But this great body had been
smitten with palsy, and was not only incapable of giving
molestation to other states, but could not, without assistance,
repel aggression. France was now, beyond all doubt, the greatest
power in Europe. Her resources have, since those days, absolutely
increased, but have not increased so fast as the resources of
England. It must also be remembered that, a hundred and eighty
years ago, the empire of Russia, now a monarchy of the first
class, was as entirely out of the system of European politics as
Abyssinia or Siam, that the House of Brandenburg was then hardly
more powerful than the House of Saxony, and that the republic of
the United States had not then begun to exist. The weight of
France, therefore, though still very considerable, has relatively
diminished. Her territory was not in the days of Lewis the
Fourteenth quite so extensive as at present: but it was large,
compact, fertile, well placed both for attack and for defence,
situated in a happy climate, and inhabited by a brave, active,
and ingenious people. The state implicitly obeyed the direction
of a single mind. The great fiefs which, three hundred years
before, had been, in all but name, independent principalities,
had been annexed to the crown. Only a few old men could remember
the last meeting of the States General. The resistance which the
Huguenots, the nobles, and the parliaments had offered to the
kingly power, had been put down by the two great Cardinals who
had ruled the nation during forty years. The government was now a
despotism, but, at least in its dealings with the upper classes,
a mild and generous despotism, tempered by courteous manners and
chivalrous sentiments. The means at the disposal of the sovereign
were, for that age, truly formidable. His revenue, raised, it is
true, by a severe and unequal taxation which pressed heavily on
the cultivators of the soil, far exceeded that of any other
potentate. His army, excellently disciplined, and commanded by
the greatest generals then living, already consisted of more than
a hundred and twenty thousand men. Such an array of regular
troops had not been seen in Europe since the downfall of the
Roman empire. Of maritime powers France was not the first. But,
though she had rivals on the sea, she had not yet a superior.
Such was her strength during the last forty years of the
seventeenth century, that no enemy could singly withstand her,
and that two great coalitions, in which half Christendom was
united against her, failed of success.
The personal qualities of the French King added to the respect
inspired by the power and importance of his kingdom. No sovereign
has ever represented the majesty of a great state with more
dignity and grace. He was his own prime minister, and performed
the duties of a prime minister with an ability and industry which
could not be reasonably expected from one who had in infancy
succeeded to a crown, and who had been surrounded by flatterers
before he could speak. He had shown, in an eminent degree, two
talents invaluable to a prince, the talent of choosing his
servants well, and the talent of appropriating to himself the
chief part of the credit of their acts. In his dealings with
foreign powers he had some generosity, but no justice. To unhappy
allies who threw themselves at his feet, and had no hope but in
his compassion, he extended his protection with a romantic
disinterestedness, which seemed better suited to a knight errant
than to a statesman. But he broke through the most sacred ties of
public faith without scruple or shame, whenever they interfered
with his interest, or with what he called his glory. His perfidy
and violence, however, excited less enmity than the insolence
with which he constantly reminded his neighbours of his own
greatness and of their littleness. He did not at this time
profess the austere devotion which, at a later period, gave to
his court the aspect of a monastery. On the contrary, he was as
licentious, though by no means as frivolous and indolent, as his
brother of England. But he was a sincere Roman Catholic; and both
his conscience and his vanity impelled him to use his power for
the defence and propagation of the true faith, after the example
of his renowned predecessors, Clovis, Charlemagne, and Saint
Lewis.
Our ancestors naturally looked with serious alarm on the growing
power of France. This feeling, in itself perfectly reasonable,
was mingled with other feelings less praiseworthy. France was our
old enemy. It was against France that the most glorious battles
recorded in our annals had been fought. The conquest of France
had been twice effected by the Plantagenets. The loss of France
had been long remembered as a great national disaster. The title
of King of France was still borne by our sovereigns. The lilies
of France still appeared, mingled with our own lions, on the
shield of the House of Stuart. In the sixteenth century the dread
inspired by Spain had suspended the animosity of which France had
anciently been the object. But the dread inspired by Spain had
given place to contemptuous compassion; and France was again
regarded as our national foe. The sale of Dunkirk to France had
been the most generally unpopular act of the restored King.
Attachment to France had been prominent among the crimes imputed
by the Commons to CIarendon. Even in trifles the public feeling
showed itself. When a brawl took place in the streets of
Westminster between the retinues of the French and Spanish
embassies, the populace, though forcibly prevented from
interfering, had given unequivocal proofs that the old antipathy
to France was not extinct.
France and Spain were now engaged in a more serious contest. One
of the chief objects of the policy of Lewis throughout his life
was to extend his dominions towards the Rhine. For this end he
had engaged in war with Spain, and he was now in the full career
of conquest. The United Provinces saw with anxiety the progress
of his arms. That renowned federation had reached the height of
power, prosperity, and glory. The Batavian territory, conquered
from the waves and defended against them by human art, was in
extent little superior to the principality of Wales. But all that
narrow space was a busy and populous hive, in which new wealth
was every day created, and in which vast masses of old wealth
were hoarded. The aspect of Holland, the rich cultivation, the
innumerable canals, the ever whirling mills, the endless fleets
of barges, the quick succession of great towns, the ports
bristling with thousands of masts, the large and stately
mansions, the trim villas, the richly furnished apartments, the
picture galleries, the summer rouses, the tulip beds, produced on
English travellers in that age an effect similar to the effect
which the first sight of England now produces on a Norwegian or a
Canadian. The States General had been compelled to humble
themselves before Cromwell. But after the Restoration they had
taken their revenge, had waged war with success against Charles,
and had concluded peace on honourable terms. Rich, however, as
the Republic was, and highly considered in Europe, she was no
match for the power of Lewis. She apprehended, not without good
cause, that his kingdom might soon be extended to her frontiers;
and she might well dread the immediate vicinity of a monarch so
great, so ambitious, and so unscrupulous. Yet it was not easy to
devise any expedient which might avert the danger. The Dutch
alone could not turn the scale against France. On the side of the
Rhine no help was to be expected. Several German princes had been
gained by Lewis; and the Emperor himself was embarrassed by the
discontents of Hungary. England was separated from the United
Provinces by the recollection of cruel injuries recently
inflicted and endured; and her policy had, since the restoration,
been so devoid of wisdom and spirit, that it was scarcely
possible to expect from her any valuable assistance
But the fate of Clarendon and the growing ill humour of the
Parliament determined the advisers of Charles to adopt on a
sudden a policy which amazed and delighted the nation.
The English resident at Brussels, Sir William Temple, one of the
most expert diplomatists and most pleasing writers of that age,
had already represented to this court that it was both desirable
and practicable to enter into engagements with the States General
for the purpose of checking the progress of France. For a time
his suggestions had been slighted; but it was now thought
expedient to act on them. He was commissioned to negotiate with
the States General. He proceeded to the Hague, and soon came to
an understanding with John De Witt, then the chief minister of
Holland. Sweden, small as her resources were, had, forty years
before, been raised by the genius of Gustavus Adolphus to a high
rank among European powers, and had not yet descended to her
natural position. She was induced to join on this occasion with
England and the States. Thus was formed that coalition known as
the Triple Alliance. Lewis showed signs of vexation and
resentment, but did not think it politic to draw on himself the
hostility of such a confederacy in addition to that of Spain. He
consented, therefore, to relinquish a large part of the territory
which his armies had occupied. Peace was restored to Europe; and
the English government, lately an object of general contempt,
was, during a few months, regarded by foreign powers with respect
scarcely less than that which the Protector had inspired.
At home the Triple Alliance was popular in the highest degree. It
gratified alike national animosity and national pride. It put a
limit to the encroachments of a powerful and ambitious neighbour.
It bound the leading Protestant states together in close union.
Cavaliers and Roundheads rejoiced in common: but the joy of the
Roundhead was even greater than that of the Cavalier. For England
had now allied herself strictly with a country republican in
government and Presbyterian in religion, against a country ruled
by an arbitrary prince and attached to the Roman Catholic Church.
The House of Commons loudly applauded the treaty; and some
uncourtly grumblers described it as the only good thing that had
been done since the King came in.
The King, however, cared little for the approbation of his
Parliament or of his people. The Triple Alliance he regarded
merely as a temporary expedient for quieting discontents which
had seemed likely to become serious. The independence, the
safety, the dignity of the nation over which he presided were
nothing to him. He had begun to find constitutional restraints
galling. Already had been formed in the Parliament a strong
connection known by the name of the Country Party. That party
included all the public men who leaned towards Puritanism and
Republicanism, and many who, though attached to the Church and to
hereditary monarchy, had been driven into opposition by dread of
Popery, by dread of France, and by disgust at the extravagance,
dissoluteness, and faithlessness of the court. The power of this
band of politicians was constantly growing. Every year some of
those members who had been returned to Parliament during the
loyal excitement of 1661 had dropped off; and the vacant seats
had generally been filled by persons less tractable. Charles did
not think himself a King while an assembly of subjects could call
for his accounts before paying his debts, and could insist on
knowing which of his mistresses or boon companions had
intercepted the money destined for the equipping and manning of
the fleet. Though not very studious of fame, he was galled by the
taunts which were sometimes uttered in the discussions of the
Commons, and on one occasion attempted to restrain the freedom of
speech by disgraceful means. Sir John Coventry, a country
gentleman, had, in debate, sneered at the profligacy of the
court. In any former reign he would probably have been called
before the Privy Council and committed to the Tower. A different
course was now taken. A gang of bullies was secretly sent to slit
the nose of the offender. This ignoble revenge, instead of
quelling the spirit of opposition, raised such a tempest that the
King was compelled to submit to the cruel humiliation of passing
an act which attainted the instruments of his revenge, and which
took from him the power of pardoning them.
But, impatient as he was of constitutional restraints, how was he
to emancipate himself from them? He could make himself despotic
only by the help of a great standing army; and such an army was
not in existence. His revenues did indeed enable him to keep up
some regular troops: but those troops, though numerous enough to
excite great jealousy and apprehension in the House of Commons
and in the country, were scarcely numerous enough to protect
Whitehall and the Tower against a rising of the mob of London.
Such risings were, indeed to be dreaded; for it was calculated
that in the capital and its suburbs dwelt not less than twenty
thousand of Oliver's old soldiers.
Since the King was bent on emancipating himself from the control
of Parliament, and since, in such an enterprise, he could not
hope for effectual aid at home, it followed that he must look for
aid abroad. The power and wealth of the King of France might be
equal to the arduous task of establishing absolute monarchy in
England. Such an ally would undoubtedly expect substantial proofs
of gratitude for such a service. Charles must descend to the rank
of a great vassal, and must make peace and war according to the
directions of the government which protected him. His relation to
Lewis would closely resemble that in which the Rajah of Nagpore
and the King of Oude now stand to the British Government. Those
princes are bound to aid the East India Company in all
hostilities, defensive and offensive, and to have no diplomatic
relations but such as the East India Company shall sanction. The
Company in return guarantees them against insurrection. As long
as they faithfully discharge their obligations to the paramount
power, they are permitted to dispose of large revenues, to fill
their palaces with beautiful women, to besot themselves in the
company of their favourite revellers, and to oppress with
impunity any subject who may incur their displeasure.18 Such a
life would be insupportable to a man of high spirit and of
powerful understanding. But to Charles, sensual, indolent,
unequal to any strong intellectual exertion, and destitute alike
of all patriotism and of all sense of personal dignity, the
prospect had nothing unpleasing.
That the Duke of York should have concurred in the design of
degrading that crown which it was probable that he would himself
one day wear may seem more extraordinary. For his nature was
haughty and imperious; and, indeed, he continued to the very last
to show, by occasional starts and struggles, his impatience of
the French yoke. But he was almost as much debased by
superstition as his brother by indolence and vice. James was now
a Roman Catholic. Religious bigotry had become the dominant
sentiment of his narrow and stubborn mind, and had so mingled
itself with his love of rule, that the two passions could hardly
be distinguished from each other. It seemed highly improbable
that, without foreign aid, he would be able to obtain ascendency,
or even toleration, for his own faith: and he was in a temper to
see nothing humiliating in any step which might promote the
interests of the true Church.
A negotiation was opened which lasted during several months. The
chief agent between the English and French courts was the
beautiful, graceful, and intelligent Henrietta, Duchess of
Orleans, sister of Charles, sister in law of Lewis, and a
favourite with both. The King of England offered to declare
himself a Roman Catholic, to dissolve the Triple Alliance, and to
join with France against Holland, if France would engage to lend
him such military and pecuniary aid as might make him independent
of his parliament. Lewis at first affected to receive these
propositions coolly, and at length agreed to them with the air of
a man who is conferring a great favour: but in truth, the course
which he had resolved to take was one by which he might gain and
could not lose.
It seems certain that he never seriously thought of establishing
despotism and Popery in England by force of arms. He must have
been aware that such an enterprise would be in the highest degree
arduous and hazardous, that it would task to the utmost all the
energies of France during many years, and that it would be
altogether incompatible with more promising schemes of
aggrandisement, which were dear to his heart. He would indeed
willingly have acquired the merit and the glory of doing a great
service on reasonable terms to the Church of which he was a
member. But he was little disposed to imitate his ancestors who,
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, had led the flower of
French chivalry to die in Syria and Egypt: and he well knew that
a crusade against Protestantism in Great Britain would not be
less perilous than the expeditions in which the armies of Lewis
the Seventh and of Lewis the Ninth had perished. He had no motive
for wishing the Stuarts to be absolute. He did not regard the
English constitution with feelings at all resembling those which
have in later times induced princes to make war on the free
institutions of neighbouring nations. At present a great party
zealous for popular government has ramifications in every
civilised country. And important advantage gained anywhere by
that party is almost certain to be the signal for general
commotion. It is not wonderful that governments threatened by a
common danger should combine for the purpose of mutual insurance.
But in the seventeenth century no such danger existed. Between
the public mind of England and the public mind of France, there
was a great gulph. Our institutions and our factions were as
little understood at Paris as at Constantinople. It may be
doubted whether any one of the forty members of the French
Academy had an English volume in his library, or knew
Shakespeare, Jonson, or Spenser, even by name. A few Huguenots,
who had inherited the mutinous spirit of their ancestors, might
perhaps have a fellow feeling with their brethren in the faith,
the English Roundheads: but the Huguenots had ceased to be
formidable. The French, as a people, attached to the Church of
Rome, and proud of the greatness of their King and of their own
loyalty, looked on our struggles against Popery and arbitrary
power, not only without admiration or sympathy, but with strong
disapprobation and disgust. It would therefore be a great error
to ascribe the conduct of Lewis to apprehensions at all
resembling those which, in our age, induced the Holy Alliance to
interfere in the internal troubles of Naples and Spain.
Nevertheless, the propositions made by the court of Whitehall
were most welcome to him. He already meditated gigantic designs,
which were destined to keep Europe in constant fermentation
during more than forty years. He wished to humble the United
Provinces, and to annex Belgium, Franche Comte, and Loraine to
his dominions. Nor was this all. The King of Spain was a sickly
child. It was likely that he would die without issue. His eldest
sister was Queen of France. A day would almost certainly come,
and might come very soon, when the House of Bourbon might lay
claim to that vast empire on which the sun never set. The union
of two great monarchies under one head would doubtless be opposed
by a continental coalition. But for any continental coalition
France singlehanded was a match. England could turn the scale. On
the course which, in such a crisis, England might pursue, the
destinies of the world would depend; and it was notorious that
the English Parliament and nation were strongly attached to the
policy which had dictated the Triple Alliance. Nothing,
therefore, could be more gratifying to Lewis than to learn that
the princes of the House of Stuart needed his help, and were
willing to purchase that help by unbounded subserviency. He
determined to profit by the opportunity, and laid down for
himself a plan to which, without deviation, he adhered, till the
Revolution of 1688 disconcerted all his politics. He professed
himself desirous to promote the designs of the English court. He
promised large aid. He from time to time doled out such aid as
might serve to keep hope alive, and as he could without risk or
inconvenience spare. In this way, at an expense very much less
than that which he incurred in building and decorating Versailles
or Marli, he succeeded in making England, during nearly twenty
years, almost as insignificant a member of the political system
of Europe as the republic of San Marino.
His object was not to destroy our constitution, but to keep the
various elements of which it was composed in a perpetual state of
conflict, and to set irreconcilable enmity between those who had
the power of the purse and those who had the power of the sword.
With this view he bribed and stimulated both parties in turn,
pensioned at once the ministers of the crown and the chiefs of
the opposition, encouraged the court to withstand the seditious
encroachments of the Parliament, and conveyed to the Parliament
intimations of the arbitrary designs of the court.
One of the devices to which he resorted for the purpose of
obtaining an ascendency in the English counsels deserves especial
notice. Charles, though incapable of love in the highest sense of
the word, was the slave of any woman whose person excited his
desires, and whose airs and prattle amused his leisure. Indeed a
husband would be justly derided who should bear from a wife of
exalted rank and spotless virtue half the insolence which the
King of England bore from concubines who, while they owed
everything to his bounty, caressed his courtiers almost before
his face. He had patiently endured the termagant passions of
Barbara Palmer and the pert vivacity of Eleanor Gwynn. Lewis
thought that the most useful envoy who could be sent to London,
would be a handsome, licentious, and crafty Frenchwoman. Such a
woman was Louisa, a lady of the House of Querouaille, whom our
rude ancestors called Madam Carwell. She was soon triumphant over
all her rivals, was created Duchess of Portsmouth, was loaded
with wealth, and obtained a dominion which ended only with the
life of Charles.
The most important conditions of the alliance between the crowns
were digested into a secret treaty which was signed at Dover in
May, 1670, just ten years after the day on which Charles had
landed at that very port amidst the acclamations and joyful tears
of a too confiding people.
By this treaty Charles bound himself to make public profession of
the Roman Catholic religion, to join his arms to those of Lewis
for the purpose of destroying the power of the United Provinces,
and to employ the whole strength of England, by land and sea, in
support of the rights of the House of Bourbon to the vast
monarchy of Spain. Lewis, on the other hand, engaged to pay a
large subsidy, and promised that, if any insurrection should
break out in England, he would send an army at his own charge to
support his ally.
This compact was made with gloomy auspices. Six weeks after it
had been signed and sealed, the charming princess, whose
influence over her brother and brother in law had been so
pernicious to her country, was no more. Her death gave rise to
horrible suspicions which, for a moment, seemed likely to
interrupt the newly formed friendship between the Houses of
Stuart and Bourbon: but in a short time fresh assurances of
undiminished good will were exchanged between the confederates.
The Duke of York, too dull to apprehend danger, or too fanatical
to care about it, was impatient to see the article touching the
Roman Catholic religion carried into immediate execution: but
Lewis had the wisdom to perceive that, if this course were taken,
there would be such an explosion in England as would probably
frustrate those parts of the plan which he had most at heart. It
was therefore determined that Charles should still call himself a
Protestant, and should still, at high festivals, receive the
sacrament according to the ritual of the Church of England. His
more scrupulous brother ceased to appear in the royal chapel.
About this time died the Duchess of York, daughter of the
banished Earl of Clarendon. She had been, during some years, a
concealed Roman Catholic. She left two daughters, Mary and Anne,
afterwards successively Queens of Great Britain. They were bred
Protestants by the positive command of the King, who knew that it
would be vain for him to profess himself a member of the Church
of England, if children who seemed likely to inherit his throne
were, by his permission, brought up as members of the Church of
Rome.
The principal servants of the crown at this time were men whose
names have justly acquired an unenviable notoriety. We must take
heed, however, that we do not load their memory with infamy which
of right belongs to their master. For the treaty of Dover the
King himself is chiefly answerable. He held conferences on it
with the French agents: he wrote many letters concerning it with
his own hand: he was the person who first suggested the most
disgraceful articles which it contained; and he carefully
concealed some of those articles from the majority of his
Cabinet.
Few things in our history are more curious than the origin and
growth of the power now possessed by the Cabinet. From an early
period the Kings of England had been assisted by a Privy Council
to which the law assigned many important functions and duties.
During several centuries this body deliberated on the gravest and
most delicate affairs. But by degrees its character changed. It
became too large for despatch and secrecy. The rank of Privy
Councillor was often bestowed as an honorary distinction on
persons to whom nothing was confided, and whose opinion was never
asked. The sovereign, on the most important occasions, resorted
for advice to a small knot of leading ministers. The advantages
and disadvantages of this course were early pointed out by Bacon,
with his usual judgment and sagacity: but it was not till after
the Restoration that the interior council began to attract
general notice. During many years old fashioned politicians
continued to regard the Cabinet as an unconstitutional and
dangerous board. Nevertheless, it constantly became more and more
important. It at length drew to itself the chief executive power,
and has now been regarded, during several generations as an
essential part of our polity. Yet, strange to say, it still
continues to be altogether unknown to the law: the names of the
noblemen and gentlemen who compose it are never officially
announced to the public: no record is kept of its meetings and
resolutions; nor has its existence ever been recognised by any
Act of Parliament.
During some years the word Cabal was popularly used as synonymous
with Cabinet. But it happened by a whimsical coincidence that, in
1671, the Cabinet consisted of five persons the initial letters
of whose names made up the word Cabal; Clifford, Arlington,
Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. These ministers were
therefore emphatically called the Cabal; and they soon made that
appellation so infamous that it has never since their time been
used except as a term of reproach.
Sir Thomas Clifford was a Commissioner of the Treasury, and had
greatly distinguished himself in the House of Commons. Of the
members of the Cabal he was the most respectable. For, with a
fiery and imperious temper, he had a strong though a lamentably
perverted sense of duty and honour.
Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, then Secretary of State, had since
he came to manhood, resided principally on the Continent, and had
learned that cosmopolitan indifference to constitutions and
religions which is often observable in persons whose life has
been passed in vagrant diplomacy. If there was any form of
government which he liked it was that of France. If there was any
Church for which he felt a preference, it was that of Rome. He
had some talent for conversation, and some talent also for
transacting the ordinary business of office. He had learned,
during a life passed in travelling and negotiating, the art of
accommodating his language and deportment to the society in which
he found himself. His vivacity in the closet amused the King: his
gravity in debates and conferences imposed on the public; and he
had succeeded in attaching to himself, partly by services and
partly by hopes, a considerable number of personal retainers.
Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were men in whom the
immorality which was epidemic among the politicians of that age
appeared in its most malignant type, but variously modified by
greet diversities of temper and understanding. Buckingham was a
sated man of pleasure, who had turned to ambition as to a
pastime. As he had tried to amuse himself with architecture and
music, with writing farces and with seeking for the philosopher's
stone, so he now tried to amuse himself with a secret negotiation
and a Dutch war. He had already, rather from fickleness and love
of novelty than from any deep design, been faithless to every
party. At one time he had ranked among the Cavaliers. At another
time warrants had been out against him for maintaining a
treasonable correspondence with the remains of the Republican
party in the city. He was now again a courtier, and was eager to
win the favour of the King by services from which the most
illustrious of those who had fought and suffered for the royal
house would have recoiled with horror.
Ashley, with a far stronger head, and with a far fiercer and more
earnest ambition, had been equally versatile. But Ashley's
versatility was the effect, not of levity, but of deliberate
selfishness. He had served and betrayed a succession of
governments. But he had timed all his treacheries so well that
through all revolutions, his fortunes had constantly been rising.
The multitude, struck with admiration by a prosperity which,
while everything else was constantly changing, remained
unchangeable, attributed to him a prescience almost miraculous,
and likened him to the Hebrew statesman of whom it is written
that his counsel was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of
God.
Lauderdale, loud and coarse both in mirth and anger, was,
perhaps, under the outward show of boisterous frankness, the most
dishonest man in the whole Cabal. He had made himself conspicuous
among the Scotch insurgents of 1638 by his zeal for the Covenant.
He was accused of having been deeply concerned in the sale of
Charles the First to the English Parliament, and was therefore,
in the estimation of good Cavaliers, a traitor, if possible, of a
worse description than those who had sate in the High Court of
Justice. He often talked with a noisy jocularity of the days when
he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the chief instrument
employed by the court in the work of forcing episcopacy on his
reluctant countrymen; nor did he in that cause shrink from the
unsparing use of the sword, the halter, and the boot. Yet those
who knew him knew that thirty years had made no change in his
real sentiments, that he still hated the memory of Charles the
First, and that he still preferred the Presbyterian form of
church government to every other.
Unscrupulous as Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were, it was
not thought safe to intrust to them the King's intention of
declaring himself a Roman Catholic. A false treaty, in which the
article concerning religion was omitted, was shown to them. The
names and seals of Clifford and Arlington are affixed to the
genuine treaty. Both these statesmen had a partiality for the old
Church, a partiality which the brave and vehement Clifford in no
long time manfully avowed, but which the colder and meaner
Arlington concealed, till the near approach of death scared him
into sincerity. The three other cabinet ministers, however, were
not men to be kept easily in the dark, and probably suspected
more than was distinctly avowed to them. They were certainly
privy to all the political engagements contracted with France,
and were not ashamed to receive large gratifications from Lewis.
The first object of Charles was to obtain from the Commons
supplies which might be employed in executing the secret treaty.
The Cabal, holding power at a time when our government was in a
state of transition, united in itself two different kinds of
vices belonging to two different ages and to two different
systems. As those five evil counsellors were among the last
English statesmen who seriously thought of destroying the
Parliament, so they were the first English statesmen who
attempted extensively to corrupt it. We find in their policy at
once the latest trace of the Thorough of Strafford, and the
earliest trace of that methodical bribery which was afterwards
practiced by Walpole. They soon perceived, however, that, though
the House of Commons was chiefly composed of Cavaliers, and
though places and French gold had been lavished on the members,
there was no chance that even the least odious parts of the
scheme arranged at Dover would be supported by a majority. It was
necessary to have recourse to fraud. The King professed great
zeal for the principles of the Triple Alliance, and pretended
that, in order to hold the ambition of France in check, it would
be necessary to augment the fleet. The Commons fell into the
snare, and voted a grant of eight hundred thousand pounds. The
Parliament was instantly prorogued; and the court, thus
emancipated from control, proceeded to the execution of the great
design.
The financial difficulties however were serious. A war with
Holland could be carried on only at enormous cost. The ordinary
revenue was not more than sufficient to support the government in
time of peace. The eight hundred thousand pounds out of which the
Commons had just been tricked would not defray the naval and
military charge of a single year of hostilities. After the
terrible lesson given by the Long Parliament, even the Cabal did
not venture to recommend benevolences or shipmoney. In this
perplexity Ashley and Clifford proposed a flagitious breach of
public faith. The goldsmiths of London were then not only dealers
in the precious metals, but also bankers, and were in the habit
of advancing large sums of money to the government. In return for
these advances they received assignments on the revenue, and were
repaid with interest as the taxes came in. About thirteen hundred
thousand pounds had been in this way intrusted to the honour of
the state. On a sudden it was announced that it was not
convenient to pay the principal, and that the lenders must
content themselves with interest. They were consequently unable
to meet their own engagements. The Exchange was in an uproar:
several great mercantile houses broke; and dismay and distress
spread through all society. Meanwhile rapid strides were made
towards despotism. Proclamations, dispensing with Acts of
Parliament, or enjoining what only Parliament could lawfully
enjoin, appeared in rapid succession. Of these edicts the most
important was the Declaration of Indulgence. By this instrument
the penal laws against Roman Catholics were set aside; and, that
the real object of the measure might not be perceived, the laws
against Protestant Nonconformists were also suspended.
A few days after the appearance of the Declaration of Indulgence,
war was proclaimed against the United Provinces. By sea the Dutch
maintained the struggle with honour; but on land they were at
first borne down by irresistible force. A great French army
passed the Rhine. Fortress after fortress opened its gates. Three
of the seven provinces of the federation were occupied by the
invaders. The fires of the hostile camp were seen from the top of
the Stadthouse of Amsterdam. The Republic, thus fiercely assailed
from without, was torn at the same time by internal dissensions.
The government was in the hands of a close oligarchy of powerful
burghers. There were numerous selfelected Town Councils, each of
which exercised within its own sphere, many of the rights of
sovereignty. These councils sent delegates to the Provincial
States, and the Provincial States again sent delegates to the
States General. A hereditary first magistrate was no essential
part of this polity. Nevertheless one family, singularly fertile
of great men, had gradually obtained a large and somewhat
indefinite authority. William, first of the name, Prince of
Orange Nassau, and Stadtholder of Holland, had headed the
memorable insurrection against Spain. His son Maurice had been
Captain General and first minister of the States, had, by eminent
abilities and public services, and by some treacherous and cruel
actions, raised himself to almost kingly power, and had
bequeathed a great part of that power to his family. The
influence of the Stadtholders was an object of extreme jealousy
to the municipal oligarchy. But the army, and that great body of
citizens which was excluded from all share in the government,
looked on the Burgomasters and Deputies with a dislike resembling
the dislike with which the legions and the common people of Rome
regarded the Senate, and were as zealous for the House of Orange
as the legions and the common people of Rome for the House of
Caesar. The Stadtholder commanded the forces of the commonwealth,
disposed of all military commands, had a large share of the civil
patronage, and was surrounded by pomp almost regal.
Prince William the Second had been strongly opposed by the
oligarchical party. His life had terminated in the year 1650,
amidst great civil troubles. He died childless: the adherents of
his house were left for a short time without a head; and the
powers which he had exercised were divided among the Town
Councils, the Provincial States, and the States General.
But, a few days after William's death, his widow, Mary, daughter
of Charles the first, King of Great Britain, gave birth to a son,
destined to raise the glory and authority of the House of Nassau
to the highest point, to save the United Provinces from slavery,
to curb the power of France, and to establish the English
constitution on a lasting foundation.
This Prince, named William Henry, was from his birth an object of
serious apprehension to the party now supreme in Holland, and of
loyal attachment to the old friends of his line. He enjoyed high
consideration as the possessor of a splendid fortune, as the
chief of one of the most illustrious houses in Europe, as a
Magnate of the German empire, as a prince of the blood royal of
England, and, above all, as the descendant of the founders of
Batavian liberty. But the high office which had once been
considered as hereditary in his family remained in abeyance; and
the intention of the aristocratical party was that there should
never be another Stadtholder. The want of a first magistrate was,
to a great extent, supplied by the Grand Pensionary of the
Province of Holland, John De Witt, whose abilities, firmness, and
integrity had raised him to unrivalled authority in the councils
of the municipal oligarchy.
The French invasion produced a complete change. The suffering and
terrified people raged fiercely against the government. In their
madness they attacked the bravest captains and the ablest
statesmen of the distressed commonwealth. De Ruyter was insulted
by the rabble. De Witt was torn in pieces before the gate of the
palace of the States General at the Hague. The Prince of Orange,
who had no share in the guilt of the murder, but who, on this
occasion, as on another lamentable occasion twenty years later,
extended to crimes perpetrated in his cause an indulgence which
has left a stain on his glory, became chief of the government
without a rival. Young as he was, his ardent and unconquerable
spirit, though disguised by a cold and sullen manner, soon roused
the courage of his dismayed countrymen. It was in vain that both
his uncle and the French King attempted by splendid offers to
seduce him from the cause of the Republic. To the States General
he spoke a high and inspiriting language. He even ventured to
suggest a scheme which has an aspect of antique heroism, and
which, if it had been accomplished, would have been the noblest
subject for epic song that is to be found in the whole compass of
modern history. He told the deputies that, even if their natal
soil and the marvels with which human industry had covered it
were buried under the ocean, all was not lost. The Hollanders
might survive Holland. Liberty and pure religion, driven by
tyrants and bigots from Europe, might take refuge in the farthest
isles of Asia. The shipping in the ports of the republic would
suffice to carry two hundred thousand emigrants to the Indian
Archipelago. There the Dutch commonwealth might commence a new
and more glorious existence, and might rear, under the Southern
Cross, amidst the sugar canes and nutmeg trees, the Exchange of a
wealthier Amsterdam, and the schools of a more learned Leyden.
The national spirit swelled and rose high. The terms offered by
the allies were firmly rejected. The dykes were opened. The whole
country was turned into one great lake from which the cities,
with their ramparts and steeples, rose like islands. The invaders
were forced to save themselves from destruction by a precipitate
retreat. Lewis, who, though he sometimes thought it necessary to
appear at the head of his troops, greatly preferred a palace to a
camp, had already returned to enjoy the adulation of poets and
the smiles of ladies in the newly planted alleys of Versailles.
And now the tide turned fast. The event of the maritime war had
been doubtful; by land the United Provinces had obtained a
respite; and a respite, though short, was of infinite importance.
Alarmed by the vast designs of Lewis, both the branches of the
great House of Austria sprang to arms. Spain and Holland, divided
by the memory of ancient wrongs and humiliations, were reconciled
by the nearness of the common danger. From every part of Germany
troops poured towards the Rhine. The English government had
already expended all the funds which had been obtained by
pillaging the public creditor. No loan could be expected from the
City. An attempt to raise taxes by the royal authority would have
at once produced a rebellion; and Lewis, who had now to maintain
a contest against half Europe, was in no condition to furnish the
means of coercing the people of England. It was necessary to
convoke the Parliament.
In the spring of 1673, therefore, the Houses reassembled after a
recess of near two years. Clifford, now a peer and Lord
Treasurer, and Ashley, now Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord
Chancellor, were the persons on whom the King principally relied
as Parliamentary managers. The Country Party instantly began to
attack the policy of the Cabal. The attack was made, not in the
way of storm. but by slow and scientific approaches. The Commons
at first held out hopes that they would give support to the
king's foreign policy, but insisted that he should purchase that
support by abandoning his whole system of domestic policy. Their
chief object was to obtain the revocation of the Declaration of
Indulgence. Of all the many unpopular steps taken by the
government the most unpopular was the publishing of this
Declaration. The most opposite sentiments had been shocked by an
act so liberal, done in a manner so despotic. All the enemies of
religious freedom, and all the friends of civil freedom, found
themselves on the same side; and these two classes made up
nineteen twentieths of the nation. The zealous churchman
exclaimed against the favour which had been shown both to the
Papist and to the Puritan. The Puritan, though he might rejoice
in the suspension of the persecution by which he had been
harassed, felt little gratitude for a toleration which he was to
share with Antichrist. And all Englishmen who valued liberty and
law, saw with uneasiness the deep inroad which the prerogative
had made into the province of the legislature.
It must in candour be admitted that the constitutional question
was then not quite free from obscurity. Our ancient Kings had
undoubtedly claimed and exercised the right of suspending the
operation of penal laws. The tribunals had recognised that right.
Parliaments had suffered it to pass unchallenged. That some such
right was inherent in the crown, few even of the Country Party
ventured, in the face of precedent and authority, to deny. Yet it
was clear that, if this prerogative were without limit, the
English government could scarcely be distinguished from a pure
despotism. That there was a limit was fully admitted by the King
and his ministers. Whether the Declaration of Indulgence lay
within or without the limit was the question; and neither party
could succeed in tracing any line which would bear examination.
Some opponents of the government complained that the Declaration
suspended not less than forty statutes. But why not forty as well
as one? There was an orator who gave it as his opinion that the
King might constitutionally dispense with bad laws, but not with
good laws. The absurdity of such a distinction it is needless to
expose. The doctrine which seems to have been generally received
in the House of Commons was, that the dispensing power was
confined to secular matters, and did not extend to laws enacted
for the security of the established religion. Yet, as the King
was supreme head of the Church, it should seem that, if he
possessed the dispensing power at all, he might well possess that
power where the Church was concerned. When the courtiers on the
other side attempted to point out the bounds of this prerogative,
they were not more successful than the opposition had been.
The truth is that the dispensing power was a great anomaly in
politics. It was utterly inconsistent in theory with the
principles of mixed government: but it had grown up in times when
people troubled themselves little about theories.19 It had not
been very grossly abused in practice. It had therefore been
tolerated, and had gradually acquired a kind of prescription. At
length it was employed, after a long interval, in an enlightened
age, and at an important conjuncture, to an extent never before
known, and for a purpose generally abhorred. It was instantly
subjected to a severe scrutiny. Men did not, indeed, at first,
venture to pronounce it altogether unconstitutional. But they
began to perceive that it was at direct variance with the spirit
of the constitution, and would, if left unchecked, turn the
English government from a limited into an absolute monarchy.
Under the influence of such apprehensions, the Commons denied the
King's right to dispense, not indeed with all penal statutes, but
with penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical, and gave him
plainly to understand that, unless he renounced that right, they
would grant no supply for the Dutch war. He, for a moment, showed
some inclination to put everything to hazard; but he was strongly
advised by Lewis to submit to necessity, and to wait for better
times, when the French armies, now employed in an arduous
struggle on the Continent, might be available for the purpose of
suppressing discontent in England. In the Cabal itself the signs
of disunion and treachery began to appear. Shaftesbury, with his
proverbial sagacity, saw that a violent reaction was at hand, and
that all things were tending towards a crisis resembling that of
1640. He was determined that such a crisis should not find him in
the situation of Strafford. He therefore turned suddenly round,
and acknowledged, in the House of Lords, that the Declaration was
illegal. The King, thus deserted by his ally and by his
Chancellor, yielded, cancelled the Declaration, and solemnly
promised that it should never be drawn into precedent.
Even this concession was insufficient. The Commons, not content
with having forced their sovereign to annul the Indulgence, next
extorted his unwilling assent to a celebrated law, which
continued in force down to the reign of George the Fourth. This
law, known as the Test Act, provided that all persons holding any
office, civil or military, should take the oath of supremacy,
should subscribe a declaration against transubstantiation, and
should publicly receive the sacrament according to the rites of
the Church of England. The preamble expressed hostility only to
the Papists: but the enacting clauses were scarcely more
unfavourable to the Papists than to the rigid Puritans. The
Puritans, however, terrified at the evident leaning of the court
towards Popery, and encouraged by some churchmen to hope that, as
soon as the Roman Catholics should have been effectually
disarmed, relief would be extended to Protestant Nonconformists,
made little opposition; nor could the King, who was in extreme
want of money, venture to withhold his sanction. The act was
passed; and the Duke of York was consequently under the necessity
of resigning the great place of Lord High Admiral.
Hitherto the Commons had not declared against the Dutch war. But,
when the King had, in return for money cautiously doled out,
relinquished his whole plan of domestic policy, they fell
impetuously on his foreign policy. They requested him to dismiss
Buckingham and Lauderdale from his councils forever, and
appointed a committee to consider the propriety of impeaching
Arlington. In a short time the Cabal was no more. Clifford, who,
alone of the five, had any claim to be regarded as an honest man,
refused to take the new test, laid down his white staff, and
retired to his country seat. Arlington quitted the post of
Secretary of State for a quiet and dignified employment in the
Royal household. Shaftesbury and Buckingham made their peace with
the opposition, and appeared at the head of the stormy democracy
of the city. Lauderdale, however, still continued to be minister
for Scotch affairs, with which the English Parliament could not
interfere.
And now the Commons urged the King to make peace with Holland,
and expressly declared that no more supplies should be granted
for the war, unless it should appear that the enemy obstinately
refused to consent to reasonable terms. Charles found it
necessary to postpone to a more convenient season all thought of
executing the treaty of Dover, and to cajole the nation by
pretending to return to the policy of the Triple Alliance.
Temple, who, during the ascendency of the Cabal, had lived in
seclusion among his books and flower beds, was called forth from
his hermitage. By his instrumentality a separate peace was
concluded with the United Provinces; and he again became
ambassador at the Hague, where his presence was regarded as a
sure pledge for the sincerity of his court.
The chief direction of affairs was now intrusted to Sir Thomas
Osborne, a Yorkshire baronet, who had, in the House of Commons,
shown eminent talents for business and debate. Osborne became
Lord Treasurer, and was soon created Earl of Danby. He was not a
man whose character, if tried by any high standard of morality,
would appear to merit approbation. He was greedy of wealth and
honours, corrupt himself, and a corrupter of others. The Cabal
had bequeathed to him the art of bribing Parliaments, an art
still rude, and giving little promise of the rare perfection to
which it was brought in the following century. He improved
greatly on the plan of the first inventors. They had merely
purchased orators: but every man who had a vote, might sell
himself to Danby. Yet the new minister must not be confounded
with the negotiators of Dover. He was not without the feelings of
an Englishman and a Protestant; nor did he, in his solicitude for
his own interests, ever wholly forget the interests of his
country and of his religion. He was desirous, indeed, to exalt
the prerogative: but the means by which he proposed to exalt it
were widely different from those which had been contemplated by
Arlington and Clifford. The thought of establishing arbitrary
power, by calling in the aid of foreign arms, and by reducing the
kingdom to the rank of a dependent principality, never entered
into his mind. His plan was to rally round the monarchy those
classes which had been the firm allies of the monarchy during the
troubles of the preceding generation, and which had been
disgusted by the recent crimes and errors of the court. With the
help of the old Cavalier interest, of the nobles, of the country
gentlemen, of the clergy, and of the Universities, it might, he
conceived, be possible to make Charles, not indeed an absolute
sovereign, but a sovereign scarcely less powerful than Elizabeth
had been.
Prompted by these feelings, Danby formed the design of securing
to the Cavalier party the exclusive possession of all political
power both executive and legislative. In the year 1675,
accordingly, a bill was offered to the Lords which provided that
no person should hold any office, or should sit in either House
of Parliament, without first declaring on oath that he considered
resistance to the kingly power as in all cases criminal, and that
he would never endeavour to alter the government either in Church
or State. During several weeks the debates, divisions, and
protests caused by this proposition kept the country in a state
of excitement. The opposition in the House of Lords, headed by
two members of the Cabal who were desirous to make their peace
with the nation, Buckingham and Shaftesbury, was beyond all
precedent vehement and pertinacious, and at length proved
successful. The bill was not indeed rejected, but was retarded,
mutilated, and at length suffered to drop.
So arbitrary and so exclusive was Danby's scheme of domestic
policy. His opinions touching foreign policy did him more honour.
They were in truth directly opposed to those of the Cabal and
differed little from those of the Country Party. He bitterly
lamented the degraded situation to which England was reduced, and
declared, with more energy than politeness, that his dearest wish
was to cudgel the French into a proper respect for her. So little
did he disguise his feelings that, at a great banquet where the
most illustrious dignitaries of the State and of the Church were
assembled, he not very decorously filled his glass to the
confusion of all who were against a war with France. He would
indeed most gladly have seen his country united with the powers
which were then combined against Lewis, and was for that end bent
on placing Temple, the author of the Triple Alliance, at the head
of the department which directed foreign affairs. But the power
of the prime minister was limited. In his most confidential
letters he complained that the infatuation of his master
prevented England from taking her proper place among European
nations. Charles was insatiably greedy of French gold: he had by
no means relinquished the hope that he might, at some future day,
be able to establish absolute monarchy by the help of the French
arms; and for both reasons he wished to maintain a good
understanding with the court of Versailles.
Thus the sovereign leaned towards one system of foreign politics,
and the minister towards a system diametrically opposite. Neither
the sovereign nor the minister, indeed, was of a temper to pursue
any object with undeviating constancy. Each occasionally yielded
to the importunity of the other; and their jarring inclinations
and mutual concessions gave to the whole administration a
strangely capricious character. Charles sometimes, from levity
and indolence, suffered Danby to take steps which Lewis resented
as mortal injuries. Danby, on the other hand, rather than
relinquish his great place, sometimes stooped to compliances
which caused him bitter pain and shame. The King was brought to
consent to a marriage between the Lady Mary, eldest daughter and
presumptive heiress of the Duke of York. and William of Orange,
the deadly enemy of France and the hereditary champion of the
Reformation. Nay, the brave Earl of Ossory, son of Ormond, was
sent to assist the Dutch with some British troops, who, on the
most bloody day of the whole war, signally vindicated the
national reputation for stubborn courage. The Treasurer, on the
other hand, was induced not only to connive at some scandalous
pecuniary transactions which took place between his master and
the court of Versailles, but to become, unwillingly indeed and
ungraciously, an agent in those transactions.
Meanwhile the Country Party was driven by two strong feelings in
two opposite directions. The popular leaders were afraid of the
greatness of Lewis, who was not only making head against the
whole strength of the continental alliance, but was even gaining
ground. Yet they were afraid to entrust their own King with the
means of curbing France, lest those means should he used to
destroy the liberties of England. The conflict between these
apprehensions, both of which were perfectly legitimate, made the
policy of the Opposition seem as eccentric and fickle as that of
the Court. The Commons called for a war with France, till the
King, pressed by Danby to comply with their wish, seemed disposed
to yield, and began to raise an army. But, as soon as they saw
that the recruiting had commenced, their dread of Lewis gave
place to a nearer dread. They began to fear that the new levies
might be employed on a service in which Charles took much more
interest than in the defence of Flanders. They therefore refused
supplies, and clamoured for disbanding as loudly as they had just
before clamoured for arming. Those historians who have severely
reprehended this inconsistency do not appear to have made
sufficient allowance for the embarrassing situation of subjects
who have reason to believe that their prince is conspiring with a
foreign and hostile power against their liberties. To refuse him
military resources is to leave the state defenceless. Yet to give
him military resources may be only to arm him against the state.
In such circumstances vacillation cannot be considered as a proof
of dishonesty or even of weakness.
These jealousies were studiously fomented by the French King. He
had long kept England passive by promising to support the throne
against the Parliament. He now, alarmed at finding that the
patriotic counsels of Danby seemed likely to prevail in the
closet, began to inflame the Parliament against the throne.
Between Lewis and the Country Party there was one thing, and one
only in common, profound distrust of Charles. Could the Country
Party have been certain that their sovereign meant only to make
war on France, they would have been eager to support him. Could
Lewis have been certain that the new levies were intended only to
make war on the constitution of England, he would have made no
attempt to stop them. But the unsteadiness and faithlessness of
Charles were such that the French Government and the English
opposition, agreeing in nothing else, agreed in disbelieving his
protestations, and were equally desirous to keep him poor and
without an army. Communications were opened between Barillon, the
Ambassador of Lewis, and those English politicians who had always
professed, and who indeed sincerely felt, the greatest dread and
dislike of the French ascendency. The most upright of the Country
Party, William Lord Russell, son of the Earl of Bedford, did not
scruple to concert with a foreign mission schemes for
embarrassing his own sovereign. This was the whole extent of
Russell's offence. His principles and his fortune alike raised
him above all temptations of a sordid kind: but there is too much
reason to believe that some of his associates were less
scrupulous. It would be unjust to impute to them the extreme
wickedness of taking bribes to injure their country. On the
contrary, they meant to serve her: but it is impossible to deny
that they were mean and indelicate enough to let a foreign prince
pay them for serving her. Among those who cannot be acquitted of
this degrading charge was one man who is popularly considered as
the personification of public spirit, and who, in spite of some
great moral and intellectual faults, has a just claim to be
called a hero, a philosopher, and a patriot. It is impossible to
see without pain such a name in the list of the pensioners of
France. Yet it is some consolation to reflect that, in our time,
a public man would be thought lost to all sense of duty and of
shame, who should not spurn from him a temptation which conquered
the virtue and the pride of Algernon Sydney.
The effect of these intrigues was that England, though she
occasionally took a menacing attitude, remained inactive till the
continental war, having lasted near seven years, was terminated
by the treaty of Nimeguen. The United Provinces, which in 1672
had seemed to be on the verge of utter ruin, obtained honourable
and advantageous terms. This narrow escape was generally ascribed
to the ability and courage of the young Stadtholder. His fame was
great throughout Europe, and especially among the English, who
regarded him as one of their own princes, and rejoiced to see him
the husband of their future Queen. France retained many important
towns in the Low Countries and the great province of Franche
Comte. Almost the whole loss was borne by the decaying monarchy
of Spain.
A few months after the termination of hostilities on the
Continent came a great crisis in English politics. Towards such a
crisis things had been tending during eighteen years. The whole
stock of popularity, great as it was, with which the King had
commenced his administration, had long been expended. To loyal
enthusiasm had succeeded profound disaffection. The public mind
had now measured back again the space over which it had passed
between 1640 and 1660, and was once more in the state in which it
had been when the Long Parliament met.
The prevailing discontent was compounded of many feelings. One of
these was wounded national pride. That generation had seen
England, during a few years, allied on equal terms with France,
victorious over Holland and Spain, the mistress of the sea, the
terror of Rome, the head of the Protestant interest. Her
resources had not diminished; and it might have been expected
that she would have been at least as highly considered in Europe
under a legitimate King, strong in the affection and willing
obedience of his subjects, as she had been under an usurper whose
utmost vigilance and energy were required to keep down a mutinous
people. Yet she had, in consequence of the imbecility and
meanness of her rulers, sunk so low that any German or Italian
principality which brought five thousand men into the field was a
more important member of the commonwealth of nations.
With the sense of national humiliation was mingled anxiety for
civil liberty. Rumours, indistinct indeed, but perhaps the more
alarming by reason of their indistinctness, imputed to the court
a deliberate design against all the constitutional rights of
Englishmen. It had even been whispered that this design was to be
carried into effect by the intervention of foreign arms. The
thought of Such intervention made the blood, even of the
Cavaliers, boil in their veins. Some who had always professed the
doctrine of non-resistance in its full extent were now heard to
mutter that there was one limitation to that doctrine. If a
foreign force were brought over to coerce the nation, they would
not answer for their own patience.
But neither national pride nor anxiety for public liberty had so
great an influence on the popular mind as hatred of the Roman
Catholic religion. That hatred had become one of the ruling
passions of the community, and was as strong in the ignorant and
profane as in those who were Protestants from conviction. The
cruelties of Mary's reign, cruelties which even in the most
accurate and sober narrative excite just detestation, and which
were neither accurately nor soberly related in the popular
martyrologies, the conspiracies against Elizabeth, and above all
the Gunpowder Plot, had left in the minds of the vulgar a deep
and bitter feeling which was kept up by annual commemorations,
prayers, bonfires, and processions. It should be added that those
classes which were peculiarly distinguished by attachment to the
throne, the clergy and the landed gentry, had peculiar reasons
for regarding the Church of Rome with aversion. The clergy
trembled for their benefices; the landed gentry for their abbeys
and great tithes. While the memory of the reign of the Saints was
still recent, hatred of Popery had in some degree given place to
hatred of Puritanism; but, during the eighteen years which had
elapsed since the Restoration, the hatred of Puritanism had
abated, and the hatred of Popery had increased. The stipulations
of the treaty of Dover were accurately known to very few; but
some hints had got abroad. The general impression was that a
great blow was about to be aimed at the Protestant religion. The
King was suspected by many of a leaning towards Rome. His brother
and heir presumptive was known to be a bigoted Roman Catholic.
The first Duchess of York had died a Roman Catholic. James had
then, in defiance of the remonstrances of the House of Commons,
taken to wife the Princess Mary of Modena, another Roman
Catholic. If there should be sons by this marriage, there was
reason to fear that they might be bred Roman Catholics, and that
a long succession of princes, hostile to the established faith,
might sit on the English throne. The constitution had recently
been violated for the purpose of protecting the Roman Catholics
from the penal laws. The ally by whom the policy of England had,
during many years, been chiefly governed, was not only a Roman
Catholic, but a persecutor of the reformed Churches. Under such
circumstances it is not strange that the common people should
have been inclined to apprehend a return of the times of her whom
they called Bloody Mary.
Thus the nation was in such a temper that the smallest spark
might raise a flame. At this conjuncture fire was set in two
places at once to the vast mass of combustible matter; and in a
moment the whole was in a blaze.
The French court, which knew Danby to be its mortal enemy,
artfully contrived to ruin him by making him pass for its friend.
Lewis, by the instrumentality of Ralph Montague, a faithless and
shameless man who had resided in France as minister from England,
laid before the House of Commons proofs that the Treasurer had
been concerned in an application made by the Court of Whitehall
to the Court of Versailles for a sum of money. This discovery
produced its natural effect. The Treasurer was, in truth, exposed
to the vengeance of Parliament, not on account of his
delinquencies, but on account of his merits; not because he had
been an accomplice in a criminal transaction, but because he had
been a most unwilling and unserviceable accomplice. But of the
circumstances, which have, in the judgment of posterity, greatly
extenuated his fault, his contemporaries were ignorant. In their
view he was the broker who had sold England to France. It seemed
clear that his greatness was at an end, and doubtful whether his
head could be saved.
Yet was the ferment excited by this discovery slight, when
compared with the commotion which arose when it was noised abroad
that a great Popish plot had been detected. One Titus Oates, a
clergyman of the Church of England, had, by his disorderly life
and heterodox doctrine, drawn on himself the censure of his
spiritual superiors, had been compelled to quit his benefice, and
had ever since led an infamous and vagrant life. He had once
professed himself a Roman Catholic, and had passed some time on
the Continent in English colleges of the order of Jesus. In those
seminaries he had heard much wild talk about the best means of
bringing England back to the true Church. From hints thus
furnished he constructed a hideous romance, resembling rather the
dream of a sick man than any transaction which ever took place in
the real world. The Pope, he said, had entrusted the government
of England to the Jesuits. The Jesuits had, by commissions under
the seal of their society, appointed Roman Catholic clergymen,
noblemen, and gentlemen, to all the highest offices in Church and
State. The Papists had burned down London once. They had tried to
burn it down again. They were at that moment planning a scheme
for setting fire to all the shipping in the Thames. They were to
rise at a signal and massacre all their Protestant neighbours. A
French army was at the same time to land in Ireland. All the
leading statesmen and divines of England were to be murdered.
Three or four schemes had been formed for assassinating the King.
He was to be stabbed. He was to be poisoned in his medicine He
was to be shot with silver bullets. The public mind was so sore
and excitable that these lies readily found credit with the
vulgar; and two events which speedily took place led even some
reflecting men to suspect that the tale, though evidently
distorted and exaggerated, might have some foundation.
Edward Coleman, a very busy, and not very honest, Roman Catholic
intriguer, had been among the persons accused. Search was made
for his papers. It was found that he had just destroyed the
greater part of them. But a few which had escaped contained some
passages such as, to minds strongly prepossessed, might seem to
confirm the evidence of Oates. Those passages indeed, when
candidly construed, appear to express little more than the hopes
which the posture of affairs, the predilections of Charles, the
still stronger predilections of James, and the relations existing
between the French and English courts, might naturally excite in
the mind of a Roman Catholic strongly attached to the interests
of his Church. But the country was not then inclined to construe
the letters of Papists candidly; and it was urged, with some show
of reason, that, if papers which had been passed over as
unimportant were filled with matter so suspicious, some great
mystery of iniquity must have been contained in those documents
which had been carefully committed to the flames.
A few days later it was known that Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, an
eminent justice of the peace who had taken the depositions of
Oates against Coleman, had disappeared. Search was made; and
Godfrey's corpse was found in a field near London. It was clear
that he had died by violence. It was equally clear that he had
not been set upon by robbers. His fate is to this day a secret.
Some think that he perished by his own hand; some, that he was
slain by a private enemy. The most improbable supposition is that
he was murdered by the party hostile to the court, in order to
give colour to the story of the plot. The most probable
supposition seems, on the whole, to be that some hotheaded Roman
Catholic, driven to frenzy by the lies of Oates and by the
insults of the multitude, and not nicely distinguishing between
the perjured accuser and the innocent magistrate, had taken a
revenge of which the history of persecuted sects furnishes but
too many examples. If this were so, the assassin must have
afterwards bitterly execrated his own wickedness and folly. The
capital and the whole nation went mad with hatred and fear. The
penal laws, which had begun to lose something of their edge, were
sharpened anew. Everywhere justices were busied in searching
houses and seizing papers. All the gaols were filled with
Papists. London had the aspect of a city in a state of siege. The
trainbands were under arms all night. Preparations were made for
barricading the great thoroughfares. Patrols marched up and down
the streets. Cannon were planted round Whitehall. No citizen
thought himself safe unless he carried under his coat a small
flail loaded with lead to brain the Popish assassins. The corpse
of the murdered magistrate was exhibited during several days to
the gaze of great multitudes, and was then committed to the grave
with strange and terrible ceremonies, which indicated rather fear
and the thirst of vengeance shall sorrow or religious hope. The
Houses insisted that a guard should be placed in the vaults over
which they sate, in order to secure them against a second
Gunpowder Plot. All their proceedings were of a piece with this
demand. Ever since the reign of Elizabeth the oath of supremacy
had been exacted from members of the House of Commons. Some Roman
Catholics, however, had contrived so to interpret this oath that
they could take it without scruple. A more stringent test was now
added: every member of Parliament was required to make the
Declaration against Transubstantiation; and thus the Roman
Catholic Lords were for the first time excluded from their seats.
Strong resolutions were adopted against the Queen. The Commons
threw one of the Secretaries of State into prison for having
countersigned commissions directed to gentlemen who were not good
Protestants. They impeached the Lord Treasurer of high treason.
Nay, they so far forgot the doctrine which, while the memory of
the civil war was still recent, they had loudly professed, that
they even attempted to wrest the command of the militia out of
the King's hands. To such a temper had eighteen years of
misgovernment brought the most loyal Parliament that had ever met
in England.
Yet it may seem strange that, even in that extremity, the King
should have ventured to appeal to the people; for the people were
more excited than their representatives. The Lower House,
discontented as it was, contained a larger number of Cavaliers
than were likely to find seats again. But it was thought that a
dissolution would put a stop to the prosecution of the Lord
Treasurer, a prosecution which might probably bring to light all
the guilty mysteries of the French alliance, and might thus cause
extreme personal annoyance and embarrassment to Charles.
Accordingly, in January, 1679, the Parliament, which had been in
existence ever since the beginning of the year 1661, was
dissolved; and writs were issued for a general election.
During some weeks the contention over the whole country was
fierce and obstinate beyond example. Unprecedented sums were
expended. New tactics were employed. It was remarked by the
pamphleteers of that time as something extraordinary that horses
were hired at a great charge for the conveyance of electors. The
practice of splitting freeholds for the purpose of multiplying
votes dates from this memorable struggle. Dissenting preachers,
who had long hidden themselves in quiet nooks from persecution,
now emerged from their retreats, and rode from village to
village, for the purpose of rekindling the zeal of the scattered
people of God. The tide ran strong against the government. Most
of the new members came up to Westminster in a mood little
differing from that of their predecessors who had sent Strafford
and Laud to the Tower.
Meanwhile the courts of justice, which ought to be, in the midst
of political commotions, sure places of refuge for the innocent
of every party, were disgraced by wilder passions and fouler
corruptions than were to be found even on the hustings. The tale
of Oates, though it had sufficed to convulse the whole realm,
would not, unless confirmed by other evidence, suffice to destroy
the humblest of those whom he had accused. For, by the old law of
England, two witnesses are necessary to establish a charge of
treason. But the success of the first impostor produced its
natural consequences. In a few weeks he had been raised from
penury and obscurity to opulence, to power which made him the
dread of princes and nobles, and to notoriety such as has for low
and bad minds all the attractions of glory. He was not long
without coadjutors and rivals. A wretch named Carstairs, who had
earned a livelihood in Scotland by going disguised to
conventicles and then informing against the preachers, led the
way. Bedloe, a noted swindler, followed; and soon from all the
brothels, gambling houses, and spunging houses of London, false
witnesses poured forth to swear away the lives of Roman
Catholics. One came with a story about an army of thirty thousand
men who were to muster in the disguise of pilgrims at Corunna,
and to sail thence to Wales. Another had been promised
canonisation and five hundred pounds to murder the King. A third
had stepped into an eating house in Covent Garden, and had there
heard a great Roman Catholic banker vow, in the hearing of all
the guests and drawers. to kill the heretical tyrant. Oates, that
he might not be eclipsed by his imitators, soon added a large
supplement to his original narrative. He had the portentous
impudence to affirm, among other things, that he had once stood
behind a door which was ajar, and had there overheard the Queen
declare that she had resolved to give her consent to the
assassination of her husband. The vulgar believed, and the
highest magistrates pretended to believe, even such fictions as
these. The chief judges of the realm were corrupt, cruel, and
timid. The leaders of the Country Party encouraged the prevailing
delusion. The most respectable among them, indeed, were
themselves so far deluded as to believe the greater part of the
evidence of the plot to be true. Such men as Shaftesbury and
Buckingham doubtless perceived that the whole was a romance. But
it was a romance which served their turn; and to their seared
consciences the death of an innocent man gave no more uneasiness
than the death of a partridge. The juries partook of the feelings
then common throughout the nation, and were encouraged by the
bench to indulge those feelings without restraint. The multitude
applauded Oates and his confederates, hooted and pelted the
witnesses who appeared on behalf of the accused, and shouted with
joy when the verdict of Guilty was pronounced. It was in vain
that the sufferers appealed to the respectability of their past
lives: for the public mind was possessed with a belief that the
more conscientious a Papist was, the more likely he must be to
plot against a Protestant government. It was in vain that, just
before the cart passed from under their feet, they resolutely
affirmed their innocence: for the general opinion was that a good
Papist considered all lies which were serviceable to his Church
as not only excusable but meritorious.
While innocent blood was shedding under the forms of justice, the
new Parliament met; and such was the violence of the predominant
party that even men whose youth had been passed amidst
revolutions men who remembered the attainder of Strafford, the
attempt on the five members, the abolition of the House of Lords,
the execution of the King, stood aghast at the aspect of public
affairs. The impeachment of Danby was resumed. He pleaded the
royal pardon. But the Commons treated the plea with contempt, and
insisted that the trial should proceed. Danby, however, was not
their chief object. They were convinced that the only effectual
way of securing the liberties and religion of the nation was to
exclude the Duke of York from the throne.
The King was in great perplexity. He had insisted that his
brother, the sight of whom inflamed the populace to madness,
should retire for a time to Brussels: but this concession did not
seem to have produced any favourable effect. The Roundhead party
was now decidedly preponderant. Towards that party leaned
millions who had, at the time of the Restoration, leaned towards
the side of prerogative. Of the old Cavaliers many participated
in the prevailing fear of Popery, and many, bitterly resenting
the ingratitude of the prince for whom they had sacrificed so
much, looked on his distress as carelessly as he had looked on
theirs. Even the Anglican clergy, mortified and alarmed by the
apostasy of the Duke of York, so far countenanced the opposition
as to join cordially in the outcry against the Roman Catholics.
The King in this extremity had recourse to Sir William Temple. Of
all the official men of that age Temple had preserved the fairest
character. The Triple Alliance had been his work. He had refused
to take any part in the politics of the Cabal, and had, while
that administration directed affairs, lived in strict privacy. He
had quitted his retreat at the call of Danby, had made peace
between England and Holland, and had borne a chief part in
bringing about the marriage of the Lady Mary to her cousin the
Prince of Orange. Thus he had the credit of every one of the few
good things which had been done by the government since the
Restoration. Of the numerous crimes and blunders of the last
eighteen years none could be imputed to him. His private life,
though not austere, was decorous: his manners were popular; and
he was not to be corrupted either by titles or by money.
Something, however, was wanting to the character of this
respectable statesman. The temperature of his patriotism was
lukewarm. He prized his ease and his personal dignity too much,
and shrank from responsibility with a pusillanimous fear. Nor
indeed had his habits fitted him to bear a part in the conflicts
of our domestic factions. He had reached his fiftieth year
without having sate in the English Parliament; and his official
experience had been almost entirely acquired at foreign courts.
He was justly esteemed one of the first diplomatists in Europe:
but the talents and accomplishments of a diplomatist are widely
different from those which qualify a politician to lead the House
of Commons in agitated times.
The scheme which he proposed showed considerable ingenuity.
Though not a profound philosopher, he had thought more than most
busy men of the world on the general principles of government;
and his mind had been enlarged by historical studies and foreign
travel. He seems to have discerned more clearly than most of his
contemporaries one cause of the difficulties by which the
government was beset. The character of the English polity was
gradually changing. The Parliament was slowly, but constantly,
gaining ground on the prerogative. The line between the
legislative and executive powers was in theory as strongly marked
as ever, but in practice was daily becoming fainter and fainter.
The theory of the constitution was that the King might name his
own ministers. But the House of Commons had driven Clarendon, the
Cabal, and Danby successively from the direction of affairs. The
theory of the constitution was that the King alone had the power
of making peace and war. But the House of Commons had forced him
to make peace with Holland, and had all but forced him to make
war with France. The theory of the constitution was that the King
was the sole judge of the cases in which it might be proper to
pardon offenders. Yet he was so much in dread of the House of
Commons that, at that moment, he could not venture to rescue from
the gallows men whom he well knew to be the innocent victims of
perjury.
Temple, it should seem, was desirous to secure to the legislature
its undoubted constitutional powers, and yet to prevent it, if
possible, from encroaching further on the province of the
executive administration. With this view he determined to
interpose between the sovereign and the Parliament a body which
might break the shock of their collision. There was a body
ancient, highly honourable, and recognised by the law, which, he
thought, might be so remodelled as to serve this purpose. He
determined to give to the Privy Council a new character and
office in the government. The number of Councillors he fixed at
thirty. Fifteen of them were to be the chief ministers of state,
of law, and of religion. The other fifteen were to be unplaced
noblemen and gentlemen of ample fortune and high character. There
was to be no interior cabinet. All the thirty were to be
entrusted with every political secret, and summoned to every
meeting; and the King was to declare that he would, on every
occasion, be guided by their advice.
Temple seems to have thought that, by this contrivance, he could
at once secure the nation against the tyranny of the Crown, and
the Crown against the encroachments of the Parliament. It was, on
one hand, highly improbable that schemes such as had been formed
by the Cabal would be even propounded for discussion in an
assembly consisting of thirty eminent men, fifteen of whom were
bound by no tie of interest to the court. On the other hand, it
might be hoped that the Commons, content with the guarantee
against misgovernment which such a Privy Council furnished, would
confine themselves more than they had of late done to their
strictly legislative functions, and would no longer think it
necessary to pry into every part of the executive administration.
This plan, though in some respects not unworthy of the abilities
of its author, was in principle vicious. The new board was half a
cabinet and half a Parliament, and, like almost every other
contrivance, whether mechanical or political, which is meant to
serve two purposes altogether different, failed of accomplishing
either. It was too large and too divided to be a good
administrative body. It was too closely connected with the Crown
to be a good checking body. It contained just enough of popular
ingredients to make it a bad council of state, unfit for the
keeping of secrets, for the conducting of delicate negotiations,
and for the administration of war. Yet were these popular
ingredients by no means sufficient to secure the nation against
misgovernment. The plan, therefore, even if it had been fairly
tried, could scarcely have succeeded; and it was not fairly
tried. The King was fickle and perfidious: the Parliament was
excited and unreasonable; and the materials out of which the new
Council was made, though perhaps the best which that age
afforded, were still bad.
The commencement of the new system was, however, hailed with
general delight; for the people were in a temper to think any
change an improvement. They were also pleased by some of the new
nominations. Shaftesbury, now their favourite, was appointed Lord
President. Russell and some other distinguished members of the
Country Party were sworn of the Council. But a few days later all
was again in confusion. The inconveniences of having so numerous
a cabinet were such that Temple himself consented to infringe one
of the fundamental rules which he had laid down, and to become
one of a small knot which really directed everything. With him
were joined three other ministers, Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex,
George Savile, Viscount Halifax, and Robert Spencer, Earl of
Sunderland.
Of the Earl of Essex, then First Commissioner of the Treasury, it
is sufficient to say that he was a man of solid, though not
brilliant parts, and of grave and melancholy character, that he
had been connected with the Country Party, and that he was at
this time honestly desirous to effect, on terms beneficial to the
state, a reconciliation between that party and the throne.
Among the statesmen of those times Halifax was, in genius, the
first. His intellect was fertile, subtle, and capacious. His
polished, luminous, and animated eloquence, set off by the silver
tones of his voice, was the delight of the House of Lords. His
conversation overflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His
political tracts well deserve to be studied for their literary
merit, and fully entitle him to a place among English classics.
To the weight derived from talents so great and various he united
all the influence which belongs to rank and ample possessions.
Yet he was less successful in politics than many who enjoyed
smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual peculiarities
which make his writings valuable frequently impeded him in the
contests of active life. For he always saw passing events, not in
the point of view in which they commonly appear to one who bears
a part in them, but in the point of view in which, after the
lapse of many years, they appear to the philosophic historian.
With such a turn of mind he could not long continue to act
cordially with any body of men. All the prejudices, all the
exaggerations, of both the great parties in the state moved his
scorn. He despised the mean arts and unreasonable clamours of
demagogues. He despised still more the doctrines of divine right
and passive obedience. He sneered impartially at the bigotry of
the Churchman and at the bigotry of the Puritan. He was equally
unable to comprehend how any man should object to Saints' days
and surplices, and how any man should persecute any other man for
objecting to them. In temper he was what, in our time, is called
a Conservative: in theory he was a Republican. Even when his
dread of anarchy and his disdain for vulgar delusions led him to
side for a time with the defenders of arbitrary power, his
intellect was always with Locke and Milton. Indeed, his jests
upon hereditary monarchy were sometimes such as would have better
become a member of the Calf's Head Club than a Privy Councillor
of the Stuarts. In religion he was so far from being a zealot
that he was called by the uncharitable an atheist: but this
imputation he vehemently repelled; and in truth, though he
sometimes gave scandal by the way in which he exerted his rare
powers both of reasoning and of ridicule on serious subjects, he
seems to have been by no means unsusceptible of religious
impressions.
He was the chief of those politicians whom the two great parties
contemptuously called Trimmers. Instead of quarrelling with this
nickname, he assumed it as a title of honour, and vindicated,
with great vivacity, the dignity of the appellation. Everything
good, he said, trims between extremes. The temperate zone trims
between the climate in which men are roasted and the climate in
which they are frozen. The English Church trims between the
Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy. The English
constitution trims between Turkish despotism and Polish anarchy.
Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities any one
of which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice. Nay, the
perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the exact
equilibrium of attributes, none of which could preponderate
without disturbing the whole moral and physical order of the
world.20 Thus Halifax was a Trimmer on principle. He was also a
Trimmer by the constitution both of his head and of his heart.
His understanding was keen, sceptical, inexhaustibly fertile in
distinctions and objections; his taste refined; his sense of the
ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and forgiving, but
fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to
enthusiastic admiration. Such a man could not long be constant to
any band of political allies. He must not, however, be confounded
with the vulgar crowd of renegades. For though, like them, he
passed from side to side, his transition was always in the
direction opposite to theirs. He had nothing in common with those
who fly from extreme to extreme, and who regard the party which
they have deserted with all animosity far exceeding that of
consistent enemies. His place was on the debatable ground between
the hostile divisions of the community, and he never wandered far
beyond the frontier of either. The party to which he at any
moment belonged was the party which, at that moment, he liked
least, because it was the party of which at that moment he had
the nearest view. He was therefore always severe upon his violent
associates, and was always in friendly relations with his
moderate opponents. Every faction in the day of its insolent and
vindictive triumph incurred his censure; and every faction, when
vanquished and persecuted, found in him a protector. To his
lasting honour it must be mentioned that he attempted to save
those victims whose fate has left the deepest stain both on the
Whig and on the Tory name.
He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, and had thus
drawn on himself the royal displeasure, which was indeed so
strong that he was not admitted into the Council of Thirty
without much difficulty and long altercation. As soon, however,
as he had obtained a footing at court, the charms of his manner
and of his conversation made him a favourite. He was seriously
alarmed by the violence of the public discontent. He thought that
liberty was for the present safe, and that order and legitimate
authority were in danger. He therefore, as was his fashion,
joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his conversion was not
wholly disinterested. For study and reflection, though they had
emancipated him from many vulgar prejudices, had left him a slave
to vulgar desires. Money he did not want; and there is no
evidence that he ever obtained it by any means which, in that
age, even severe censors considered as dishonourable; but rank
and power had strong attractions for him. He pretended, indeed,
that he considered titles and great offices as baits which could
allure none but fools, that he hated business, pomp, and
pageantry, and that his dearest wish was to escape from the
bustle and glitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which
surrounded his ancient mansion in Nottinghamshire; but his
conduct was not a little at variance with his professions. In
truth he wished to command the respect at once of courtiers and
of philosophers, to be admired for attaining high dignities, and
to be at the same time admired for despising them.
Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the political
immorality of his age was personified in the most lively manner.
Nature had given him a keen understanding, a restless and
mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirit. His mind
had undergone a training by which all his vices had been nursed
up to the rankest maturity. At his entrance into public life, he
had passed several years in diplomatic posts abroad, and had
been, during some time, minister in France. Every calling has its
peculiar temptations. There is no injustice in saying that
diplomatists, as a class, have always been more distinguished by
their address, by the art with which they win the confidence of
those with whom they have to deal, and by the ease with which
they catch the tone of every society into which they are
admitted, than by generous enthusiasm or austere rectitude; and
the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English
nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any
patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the
bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple,
shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all
principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but
with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous
for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they
had sturdy English hearts which would never have endured real
despotism. He, on the contrary, had a languid speculative liking
for republican institutions which was compatible with perfect
readiness to be in practice the most servile instrument of
arbitrary power. Like many other accomplished flatterers and
negotiators, he was far more skilful in the art of reading the
characters and practising on the weaknesses of individuals, than
in the art of discerning the feelings of great masses, and of
foreseeing the approach of great revolutions. He was adroit in
intrigue; and it was difficult even for shrewd and experienced
men who had been amply forewarned of his perfidy to withstand the
fascination of his manner, and to refuse credit to his
professions of attachment. But he was so intent on observing and
courting particular persons, that he often forgot to study the
temper of the nation. He therefore miscalculated grossly with
respect to some of the most momentous events of his time. More
than one important movement and rebound of the public mind took
him by surprise; and the world, unable to understand how so
clever a man could be blind to what was clearly discerned by the
politicians of the coffee houses, sometimes attributed to deep
design what were in truth mere blunders.
It was only in private conference that his eminent abilities
displayed themselves. In the royal closet, or in a very small
circle, he exercised great influence. But at the Council board he
was taciturn; and in the House of Lords he never opened his lips.
The four confidential advisers of the crown soon found that their
position was embarrassing and invidious. The other members of the
Council murmured at a distinction inconsistent with the King's
promises; and some of them, with Shaftesbury at their head, again
betook themselves to strenuous opposition in Parliament. The
agitation, which had been suspended by the late changes, speedily
became more violent than ever. It was in vain that Charles
offered to grant to the Commons any security for the Protestant
religion which they could devise, provided only that they would
not touch the order of succession. They would hear of no
compromise. They would have the Exclusion Bill, and nothing but
the Exclusion Bill. The King, therefore, a few weeks after he had
publicly promised to take no step without the advice of his new
Council, went down to the House of Lords without mentioning his
intention in Council, and prorogued the Parliament.
The day of that prorogation, the twenty-sixth of May, 1679, is a
great era in our history. For on that day the Habeas Corpus Act
received the royal assent. From the time of the Great Charter the
substantive law respecting the personal liberty of Englishmen had
been nearly the same as at present: but it had been inefficacious
for want of a stringent system of procedure. What was needed was
not a new light, but a prompt and searching remedy; and such a
remedy the Habeas Corpus Act supplied. The King would gladly have
refused his consent to that measure: but he was about to appeal
from his Parliament to his people on the question of the
succession, and he could not venture, at so critical a moment, to
reject a bill which was in the highest degree popular.
On the same day the press of England became for a short time
free. In old times printers had been strictly controlled by the
Court of Star Chamber. The Long Parliament had abolished the Star
Chamber, but had, in spite of the philosophical and eloquent
expostulation of Milton, established and maintained a censorship.
Soon after the Restoration, an Act had been passed which
prohibited the printing of unlicensed books; and it had been
provided that this Act should continue in force till the end of
the first session of the next Parliament. That moment had now
arrived; and the King, in the very act of dismissing the House,
emancipated the Press.
Shortly after the prorogation came a dissolution and another
general election. The zeal and strength of the opposition were at
the height. The cry for the Exclusion Bill was louder than ever,
and with this cry was mingled another cry, which fired the blood
of the multitude, but which was heard with regret and alarm by
all judicious friends of freedom. Not only the rights of the Duke
of York, an avowed Papist, but those of his two daughters,
sincere and zealous Protestants, were assailed. It was
confidently affirmed that the eldest natural son of the King had
been born in wedlock, and was lawful heir to the crown.
Charles, while a wanderer on the Continent, had fallen in at the
Hague with Lucy Walters, a Welsh girl of great beauty, but of
weak understanding and dissolute manners. She became his
mistress, and presented him with a son. A suspicious lover might
have had his doubts; for the lady had several admirers, and was
not supposed to be cruel to any. Charles, however, readily took
her word, and poured forth on little James Crofts, as the boy was
then called, an overflowing fondness, such as seemed hardly to
belong to that cool and careless nature. Soon after the
restoration, the young favourite, who had learned in France the
exercises then considered necessary to a fine gentleman, made his
appearance at Whitehall. He was lodged in the palace, attended by
pages, and permitted to enjoy several distinctions which had till
then been confined to princes of the blood royal. He was married,
while still in tender youth, to Anne Scott, heiress of the noble
house of Buccleuch. He took her name, and received with her hand
possession of her ample domains. The estate which he had acquired
by this match was popularly estimated at not less than ten
thousand pounds a year. Titles, and favours more substantial than
titles, were lavished on him. He was made Duke of Monmouth in
England, Duke of Buccleuch in Scotland, a Knight of the Garter,
Master of the Horse, Commander of the first troop of Life Guards,
Chief Justice of Eyre south of Trent, and Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge. Nor did he appear to the public unworthy
of his high fortunes. His countenance was eminently handsome and
engaging, his temper sweet, his manners polite and affable.
Though a libertine, he won the hearts of the Puritans. Though he
was known to have been privy to the shameful attack on Sir John
Coventry, he easily obtained the forgiveness of the Country
Party. Even austere moralists owned that, in such a court, strict
conjugal fidelity was scarcely to be expected from one who, while
a child, had been married to another child. Even patriots were
willing to excuse a headstrong boy for visiting with immoderate
vengeance an insult offered to his father. And soon the stain
left by loose amours and midnight brawls was effaced by
honourable exploits. When Charles and Lewis united their forces
against Holland, Monmouth commanded the English auxiliaries who
were sent to the Continent, and approved himself a gallant
soldier and a not unintelligent officer. On his return he found
himself the most popular man in the kingdom. Nothing was withheld
from him but the crown; nor did even the crown seem to be
absolutely beyond his reach. The distinction which had most
injudiciously been made between him and the highest nobles had
produced evil consequences. When a boy he had been invited to put
on his hat in the presence chamber, while Howards and Seymours
stood uncovered round him. When foreign princes died, he had
mourned for them in the long purple cloak, which no other
subject, except the Duke of York and Prince Rupert, was permitted
to wear. It was natural that these things should lead him to
regard himself as a legitimate prince of the House of Stuart.
Charles, even at a ripe age, was devoted to his pleasures and
regardless of his dignity. It could hardly be thought incredible
that he should at twenty have secretly gone through the form of
espousing a lady whose beauty had fascinated him. While Monmouth
was still a child, and while the Duke of York still passed for a
Protestant, it was rumoured throughout the country, and even in
circles which ought to have been well informed, that the King had
made Lucy Walters his wife, and that, if every one had his right,
her son would be Prince of Wales. Much was said of a certain
black box which, according to the vulgar belief, contained the
contract of marriage. When Monmouth had returned from the Low
Countries with a high character for valour and conduct, and when
the Duke of York was known to be a member of a church detested by
the great majority of the nation, this idle story became
important. For it there was not the slightest evidence. Against
it there was the solemn asseveration of the King, made before his
Council, and by his order communicated to his people. But the
multitude, always fond of romantic adventures, drank in eagerly
the tale of the secret espousals and the black box. Some chiefs
of the opposition acted on this occasion as they acted with
respect to the more odious fables of Oates, and countenanced a
story which they must have despised. The interest which the
populace took in him whom they regarded as the champion of the
true religion, and the rightful heir of the British throne, was
kept up by every artifice. When Monmouth arrived in London at
midnight, the watchmen were ordered by the magistrates to
proclaim the joyful event through the streets of the City: the
people left their beds: bonfires were lighted: the windows were
illuminated: the churches were opened; and a merry peal rose from
all the steeples. When he travelled, he was everywhere received
with not less pomp, and with far more enthusiasm, than had been
displayed when Kings had made progresses through the realm. He
was escorted from mansion to mansion by long cavalcades of armed
gentlemen and yeomen. Cities poured forth their whole population
to receive him. Electors thronged round him, to assure him that
their votes were at his disposal. To such a height were his
pretensions carried, that he not only exhibited on his escutcheon
the lions of England and the lilies of France without the baton
sinister under which, according to the law of heraldry, they
should have been debruised in token of his illegitimate birth,
but ventured to touch for the king's evil. At the same time he
neglected no art of condescension by which the love of the
multitude could be conciliated. He stood godfather to the
children of the peasantry, mingled in every rustic sport,
wrestled, played at quarterstaff, and won footraces in his boots
against fleet runners in shoes.
It is a curious circumstance that, at two of the greatest
conjunctures in our history, the chiefs of the Protestant party
should have committed the same error, and should by that error
have greatly endangered their country and their religion. At the
death of Edward the Sixth they set up the Lady Jane, without any
show of birthright, in opposition, not only to their enemy Mary,
but also to Elizabeth, the true hope of England and of the
Reformation. Thus the most respectable Protestants, with
Elizabeth at their head, were forced to make common cause with
the Papists. In the same manner, a hundred and thirty years
later, a part of the opposition, by setting up Monmouth as a
claimant of the crown, attacked the rights, not only of James,
whom they justly regarded as an implacable foe of their faith and
their liberties, but also of the Prince and Princess of Orange,
who were eminently marked out, both by situation and by personal
qualities, as the defenders of all free governments and of all
reformed churches.
The folly of this course speedily became manifest. At present the
popularity of Monmouth constituted a great part of the strength
of the opposition. The elections went against the court: the day
fixed for the meeting of the Houses drew near; and it was
necessary that the King should determine on some line of conduct.
Those who advised him discerned the first faint signs of a change
of public feeling, and hoped that, by merely postponing the
conflict, he would be able to secure the victory. He therefore,
without even asking the opinion of the Council of the Thirty,
resolved to prorogue the new Parliament before it entered on
business. At the same time the Duke of York, who had returned
from Brussels, was ordered to retire to Scotland, and was placed
at the head of the administration of that kingdom.
Temple's plan of government was now avowedly abandoned and very
soon forgotten. The Privy Council again became what it had been.
Shaftesbury, and those who were connected with him in politics
resigned their seats. Temple himself, as was his wont in unquiet
times, retired to his garden and his library. Essex quitted the
board of Treasury, and cast in his lot with the opposition. But
Halifax, disgusted and alarmed by the violence of his old
associates, and Sunderland, who never quitted place while he
could hold it, remained in the King's service.
In consequence of the resignations which took place at this
conjuncture, the way to greatness was left clear to a new set of
aspirants. Two statesmen, who subsequently rose to the highest
eminence which a British subject can reach, soon began to attract
a large share of the public attention. These were Lawrence Hyde
and Sidney Godolphin.
Lawrence Hyde was the second son of the Chancellor Clarendon, and
was brother of the first Duchess of York. He had excellent parts,
which had been improved by parliamentary and diplomatic
experience; but the infirmities of his temper detracted much from
the effective strength of his abilities. Negotiator and courtier
as he was, he never learned the art of governing or of concealing
his emotions. When prosperous, he was insolent and boastful: when
he sustained a check, his undisguised mortification doubled the
triumph of his enemies: very slight provocations sufficed to
kindle his anger; and when he was angry he said bitter things
which he forgot as soon as he was pacified, but which others
remembered many years. His quickness and penetration would have
made him a consummate man of business but for his selfsufficiency
and impatience. His writings proved that he had many of the
qualities of an orator: but his irritability prevented him from
doing himself justice in debate; for nothing was easier than to
goad him into a passion; and, from the moment when he went into a
passion, he was at the mercy of opponents far inferior to him in
capacity.
Unlike most of the leading politicians of that generation he was
a consistent, dogged, and rancorous party man, a Cavalier of the
old school, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the Church,
and a hater of Republicans and Nonconformists. He had
consequently a great body of personal adherents. The clergy
especially looked on him as their own man, and extended to his
foibles an indulgence of which, to say the truth, he stood in
some need: for he drank deep; and when he was in a rage,-and he
very often was in a rage,-he swore like a porter.
He now succeeded Essex at the treasury. It is to be observed that
the place of First Lord of the Treasury had not then the
importance and dignity which now belong to it. When there was a
Lord Treasurer, that great officer was generally prime minister:
but, when the white staff was in commission, the chief
commissioner hardly ranked so high as a Secretary of State. It
was not till the time of Walpole that the First Lord of the
Treasury became, under a humbler name, all that the Lord High
Treasurer had been.
Godolphin had been bred a page at Whitehall, and had early
acquired all the flexibility and the selfpossession of a veteran
courtier. He was laborious, clearheaded, and profoundly versed in
the details of finance. Every government, therefore, found him an
useful servant; and there was nothing in his opinions or in his
character which could prevent him from serving any government.
"Sidney Godolphin," said Charles, "is never in the way, and never
out of the way." This pointed remark goes far to explain
Godolphin's extraordinary success in life.
He acted at different times with both the great political
parties: but he never shared in the passions of either. Like most
men of cautious tempers and prosperous fortunes, he had a strong
disposition to support whatever existed. He disliked revolutions;
and, for the same reason for which he disliked revolutions, he
disliked counter-revolutions. His deportment was remarkably grave
and reserved: but his personal tastes were low and frivolous; and
most of the time which he could save from public business was
spent in racing, cardplaying, and cockfighting. He now sate below
Rochester at the Board of Treasury, and distinguished himself
there by assiduity and intelligence.
Before the new Parliament was suffered to meet for the despatch
of business a whole year elapsed, an eventful year, which has
left lasting traces in our manners and language. Never before had
political controversy been carried on with so much freedom. Never
before had political clubs existed with so elaborate an
organisation or so formidable an influence. The one question of
the Exclusion occupied the public mind. All the presses and
pulpits of the realm took part in the conflict. On one side it
was maintained that the constitution and religion of the state
could never be secure under a Popish King; on the other, that the
right of James to wear the crown in his turn was derived from
God, and could not be annulled, even by the consent of all the
branches of the legislature. Every county, every town, every
family, was in agitation. The civilities and hospitalities of
neighbourhood were interrupted. The dearest ties of friendship
and of blood were sundered. Even schoolboys were divided into
angry parties; and the Duke of York and the Earl of Shaftesbury
had zealous adherents on all the forms of Westminster and Eton.
The theatres shook with the roar of the contending factions. Pope
Joan was brought on the stage by the zealous Protestants.
Pensioned poets filled their prologues and epilogues with
eulogies on the King and the Duke. The malecontents besieged the
throne with petitions, demanding that Parliament might be
forthwith convened. The royalists sent up addresses, expressing
the utmost abhorrence of all who presumed to dictate to the
sovereign. The citizens of London assembled by tens of thousands
to burn the Pope in effigy. The government posted cavalry at
Temple Bar, and placed ordnance round Whitehall. In that year our
tongue was enriched with two words, Mob and Sham, remarkable
memorials of a season of tumult and imposture.21 Opponents of the
court were called Birminghams, Petitioners, and Exclusionists.
Those who took the King's side were Antibirminghams, Abhorrers,
and Tantivies. These appellations soon become obsolete: but at
this time were first heard two nicknames which, though originally
given in insult, were soon assumed with pride, which are still in
daily use, which have spread as widely as the English race, and
which will last as long as the English literature. It is a
curious circumstance that one of these nicknames was of Scotch,
and the other of Irish, origin. Both in Scotland and in Ireland,
misgovernment had called into existence bands of desperate men
whose ferocity was heightened by religions enthusiasm. In
Scotland some of the persecuted Covenanters, driven mad by
oppression, had lately murdered the Primate, had taken arms
against the government, had obtained some advantages against the
King's forces, and had not been put down till Monmouth, at the
head of some troops from England, had routed them at Bothwell
Bridge. These zealots were most numerous among the rustics of the
western lowlands, who were vulgarly called Whigs. Thus the
appellation of Whig was fastened on the Presbyterian zealots of
Scotland, and was transferred to those English politicians who
showed a disposition to oppose the court, and to treat Protestant
Nonconformists with indulgence. The bogs of Ireland, at the same
time, afforded a refuge to Popish outlaws, much resembling those
who were afterwards known as Whiteboys. These men were then
called Tories. The name of Tory was therefore given to Englishmen
who refused to concur in excluding a Roman Catholic prince from
the throne.
The rage of the hostile factions would have been sufficiently
violent, if it had been left to itself. But it was studiously
exasperated by the common enemy of both. Lewis still continued to
bribe and flatter both the court and the opposition. He exhorted
Charles to be firm: he exhorted James to raise a civil war in
Scotland: he exhorted the Whigs not to flinch, and to rely with
confidence on the protection of France.
Through all this agitation a discerning eye might have perceived
that the public opinion was gradually changing. The persecution
of the Roman Catholics went on; but convictions were no longer
matters of course. A new brood of false witnesses, among whom a
villain named Dangerfield was the most conspicuous, infested the
courts: but the stories of these men, though better constructed
than that of Oates, found less credit. Juries were no longer so
easy of belief as during the panic which had followed the murder
of Godfrey; and Judges, who, while the popular frenzy was at the
height, had been its most obsequious instruments, now ventured to
express some part of what they had from the first thought.
At length, in October 1680, the Parliament met. The Whigs had so
great a majority in the Commons that the Exclusion Bill went
through all its stages there without difficulty. The King
scarcely knew on what members of his own cabinet he could reckon.
Hyde had been true to his Tory opinions, and had steadily
supported the cause of hereditary monarchy. But Godolphin,
anxious for quiet, and believing that quiet could be restored
only by concession, wished the bill to pass. Sunderland, ever
false, and ever shortsighted, unable to discern the signs of
approaching reaction, and anxious to conciliate the party which
he believed to be irresistible, determined to vote against the
court. The Duchess of Portsmouth implored her royal lover not to
rush headlong to destruction. If there were any point on which he
had a scruple of conscience or of honour, it was the question of
the succession; but during some days it seemed that he would
submit. He wavered, asked what sum the Commons would give him if
he yielded, and suffered a negotiation to be opened with the
leading Whigs. But a deep mutual distrust which had been many
years growing, and which had been carefully nursed by the arts of
France, made a treaty impossible. Neither side would place
confidence in the other. The whole nation now looked with
breathless anxiety to the House of Lords. The assemblage of peers
was large. The King himself was present. The debate was long,
earnest, and occasionally furious. Some hands were laid on the
pommels of swords in a manner which revived the recollection of
the stormy Parliaments of Edward the Third and Richard the
Second. Shaftesbury and Essex were joined by the treacherous
Sunderland. But the genius of Halifax bore down all opposition.
Deserted by his most important colleagues, and opposed to a crowd
of able antagonists, he defended the cause of the Duke of York,
in a succession of speeches which, many years later, were
remembered as masterpieces of reasoning, of wit, and of
eloquence. It is seldom that oratory changes votes. Yet the
attestation of contemporaries leaves no doubt that, on this
occasion, votes were changed by the oratory of Halifax. The
Bishops, true to their doctrines, supported the principle of
hereditary right, and the bill was rejected by a great
majority.22
The party which preponderated in the House of Commons, bitterly
mortified by this defeat, found some consolation in shedding the
blood of Roman Catholics. William Howard, Viscount Stafford, one
of the unhappy men who had been accused of a share in the plot,
was impeached; and on the testimony of Oates and of two other
false witnesses, Dugdale and Turberville, was found guilty of
high treason, and suffered death. But the circumstances of his
trial and execution ought to have given an useful warning to the
Whig leaders. A large and respectable minority of the House of
Lords pronounced the prisoner not guilty. The multitude, which a
few months before had received the dying declarations of Oates's
victims with mockery and execrations, now loudly expressed a
belief that Stafford was a murdered man. When he with his last
breath protested his innocence, the cry was, "God bless you, my
Lord! We believe you, my Lord." A judicious observer might easily
have predicted that the blood then shed would shortly have blood.
The King determined to try once more the experiment of a
dissolution. A new Parliament was summoned to meet at Oxford, in
March, 1681. Since the days of the Plantagenets the Houses had
constantly sat at Westminster, except when the plague was raging
in the capital: but so extraordinary a conjuncture seemed to
require extraordinary precautions. If the Parliament were held in
its usual place of assembling, the House of Commons might declare
itself permanent, and might call for aid on the magistrates and
citizens of London. The trainbands might rise to defend
Shaftesbury as they had risen forty years before to defend Pym
and Hampden. The Guards might be overpowered, the palace forced,
the King a prisoner in the hands of his mutinous subjects. At
Oxford there was no such danger. The University was devoted to
the crown; and the gentry of the neighbourhood were generally
Tories. Here, therefore, the opposition had more reason than the
King to apprehend violence.
The elections were sharply contested. The Whigs still composed a
majority of the House of Commons: but it was plain that the Tory
spirit was fast rising throughout the country. It should seem
that the sagacious and versatile Shaftesbury ought to have
foreseen the coming change, and to have consented to the
compromise which the court offered: but he appears to have
forgotten his old tactics. Instead of making dispositions which,
in the worst event, would have secured his retreat, he took up a
position in which it was necessary that he should either conquer
or perish. Perhaps his head, strong as it was, had been turned by
popularity, by success, and by the excitement of conflict.
Perhaps he had spurred his party till he could no longer curb it,
and was really hurried on headlong by those whom he seemed to
guide.
The eventful day arrived. The meeting at Oxford resembled rather
that of a Polish Diet than that of an English Parliament. The
Whig members were escorted by great numbers of their armed and
mounted tenants and serving men, who exchanged looks of defiance
with the royal Guards. The slightest provocation might, under
such circumstances, have produced a civil war; but neither side
dared to strike the first blow. The King again offered to consent
to anything but the Exclusion Bill. The Commons were determined
to accept nothing but the Exclusion Bill. In a few days the
Parliament was again dissolved.
The King had triumphed. The reaction, which had begun some months
before the meeting of the House at Oxford, now went rapidly on.
The nation, indeed, was still hostile to Popery: but, when men
reviewed the whole history of the plot, they felt that their
Protestant zeal had hurried them into folly and crime, and could
scarcely believe that they had been induced by nursery tales to
clamour for the blood of fellow subjects and fellow Christians.
The most loyal, indeed, could not deny that the administration of
Charles had often been highly blamable. But men who had not the
full information which we possess touching his dealings with
France, and who were disgusted by the violence of the Whigs,
enumerated the large concessions which, during the last few years
he had made to his Parliaments, and the still larger concessions
which he had declared himself willing to make. He had consented
to the laws which excluded Roman Catholics from the House of
Lords, from the Privy Council, and from all civil and military
offices. He had passed the Habeas Corpus Act. If securities yet
stronger had not been provided against the dangers to which the
constitution and the Church might be exposed under a Roman
Catholic sovereign, the fault lay, not with Charles who had
invited the Parliament to propose such securities, but with those
Whigs who had refused to hear of any substitute for the Exclusion
Bill. One thing only had the King denied to his people. He had
refused to take away his brother's birthright. And was there not
good reason to believe that this refusal was prompted by laudable
feelings? What selfish motive could faction itself impute to the
royal mind? The Exclusion Bill did not curtail the reigning
King's prerogatives, or diminish his income. Indeed, by passing
it, he might easily have obtained an ample addition to his own
revenue. And what was it to him who ruled after him? Nay, if he
had personal predilections, they were known to be rather in
favour of the Duke of Monmouth than of the Duke of York. The most
natural explanation of the King's conduct seemed to be that,
careless as was his temper and loose as were his morals, he had,
on this occasion, acted from a sense of duty and honour. And, if
so, would the nation compel him to do what he thought criminal
and disgraceful? To apply, even by strictly constitutional means,
a violent pressure to his conscience, seemed to zealous royalists
ungenerous and undutiful. But strictly constitutional means were
not the only means which the Whigs were disposed to employ. Signs
were already discernible which portended the approach of great
troubles. Men, who, in the time of the civil war and of the
Commonwealth, had acquired an odious notoriety, had emerged from
the obscurity in which, after the Restoration, they had hidden
themselves from the general hatred. showed their confident and
busy faces everywhere, and appeared to anticipate a second reign
of the Saints. Another Naseby, another High Court of Justice,
another usurper on the throne, the Lords again ejected from their
hall by violence, the Universities again purged, the Church again
robbed and persecuted, the Puritans again dominant, to such
results did the desperate policy of the opposition seem to tend.
Strongly moved by these apprehensions, the majority of the upper
and middle classes hastened to rally round the throne. The
situation of the King bore, at this time, a great resemblance to
that in which his father stood just after the Remonstrance had
been voted. But the reaction of 1641 had not been suffered to run
its course. Charles the First, at the very moment when his
people, long estranged, were returning to him with hearts
disposed to reconciliation, had, by a perfidious violation of the
fundamental laws of the realm, forfeited their confidence for
ever. Had Charles the Second taken a similar course, had he
arrested the Whig leaders in an irregular manner, had he
impeached them of high treason before a tribunal which had no
legal jurisdiction over them, it is highly probable that they
would speedily have regained the ascendancy which they had lost.
Fortunately for himself, he was induced, at this crisis, to adopt
a policy singularly judicious. He determined to conform to the
law, but at the same time to make vigorous and unsparing use of
the law against his adversaries. He was not bound to convoke a
Parliament till three years should have elapsed. He was not much
distressed for money. The produce of the taxes which had been
settled on him for life exceeded the estimate. He was at peace
with all the world. He could retrench his expenses by giving up
the costly and useless settlement of Tangier; and he might hope
for pecuniary aid from France. He had, therefore, ample time and
means for a systematic attack on the opposition under the forms
of the constitution. The Judges were removable at his pleasure:
the juries were nominated by the Sheriffs; and, in almost all the
counties of England, the Sheriffs were nominated by himself.
Witnesses, of the same class with those who had recently sworn
away the lives of Papists, were ready to swear away the lives of
Whigs.
The first victim was College, a noisy and violent demagogue of
mean birth and education. He was by trade a joiner, and was
celebrated as the inventor of the Protestant flail.23 He had been
at Oxford when the Parliament sate there, and was accused of
having planned a rising and an attack on the King's guards.
Evidence was given against him by Dugdale and Turberville, the
same infamous men who had, a few months earlier, borne false
witness against Stafford. In the sight of a jury of country
squires no Exclusionist was likely to find favour. College was
convicted. The crowd which filled the court house of Oxford
received the verdict with a roar of exultation, as barbarous as
that which he and his friends had been in the habit of raising
when innocent Papists were doomed to the gallows. His execution
was the beginning of a new judicial massacre not less atrocious
than that in which he had himself borne a share.
The government, emboldened by this first victory, now aimed a
blow at an enemy of a very different class. It was resolved that
Shaftesbury should be brought to trial for his life. Evidence was
collected which, it was thought, would support a charge of
treason. But the facts which it was necessary to prove were
alleged to have been committed in London. The Sheriffs of London,
chosen by the citizens, were zealous Whigs. They named a Whig
grand jury, which threw out the bill. This defeat, far from
discouraging those who advised the King, suggested to them a new
and daring scheme. Since the charter of the capital was in their
way, that charter must be annulled. It was pretended, therefore,
that the City had by some irregularities forfeited its municipal
privileges; and proceedings were instituted against the
corporation in the Court of King's Bench. At the same time those
laws which had, soon after the Restoration, been enacted against
Nonconformists, and which had remained dormant during the
ascendency of the Whigs, were enforced all over the kingdom with
extreme rigour.
Yet the spirit of the Whigs was not subdued. Though in evil
plight, they were still a numerous and powerful party; and. as
they mustered strong in the large towns, and especially in the
capital, they made a noise and a show more than proportioned to
their real force. Animated by the recollection of past triumphs,
and by the sense of present oppression, they overrated both their
strength and their wrongs. It was not in their power to make out
that clear and overwhelming case which can alone justify so
violent a remedy as resistance to an established government.
Whatever they might suspect, they could not prove that their
sovereign had entered into a treaty with France against the
religion and liberties of England. What was apparent was not
sufficient to warrant an appeal to the sword. If the Lords had
thrown out the Exclusion Bill, they had thrown it out in the
exercise of a right coeval with the constitution. If the King had
dissolved the Oxford Parliament, he had done so by virtue of a
prerogative which had never been questioned. If he had, since the
dissolution, done some harsh things, still those things were in
strict conformity with the letter of the law, and with the recent
practice of the malecontents themselves. If he had prosecuted his
opponents, he had prosecuted them according to the proper forms,
and before the proper tribunals. The evidence now produced for
the crown was at least as worthy of credit as the evidence on
which the noblest blood of England had lately been shed by the
opposition. The treatment which an accused Whig had now to expect
from judges, advocates, sheriffs, juries and spectators, was no
worse than the treatment which had lately been thought by the
Whigs good enough for an accused Papist. If the privileges of the
City of London were attacked, they were attacked, not by military
violence or by any disputable exercise of prerogative, but
according to the regular practice of Westminster Hall. No tax was
imposed by royal authority. No law was suspended. The Habeas
Corpus Act was respected. Even the Test Act was enforced. The
opposition, therefore, could not bring home to the King that
species of misgovernment which alone could justify insurrection.
And, even had his misgovernment been more flagrant than it was,
insurrection would still have been criminal, because it was
almost certain to be unsuccessful. The situation of the Whigs in
1682 differed widely from that of the Roundheads forty years
before. Those who took up arms against Charles the First acted
under the authority of a Parliament which had been legally
assembled, and which could not, without its own consent, be
legally dissolved. The opponents of Charles the Second were
private men. Almost all the military and naval resources of the
kingdom had been at the disposal of those who resisted Charles
the First. All the military and naval resources of the kingdom
were at the disposal of Charles the Second. The House of Commons
had been supported by at least half the nation against Charles
the First. But those who were disposed to levy war against
Charles the Second were certainly a minority. It could hardly be
doubted, therefore, that, if they attempted a rising, they would
fail. Still less could it be doubted that their failure would
aggravate every evil of which they complained. The true policy of
the Whigs was to submit with patience to adversity which was the
natural consequence and the just punishment of their errors, to
wait patiently for that turn of public feeling which must
inevitably come, to observe the law, and to avail themselves of
the protection, imperfect indeed, but by no means nugatory, which
the law afforded to innocence. Unhappily they took a very
different course. Unscrupulous and hot-headed chiefs of the party
formed and discussed schemes of resistance, and were heard, if
not with approbation, yet with the show of acquiescence, by much
better men than themselves. It was proposed that there should be
simultaneous insurrections in London, in Cheshire, at Bristol,
and at Newcastle. Communications were opened with the
discontented Presbyterians of Scotland, who were suffering under
a tyranny such as England, in the worst times, had never known.
While the leaders of the opposition thus revolved plans of open
rebellion, but were still restrained by fears or scruples from
taking any decisive step, a design of a very different kind was
meditated by some of their accomplices. To fierce spirits,
unrestrained by principle, or maddened by fanaticism, it seemed
that to waylay and murder the King and his brother was the
shortest and surest way of vindicating the Protestant religion
and the liberties of England. A place and a time were named; and
the details of the butchery were frequently discussed, if not
definitely arranged. This scheme was known but to few, and was
concealed with especial care from the upright and humane Russell,
and from Monmouth, who, though not a man of delicate conscience,
would have recoiled with horror from the guilt of parricide. Thus
there were two plots, one within the other. The object of the
great Whig plot was to raise the nation in arms against the
government. The lesser plot, commonly called the Rye House Plot,
in which only a few desperate men were concerned, had for its
object the assassination of the King and of the heir presumptive.
Both plots were soon discovered. Cowardly traitors hastened to
save themselves, by divulging all, and more than all, that had
passed in the deliberations of the party. That only a small
minority of those who meditated resistance had admitted into
their minds the thought of assassination is fully established:
but, as the two conspiracies ran into each other, it was not
difficult for the government to confound them together. The just
indignation excited by the Rye House Plot was extended for a time
to the whole Whig body. The King was now at liberty to exact full
vengeance for years of restraint and humiliation. Shaftesbury,
indeed, had escaped the fate which his manifold perfidy had well
deserved. He had seen that the ruin of his party was at hand, had
in vain endeavoured to make his peace with the royal brothers,
had fled to Holland, and had died there, under the generous
protection of a government which he had cruelly wronged. Monmouth
threw himself at his father's feet and found mercy, but soon gave
new offence, and thought it prudent to go into voluntary exile.
Essex perished by his own hand in the Tower. Russell, who appears
to have been guilty of no offence falling within the definition
of high treason, and Sidney, of whose guilt no legal evidence
could be produced, were beheaded in defiance of law and justice.
Russell died with the fortitude of a Christian, Sidney with the
fortitude of a Stoic. Some active politicians of meaner rank were
sent to the gallows. Many quitted the country. Numerous
prosecutions for misprision of treason, for libel, and for
conspiracy were instituted. Convictions were obtained without
difficulty from Tory juries, and rigorous punishments were
inflicted by courtly judges. With these criminal proceedings were
joined civil proceedings scarcely less formidable. Actions were
brought against persons who had defamed the Duke of York and
damages tantamount to a sentence of perpetual imprisonment were
demanded by the plaintiff, and without difficulty obtained. The
Court of King's Bench pronounced that the franchises of the City
of London were forfeited to the Crown. Flushed with this great
victory, the government proceeded to attack the constitutions of
other corporations which were governed by Whig officers, and
which had been in the habit of returning Whig members to
Parliament. Borough after borough was compelled to surrender its
privileges; and new charters were granted which gave the
ascendency everywhere to the Tories.
These proceedings, however reprehensible, had yet the semblance
of legality. They were also accompanied by an act intended to
quiet the uneasiness with which many loyal men looked forward to
the accession of a Popish sovereign. The Lady Anne, younger
daughter of the Duke of York by his first wife, was married to
George, a prince of the orthodox House of Denmark. The Tory
gentry and clergy might now flatter themselves that the Church of
England had been effectually secured without any violation of the
order of succession. The King and the heir presumptive were
nearly of the same age. Both were approaching the decline of
life. The King's health was good. It was therefore probable that
James, if he came to the throne, would have but a short reign.
Beyond his reign there was the gratifying prospect of a long
series of Protestant sovereigns.
The liberty of unlicensed printing was of little or no use to the
vanquished party; for the temper of judges and juries was such
that no writer whom the government prosecuted for a libel had any
chance of escaping. The dread of punishment therefore did all
that a censorship could have done. Meanwhile, the pulpits
resounded with harangues against the sin of rebellion. The
treatises in which Filmer maintained that hereditary despotism
was the form of government ordained by God, and that limited
monarchy was a pernicious absurdity, had recently appeared, and
had been favourably received by a large section of the Tory
party. The university of Oxford, on the very day on which Russell
was put to death, adopted by a solemn public act these strange
doctrines, and ordered the political works of Buchanan, Milton,
and Baxter to be publicly burned in the court of the Schools.
Thus emboldened, the King at length ventured to overstep the
bounds which he had during some years observed, and to violate
the plain letter of the law. The law was that not more than three
years should pass between the dissolving of one Parliament and
the convoking of another. But, when three years had elapsed after
the dissolution of the Parliament which sate at Oxford, no writs
were issued for an election. This infraction of the constitution
was the more reprehensible, because the King had little reason to
fear a meeting with a new House of Commons. The counties were
generally on his side; and many boroughs in which the Whigs had
lately held sway had been so remodelled that they were certain to
return none but courtiers
In a short time the law was again violated in order to gratify
the Duke of York. That prince was, partly on account of his
religion, and partly on account of the sternness and harshness of
his nature, so unpopular that it had been thought necessary to
keep him out of sight while the Exclusion Bill was before
Parliament, lest his appearance should give an advantage to the
party which was struggling to deprive him of his birthright. He
had therefore been sent to govern Scotland, where the savage old
tyrant Lauderdale was sinking into the grave. Even Lauderdale was
now outdone. The administration of James was marked by odious
laws, by barbarous punishments, and by judgments to the iniquity
of which even that age furnished no parallel. The Scottish Privy
Council had power to put state prisoners to the question. But the
sight was so dreadful that, as soon as the boots appeared, even
the most servile and hardhearted courtiers hastened out of the
chamber. The board was sometimes quite deserted: and it was at
length found necessary to make an order that the members should
keep their seats on such occasions. The Duke of York, it was
remarked, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle which some of
the worst men then living were unable to contemplate without pity
and horror. He not only came to Council when the torture was to
be inflicted, but watched the agonies of the sufferers with that
sort of interest and complacency with which men observe a curious
experiment in science. Thus he employed himself at Edinburgh,
till the event of the conflict between the court and the Whigs
was no longer doubtful. He then returned to England: but he was
still excluded by the Test Act from all public employment; nor
did the King at first think it safe to violate a statute which
the great majority of his most loyal subjects regarded as one of
the chief securities of their religion and of their civil rights.
When, however, it appeared, from a succession of trials, that the
nation had patience to endure almost anything that the government
had courage to do, Charles ventured to dispense with the law in
his brother's favour. The Duke again took his seat in the
Council, and resumed the direction of naval affairs.
These breaches of the constitution excited, it is true, some
murmurs among the moderate Tories, and were not unanimously
approved even by the King's ministers. Halifax in particular, now
a Marquess and Lord Privy Seal, had, from the very day on which
the Tories had by his help gained the ascendant, begun to turn
Whig. As soon as the Exclusion Bill had been thrown out, he had
pressed the House of Lords to make provision against the danger
to which, in the next reign, the liberties and religion of the
nation might be exposed. He now saw with alarm the violence of
that reaction which was, in no small measure, his own work. He
did not try to conceal the scorn which he felt for the servile
doctrines of the University of Oxford. He detested the French
alliance. He disapproved of the long intermission of Parliaments.
He regretted the severity with which the vanquished party was
treated. He who, when the Whigs were predominant, had ventured to
pronounce Stafford not guilty, ventured, when they were
vanquished and helpless, to intercede for Russell. At one of the
last Councils which Charles held a remarkable scene took place.
The charter of Massachusetts had been forfeited. A question arose
how, for the future, the colony should be governed. The general
opinion of the board was that the whole power, legislative as
well as executive, should abide in the crown. Halifax took the
opposite side, and argued with great energy against absolute
monarchy, and in favour of representative government. It was
vain, he said, to think that a population, sprung from the
English stock, and animated by English feelings, would long bear
to be deprived of English institutions. Life, he exclaimed, would
not be worth having in a country where liberty and property were
at the mercy of one despotic master. The Duke of York was greatly
incensed by this language, and represented to his brother the
danger of retaining in office a man who appeared to be infected
with all the worst notions of Marvell and Sidney.
Some modern writers have blamed Halifax for continuing in the
ministry while he disapproved of the manner in which both
domestic and foreign affairs were conducted. But this censure is
unjust. Indeed it is to be remarked that the word ministry, in
the sense in which we use it, was then unknown.24 The thing
itself did not exist; for it belongs to an age in which
parliamentary government is fully established. At present the
chief servants of the crown form one body. They are understood to
be on terms of friendly confidence with each other, and to agree
as to the main principles on which the executive administration
ought to be conducted. If a slight difference of opinion arises
among them, it is easily compromised: but, if one of them differs
from the rest on a vital point, it is his duty to resign. While
he retains his office, he is held responsible even for steps
which he has tried to dissuade his colleagues from taking. In the
seventeenth century, the heads of the various branches of the
administration were bound together in no such partnership. Each
of them was accountable for his own acts, for the use which he
made of his own official seal, for the documents which he signed,
for the counsel which he gave to the King. No statesman was held
answerable for what he had not himself done, or induced others to
do. If he took care not to be the agent in what was wrong, and
if, when consulted, he recommended what was right, he was
blameless. It would have been thought strange scrupulosity in him
to quit his post, because his advice as to matters not strictly
within his own department was not taken by his master; to leave
the Board of Admiralty, for example, because the finances were in
disorder, or the Board of Treasury because the foreign relations
of the kingdom were in an unsatisfactory state. It was,
therefore, by no means unusual to see in high office, at the same
time, men who avowedly differed from one another as widely as
ever Pulteney differed from Walpole, or Fox from Pitt.
The moderate and constitutional counsels of Halifax were timidly
and feebly seconded by Francis North, Lord Guildford who had
lately been made Keeper of the Great Seal. The character of
Guildford has been drawn at full length by his brother Roger
North, a most intolerant Tory, a most affected and pedantic
writer, but a vigilant observer of all those minute circumstances
which throw light on the dispositions of men. It is remarkable
that the biographer, though he was under the influence of the
strongest fraternal partiality, and though he was evidently
anxious to produce a flattering likeness, was unable to portray
the Lord Keeper otherwise than as the most ignoble of mankind.
Yet the intellect of Guildford was clear, his industry great, his
proficiency in letters and science respectable, and his legal
learning more than respectable. His faults were selfishness,
cowardice, and meanness. He was not insensible to the power of
female beauty, nor averse from excess in wine. Yet neither wine
nor beauty could ever seduce the cautious and frugal libertine,
even in his earliest youth, into one fit of indiscreet
generosity. Though of noble descent, he rose in his profession by
paying ignominious homage to all who possessed influence in the
courts. He became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and as such
was party to some of the foulest judicial murders recorded in our
history. He had sense enough to perceive from the first that
Oates and Bedloe were impostors: but the Parliament and the
country were greatly excited: the government had yielded to the
pressure; and North was not a man to risk a good place for the
sake of justice and humanity. Accordingly, while he was in secret
drawing up a refutation of the whole romance of the Popish plot,
he declared in public that the truth of the story was as plain as
the sun in heaven, and was not ashamed to browbeat, from the seat
of judgment, the unfortunate Roman Catholics who were arraigned
before him for their lives. He had at length reached the highest
post in the law. But a lawyer, who, after many years devoted to
professional labour, engages in politics for the first time at an
advanced period of life, seldom distinguishes himself as a
statesman; and Guildford was no exception to the general rule. He
was indeed so sensible of his deficiencies that he never attended
the meetings of his colleagues on foreign affairs. Even on
questions relating to his own profession his opinion had less
weight at the Council board than that of any man who has ever
held the Great Seal. Such as his influence was, however, he used
it, as far as ho dared, on the side of the laws.
The chief opponent of Halifax was Lawrence Hyde, who had recently
been created Earl of Rochester. Of all Tories, Rochester was the
most intolerant and uncompromising. The moderate members of his
party complained that the whole patronage of the Treasury, while
he was First Commissioner there, went to noisy zealots, whose
only claim to promotion was that they were always drinking
confusion to Whiggery, and lighting bonfires to burn the
Exclusion Bill. The Duke of York, pleased with a spirit which so
much resembled his own supported his brother in law passionately
and obstinately.
The attempts of the rival ministers to surmount and supplant each
other kept the court in incessant agitation. Halifax pressed the
King to summon a Parliament, to grant a general amnesty, to
deprive the Duke of York of all share in the government, to
recall Monmouth from banishment, to break with Lewis, and to form
a close union with Holland on the principles of the Triple
Alliance. The Duke of York, on the other hand, dreaded the
meeting of a Parliament, regarded the vanquished Whigs with
undiminished hatred, still flattered himself that the design
formed fourteen years before at Dover might be accomplished,
daily represented to his brother the impropriety of suffering one
who was at heart a Republican to hold the Privy Seal, and
strongly recommended Rochester for the great place of Lord
Treasurer.
While the two factions were struggling, Godolphin, cautious,
silent, and laborious, observed a neutrality between them.
Sunderland, with his usual restless perfidy, intrigued against
them both. He had been turned out of office in disgrace for
having voted in favour of the Exclusion Bill, but had made his
peace by employing the good offices of the Duchess of Portsmouth
and by cringing to the Duke of York, and was once more Secretary
of State.
Nor was Lewis negligent or inactive. Everything at that moment
favoured his designs. He had nothing to apprehend from the German
empire, which was then contending against the Turks on the
Danube. Holland could not, unsupported venture to oppose him. He
was therefore at liberty to indulge his ambition and insolence
without restraint. He seized Strasburg,, Courtray, Luxemburg. He
exacted from the republic of Genoa the most humiliating
submissions. The power of France at that time reached a higher
point than it ever before or ever after attained, during the ten
centuries which separated the reign of Charlemagne from the reign
of Napoleon. It was not easy to say where her acquisitions would
stop, if only England could be kept in a state of vassalage. The
first object of the court of Versailles was therefore to prevent
the calling of a Parliament and the reconciliation of English
parties. For this end bribes, promises, and menaces were
unsparingly employed. Charles was sometimes allured by the hope
of a subsidy, and sometimes frightened by being told that, if he
convoked the Houses, the secret articles of the treaty of Dover
should be published. Several Privy Councillors were bought; and
attempts were made to buy Halifax, but in vain. When he had been
found incorruptible, all the art and influence of the French
embassy were employed to drive him from office: but his polished
wit and his various accomplishments had made him so agreeable to
his master, that the design failed.25
Halifax was not content with standing on the defensive. He openly
accused Rochester of malversation. An inquiry took place. It
appeared that forty thousand pounds had been lost to the public
by the mismanagement of the First Lord of the Treasury. In
consequence of this discovery he was not only forced to
relinquish his hopes of the white staff, but was removed from the
direction of the finances to the more dignified but less
lucrative and important post of Lord President. "I have seen
people kicked down stairs," said Halifax; "but my Lord Rochester
is the first person that I ever saw kicked up stairs." Godolphin,
now a peer, became First Commissioner of the Treasury.
Still, however, the contest continued. The event depended wholly
on the will of Charles; and Charles could not come to a decision.
In his perplexity he promised everything to everybody. He would
stand by France: he would break with France: he would never meet
another Parliament: he would order writs for a Parliament to be
issued without delay. He assured the Duke of York that Halifax
should be dismissed from office, and Halifax that the Duke should
be sent to Scotland. In public he affected implacable resentment
against Monmouth, and in private conveyed to Monmouth assurances
of unalterable affection. How long, if the King's life had been
protracted, his hesitation would have lasted, and what would have
been his resolve, can only be conjectured. Early in the year
1685, while hostile parties were anxiously awaiting his
determination, he died, and a new scene opened. In a few mouths
the excesses of the government obliterated the impression which
had been made on the public mind by the excesses of the
opposition. The violent reaction which had laid the Whig party
prostrate was followed by a still more violent reaction in the
opposite direction; and signs not to be mistaken indicated that
the great conflict between the prerogatives of the Crown and the
privileges of the Parliament, was about to be brought to a final
issue.
CHAPTER III.
I INTEND, in this chapter, to give a description of the state in
which England was at the time when the crown passed from Charles
the Second to his brother. Such a description, composed from
scanty. and dispersed materials, must necessarily be very
imperfect. Yet it may perhaps correct some false notions which
would make the subsequent narrative unintelligible or
uninstructive.
If we would study with profit the history of our ancestors, we
must be constantly on our guard against that delusion which the
well known names of families, places, and offices naturally
produce, and must never forget that the country of which we read
was a very different country from that in which we live. In every
experimental science there is a tendency towards perfection. In
every human being there is a wish to ameliorate his own
condition. These two principles have often sufficed, even when
counteracted by great public calamities and by bad institutions,
to carry civilisation rapidly forward. No ordinary misfortune, no
ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a nation
wretched, as the constant progress of physical knowledge and the
constant effort of every man to better himself will do to make a
nation prosperous. It has often been found that profuse
expenditure, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions,
corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions,
conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to destroy
capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been
able to create it. It can easily be proved that, in our own land,
the national wealth has, during at least six centuries, been
almost uninterruptedly increasing; that it was greater under the
Tudors than under the Plantagenets; that it was greater under the
Stuarts than under the Tudors; that, in spite of battles, sieges,
and confiscations, it was greater on the day of the Restoration
than on the day when the Long Parliament met; that, in spite of
maladministration, of extravagance, of public bankruptcy, of two
costly and unsuccessful wars, of the pestilence and of the fire,
it was greater on the day of the death of Charles the Second than
on the day of his Restoration. This progress, having continued
during many ages, became at length, about the middle of the
eighteenth century, portentously rapid, and has proceeded, during
the nineteenth, with accelerated velocity. In consequence partly
of our geographical and partly of our moral position, we have,
during several generations, been exempt from evils which have
elsewhere impeded the efforts and destroyed the fruits of
industry. While every part of the Continent, from Moscow to
Lisbon, has been the theatre of bloody and devastating wars, no
hostile standard has been seen here but as a trophy. While
revolutions have taken place all around us, our government has
never once been subverted by violence. During more than a hundred
years there has been in our island no tumult of sufficient
importance to be called an insurrection; nor has the law been
once borne down either by popular fury or by regal tyranny:
public credit has been held sacred: the administration of justice
has been pure: even in times which might by Englishmen be justly
called evil times, we have enjoyed what almost every other nation
in the world would have considered as an ample measure of civil
and religious freedom. Every man has felt entire confidence that
the state would protect him in the possession of what had been
earned by his diligence and hoarded by his selfdenial. Under the
benignant influence of peace and liberty, science has flourished,
and has been applied to practical purposes on a scale never
before known. The consequence is that a change to which the
history of the old world furnishes no parallel has taken place in
our country. Could the England of 1685 be, by some magical
process, set before our eyes, we should not know one landscape in
a hundred or one building in ten thousand. The country gentleman
would not recognise his own fields. The inhabitant of the town
would not recognise his own street. Everything has been changed,
but the great features of nature, and a few massive and durable
works of human art. We might find out Snowdon and Windermere, the
Cheddar Cliffs and Beachy Head. We might find out here and there
a Norman minster, or a castle which witnessed the wars of the
Roses. But, with such rare exceptions, everything would be
strange to us. Many thousands of square miles which are now rich
corn land and meadow, intersected by green hedgerows and dotted
with villages and pleasant country seats, would appear as moors
overgrown with furze, or fens abandoned to wild ducks. We should
see straggling huts built of wood and covered with thatch, where
we now see manufacturing towns and seaports renowned to the
farthest ends of the world. The capital itself would shrink to
dimensions not much exceeding those of its present suburb on the
south of the Thames. Not less strange to us would be the garb and
manners of the people, the furniture and the equipages, the
interior of the shops and dwellings. Such a change in the state
of a nation seems to be at least as well entitled to the notice
of a historian as any change of the dynasty or of the ministry.26
One of the first objects of an inquirer, who wishes to form a
correct notion of the state of a community at a given time, must
be to ascertain of how many persons that community then
consisted. Unfortunately the population of England in 1685,
cannot be ascertained with perfect accuracy. For no great state
had then adopted the wise course of periodically numbering the
people. All men were left to conjecture for themselves; and, as
they generally conjectured without examining facts, and under the
influence of strong passions and prejudices, their guesses were
often ludicrously absurd. Even intelligent Londoners ordinarily
talked of London as containing several millions of souls. It was
confidently asserted by many that, during the thirty-five years
which had elapsed between the accession of Charles the First and
the Restoration the population of the City had increased by two
millions.27 Even while the ravages of the plague and fire were
recent, it was the fashion to say that the capital still had a
million and a half of inhabitants.28 Some persons, disgusted by
these exaggerations, ran violently into the opposite extreme.
Thus Isaac Vossius, a man of undoubted parts and learning,
strenuously maintained that there were only two millions of human
beings in England, Scotland, and Ireland taken together.29
We are not, however, left without the means of correcting the
wild blunders into which some minds were hurried by national
vanity and others by a morbid love of paradox. There are extant
three computations which seem to be entitled to peculiar
attention. They are entirely independent of each other: they
proceed on different principles; and yet there is little
difference in the results.
One of these computations was made in the year 1696 by Gregory
King, Lancaster herald, a political arithmetician of great
acuteness and judgment. The basis of his calculations was the
number of houses returned in 1690 by the officers who made the
last collection of the hearth money. The conclusion at which he
arrived was that the population of England was nearly five
millions and a half.30
About the same time King William the Third was desirous to
ascertain the comparative strength of the religious sects into
which the community was divided. An inquiry was instituted; and
reports were laid before him from all the dioceses of the realm.
According to these reports the number of his English subjects
must have been about five million two hundred thousand.31
Lastly, in our own days, Mr. Finlaison, an actuary of eminent
skill, subjected the ancient parochial registers of baptisms,
marriages, and burials, to all the tests which the modern
improvements in statistical science enabled him to apply. His
opinion was, that, at the close of the seventeenth century, the
population of England was a little under five million two hundred
thousand souls.32
Of these three estimates, framed without concert by different
persons from different sets of materials, the highest, which is
that of King, does not exceed the lowest, which is that of
Finlaison, by one twelfth. We may, therefore, with confidence
pronounce that, when James the Second reigned, England contained
between five million and five million five hundred thousand
inhabitants. On the very highest supposition she then had less
than one third of her present population, and less than three
times the population which is now collected in her gigantic
capital.
The increase of the people has been great in every part of the
kingdom, but generally much greater in the northern than in the
southern shires. In truth a large part of the country beyond
Trent was, down to the eighteenth century, in a state of
barbarism. Physical and moral causes had concurred to prevent
civilisation from spreading to that region. The air was
inclement; the soil was generally such as required skilful and
industrious cultivation; and there could be little skill or
industry in a tract which was often the theatre of war, and
which, even when there was nominal peace, was constantly
desolated by bands of Scottish marauders. Before the union of the
two British crowns, and long after that union, there was as great
a difference between Middlesex and Northumberland as there now is
between Massachusetts and the settlements of those squatters who,
far to the west of the Mississippi, administer a rude justice
with the rifle and the dagger. In the reign of Charles the
Second, the traces left by ages of slaughter and pillage were
distinctly perceptible, many miles south of the Tweed, in the
face of the country and in the lawless manners of the people.
There was still a large class of mosstroopers, whose calling was
to plunder dwellings and to drive away whole herds of cattle. It
was found necessary, soon after the Restoration, to enact laws of
great severity for the prevention of these outrages. The
magistrates of Northumberland and Cumberland were authorised to
raise bands of armed men for the defence of property and order;
and provision was made for meeting the expense of these levies by
local taxation.33 The parishes were required to keep bloodhounds
for the purpose of hunting the freebooters. Many old men who were
living in the middle of the eighteenth century could well
remember the time when those ferocious dogs were common.34 Yet,
even with such auxiliaries, it was often found impossible to
track the robbers to their retreats among the hills and morasses.
For the geography of that wild country was very imperfectly
known. Even after the accession of George the Third, the path
over the fells from Borrowdale to Ravenglas was still a secret
carefully kept by the dalesmen, some of whom had probably in
their youth escaped from the pursuit of justice by that road.35
The seats of the gentry and the larger farmhouses were fortified.
Oxen were penned at night beneath the overhanging battlements of
the residence, which was known by the name of the Peel. The
inmates slept with arms at their sides. Huge stones and boiling
water were in readiness to crush and scald the plunderer who
might venture to assail the little garrison. No traveller
ventured into that country without making his will. The Judges on
circuit, with the whole body of barristers, attorneys, clerks,
and serving men, rode on horseback from Newcastle to Carlisle,
armed and escorted by a strong guard under the command of the
Sheriffs. It was necessary to carry provisions; for the country
was a wilderness which afforded no supplies. The spot where the
cavalcade halted to dine, under an immense oak, is not yet
forgotten. The irregular vigour with which criminal justice was
administered shocked observers whose lives had been passed in
more tranquil districts. Juries, animated by hatred and by a
sense of common danger, convicted housebreakers and cattle
stealers with the promptitude of a court martial in a mutiny; and
the convicts were hurried by scores to the gallows.36 Within the
memory of some whom this generation has seen, the sportsman who
wandered in pursuit of game to the sources of the Tyne found the
heaths round Keeldar Castle peopled by a race scarcely less
savage than the Indians of California, and heard with surprise
the half naked women chaunting a wild measure, while the men with
brandished dirks danced a war dance.37
Slowly and with difficulty peace was established on the border.
In the train of peace came industry and all the arts of life.
Meanwhile it was discovered that the regions north of the Trent
possessed in their coal beds a source of wealth far more precious
than the gold mines of Peru. It was found that, in the
neighbourhood of these beds, almost every manufacture might be
most profitably carried on. A constant stream of emigrants began
to roll northward. It appeared by the returns of 1841 that the
ancient archiepiscopal province of York contained two-sevenths of
the population of England. At the time of the Revolution that
province was believed to contain only one seventh of the
population.38 In Lancashire the number of inhabitants appear to
have increased ninefold, while in Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Northamptonshire it has hardly doubled.39
Of the taxation we can speak with more confidence and precision
than of the population. The revenue of England, when Charles the
Second died, was small, when compared with the resources which
she even then possessed, or with the sums which were raised by
the governments of the neighbouring countries. It had, from the
time of the Restoration, been almost constantly increasing. yet
it was little more than three fourths of the revenue of the
United Provinces, and was hardly one fifth of the revenue of
France.
The most important head of receipt was the excise, which, in the
last year of the reign of Charles, produced five hundred and
eighty-five thousand pounds, clear of all deductions. The net
proceeds of the customs amounted in the same year to five hundred
and thirty thousand pounds. These burdens did not lie very heavy
on the nation. The tax on chimneys, though less productive, call
forth far louder murmurs. The discontent excited by direct
imposts is, indeed, almost always out of proportion to the
quantity of money which they bring into the Exchequer; and the
tax on chimneys was, even among direct imposts, peculiarly
odious: for it could be levied only by means of domiciliary
visits; and of such visits the English have always been impatient
to a degree which the people of other countries can but faintly
conceive. The poorer householders were frequently unable to pay
their hearth money to the day. When this happened, their
furniture was distrained without mercy: for the tax was farmed;
and a farmer of taxes is, of all creditors, proverbially the most
rapacious. The collectors were loudly accused of performing their
unpopular duty with harshness and insolence. It was said that, as
soon as they appeared at the threshold of a cottage, the children
began to wail, and the old women ran to hide their earthenware.
Nay, the single bed of a poor family had sometimes been carried
away and sold. The net annual receipt from this tax was two
hundred thousand pounds.40
When to the three great sources of income which have been
mentioned we add the royal domains, then far more extensive than
at present, the first fruits and tenths, which had not yet been
surrendered to the Church, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster,
the forfeitures, and the fines, we shall find that the whole
annual revenue of the crown may be fairly estimated at about
fourteen hundred thousand pounds. Of this revenue part was
hereditary; the rest had been granted to Charles for life; and he
was at liberty to lay out the whole exactly as he thought fit.
Whatever he could save by retrenching from the expenditure of the
public departments was an addition to his privy purse. Of the
Post Office more will hereafter be said. The profits of that
establishment had been appropriated by Parliament to the Duke of
York.
The King's revenue was, or rather ought to have been, charged
with the payment of about eighty thousand pounds a year, the
interest of the sum fraudulently destined in the Exchequer by the
Cabal. While Danby was at the head of the finances, the creditors
had received dividends, though not with the strict punctuality of
modern times: but those who had succeeded him at the treasury had
been less expert, or less solicitous to maintain public faith.
Since the victory won by the court over the Whigs, not a farthing
had been paid; and no redress was granted to the sufferers, till
a new dynasty had been many years on the throne. There can be no
greater error than to imagine that the device of meeting the
exigencies of the state by loans was imported into our island by
William the Third. What really dates from his reign is not the
system of borrowing, but the system of funding. From a period of
immemorable antiquity it had been the practice of every English
government to contract debts. What the Revolution introduced was
the practice of honestly paying them.41
By plundering the public creditor, it was possible to make an
income of about fourteen hundred thousand pounds, with some
occasional help from Versailles, support the necessary charges of
the government and the wasteful expenditure of the court. For
that load which pressed most heavily on the finances of the great
continental states was here scarcely felt. In France, Germany,
and the Netherlands, armies, such as Henry the Fourth and Philip
the Second had never employed in time of war, were kept up in the
midst of peace. Bastions and raveling were everywhere rising,
constructed on principles unknown to Parma and Spinola. Stores of
artillery and ammunition were accumulated, such as even
Richelieu, whom the preceding generation had regarded as a worker
of prodigies, would have pronounced fabulous. No man could
journey many leagues in those countries without hearing the drums
of a regiment on march, or being challenged by the sentinels on
the drawbridge of a fortress. In our island, on the contrary, it
was possible to live long and to travel far without being once
reminded, by any martial sight or sound, that the defence of
nations had become a science and a calling. The majority of
Englishmen who were under twenty-five years of age had probably
never seen a company of regular soldiers. Of the cities which, in
the civil war, had valiantly repelled hostile armies, scarcely
one was now capable of sustaining a siege The gates stood open
night and day. The ditches were dry. The ramparts had been
suffered to fall into decay, or were repaired only that the
townsfolk might have a pleasant walk on summer evenings. Of the
old baronial keeps many had been shattered by the cannon of
Fairfax and Cromwell, and lay in heaps of ruin, overgrown with
ivy. Those which remained had lost their martial character, and
were now rural palaces of the aristocracy. The moats were turned
into preserves of carp and pike. The mounds were planted with
fragrant shrubs, through which spiral walks ran up to summer
houses adorned with mirrors and paintings.42 On the capes of the
sea coast, and on many inland hills, were still seen tall posts,
surmounted by barrels. Once those barrels had been filled with
pitch. Watchmen had been set round them in seasons of danger;
and, within a few hours after a Spanish sail had been discovered
in the Channel, or after a thousand Scottish mosstroopers had
crossed the Tweed, the signal fires were blazing fifty miles off,
and whole counties were rising in arms. But many years had now
elapsed since the beacons had been lighted; and they were
regarded rather as curious relics of ancient manners than as
parts of a machinery necessary to the safety of the state.43
The only army which the law recognised was the militia. That
force had been remodelled by two Acts of Parliament, passed
shortly after the Restoration. Every man who possessed five
hundred pounds a year derived from land, or six thousand pounds
of personal estate, was bound to provide, equip, and pay, at his
own charge, one horseman. Every man who had fifty pounds a year
derived from land, or six hundred pounds of personal estate, was
charged in like manner with one pikemen or musketeer. Smaller
proprietors were joined together in a kind of society, for which
our language does not afford a special name, but which an
Athenian would have called a Synteleia; and each society was
required to furnish, according to its means, a horse soldier or a
foot soldier. The whole number of cavalry and infantry thus
maintained was popularly estimated at a hundred and thirty
thousand men.44
The King was, by the ancient constitution of the realm, and by
the recent and solemn acknowledgment of both Houses of
Parliament, the sole Captain General of this large force. The
Lords Lieutenants and their Deputies held the command under him,
and appointed meetings for drilling and inspection. The time
occupied by such meetings, however, was not to exceed fourteen
days in one year. The Justices of the Peace were authorised to
inflict severe penalties for breaches of discipline. Of the
ordinary cost no part was paid by the crown: but when the
trainbands were called out against an enemy, their subsistence
became a charge on the general revenue of the state, and they
were subject to the utmost rigour of martial law.
There were those who looked on the militia with no friendly eye.
Men who had travelled much on the Continent, who had marvelled at
the stern precision with which every sentinel moved and spoke in
the citadels built by Vauban, who had seen the mighty armies
which poured along all the roads of Germany to chase the Ottoman
from the Gates of Vienna, and who had been dazzled by the well
ordered pomp of the household troops of Lewis, sneered much at
the way in which the peasants of Devonshire and Yorkshire marched
and wheeled, shouldered muskets and ported pikes. The enemies of
the liberties and religion of England looked with aversion on a
force which could not, without extreme risk, be employed against
those liberties and that religion, and missed no opportunity of
throwing ridicule on the rustic soldiery.45 Enlightened patriots,
when they contrasted these rude levies with the battalions which,
in time of war, a few hours might bring to the coast of Kent or
Sussex, were forced to acknowledge that, dangerous as it might be
to keep up a permanent military establishment, it might be more
dangerous still to stake the honour and independence of the
country on the result of a contest between plowmen officered by
Justices of the Peace, and veteran warriors led by Marshals of
France. In Parliament, however, it was necessary to express such
opinions with some reserve; for the militia was an institution
eminently popular. Every reflection thrown on it excited the
indignation of both the great parties in the state, and
especially of that party which was distinguished by peculiar zeal
for monarchy and for the Anglican Church. The array of the
counties was commanded almost exclusively by Tory noblemen and
gentlemen. They were proud of their military rank, and considered
an insult offered to the service to which they belonged as
offered to themselves. They were also perfectly aware that
whatever was said against a militia was said in favour of a
standing army; and the name of standing army was hateful to them.
One such army had held dominion in England; and under that
dominion the King had been murdered, the nobility degraded, the
landed gentry plundered, the Church persecuted. There was
scarcely a rural grandee who could not tell a story of wrongs and
insults suffered by himself, or by his father, at the hands of
the parliamentary soldiers. One old Cavalier had seen half his
manor house blown up. The hereditary elms of another had been
hewn down. A third could never go into his parish church without
being reminded by the defaced scutcheons and headless statues of
his ancestry, that Oliver's redcoats had once stabled their
horses there. The consequence was that those very Royalists, who
were most ready to fight for the King themselves, were the last
persons whom he could venture to ask for the means of hiring
regular troops.
Charles, however, had, a few months after his restoration, begun
to form a small standing army. He felt that, without some better
protection than that of the trainbands and beefeaters, his palace
and person would hardly be secure, in the vicinity of a great
city swarming with warlike Fifth Monarchy men who had just been
disbanded. He therefore, careless and profuse as he was,
contrived to spare from his pleasures a sum sufficient to keep up
a body of guards. With the increase of trade and of public wealth
his revenues increased; and he was thus enabled, in spite of the
occasional murmurs of the Commons, to make gradual additions to
his regular forces. One considerable addition was made a few
months before the close of his reign. The costly, useless, and
pestilential settlement of Tangier was abandoned to the
barbarians who dwelt around it; and the garrison, consisting of
one regiment of horse and two regiments of foot, was brought to
England.
The little army formed by Charles the Second was the germ of that
great and renowned army which has, in the present century,
marched triumphant into Madrid and Paris, into Canton and
Candahar. The Life Guards, who now form two regiments, were then
distributed into three troops, each of which consisted of two
hundred carabineers, exclusive of officers. This corps, to which
the safety of the King and royal family was confided, had a very
peculiar character. Even the privates were designated as
gentlemen of the Guard. Many of them were of good families, and
had held commissions in the civil war. Their pay was far higher
than that of the most favoured regiment of our time, and would in
that age have been thought a respectable provision for the
younger son of a country squire. Their fine horses, their rich
housings, their cuirasses, and their buff coats adorned with
ribands, velvet, and gold lace, made a splendid appearance in
Saint James's Park. A small body of grenadier dragoons, who came
from a lower class and received lower pay, was attached to each
troop. Another body of household cavalry distinguished by blue
coats and cloaks, and still called the Blues, was generally
quartered in the neighbourhood of the capital. Near the capital
lay also the corps which is now designated as the first regiment
of dragoons, but which was then the only regiment of dragoons on
the English establishment. It had recently been formed out of the
cavalry which had returned from Tangier. A single troop of
dragoons, which did not form part of any regiment, was stationed
near Berwick, for the purpose of keeping, the peace among the
mosstroopers of the border. For this species of service the
dragoon was then thought to be peculiarly qualified. He has since
become a mere horse soldier. But in the seventeenth century he
was accurately described by Montecuculi as a foot soldier who
used a horse only in order to arrive with more speed at the place
where military service was to be performed.
The household infantry consisted of two regiments, which were
then, as now, called the first regiment of Foot Guards, and the
Coldstream Guards. They generally did duty near Whitehall and
Saint James's Palace. As there were then no barracks, and as, by
the Petition of Right, it had been declared unlawful to quarter
soldiers on private families, the redcoats filled all the
alehouses of Westminster and the Strand.
There were five other regiments of foot. One of these, called the
Admiral's Regiment, was especially destined to service on board
of the fleet. The remaining four still rank as the first four
regiments of the line. Two of these represented two brigades
which had long sustained on the Continent the fame of British
valour. The first, or Royal regiment, had, under the great
Gustavus, borne a conspicuous part in the deliverance of Germany.
The third regiment, distinguished by fleshcoloured facings, from
which it had derived the well known name of the Buffs, had, under
Maurice of Nassau, fought not less bravely for the deliverance of
the Netherlands. Both these gallant bands had at length, after
many vicissitudes, been recalled from foreign service by Charles
the Second, and had been placed on the English establishment.
The regiments which now rank as the second and fourth of the line
had, in 1685, just returned from Tangier, bringing with them
cruel and licentious habits contracted in a long course of
warfare with the Moors. A few companies of infantry which had not
been regimented lay in garrison at Tilbury Fort, at Portsmouth,
at Plymouth, and at some other important stations on or near the
coast.
Since the beginning of the seventeenth century a great change had
taken place in the arms of the infantry. The pike had been
gradually giving place to the musket; and, at the close of the
reign of Charles the Second, most of his foot were musketeers.
Still, however, there was a large intermixture of pikemen. Each
class of troops was occasionally instructed in the use of the
weapon which peculiarly belonged to the other class. Every foot
soldier had at his side a sword for close fight. The musketeer
was generally provided with a weapon which had, during many
years, been gradually coming into use, and which the English then
called a dagger, but which, from the time of William the Third,
has been known among us by the French name of bayonet. The
bayonet seems not to have been then so formidable an instrument
of destruction as it has since become; for it was inserted in the
muzzle of the gun; and in action much time was lost while the
soldier unfixed his bayonet in order to fire, and fixed it again
in order to charge. The dragoon, when dismounted, fought as a
musketeer.
The regular army which was kept up in England at the beginning of
the year 1685 consisted, all ranks included, of about seven
thousand foot, and about seventeen hundred cavalry and dragoons.
The whole charge amounted to about two hundred and ninety
thousand pounds a year, less then a tenth part of what the
military establishment of France then cost in time of peace. The
daily pay of a private in the Life Guards was four shillings, in
the Blues two shillings and sixpence, in the Dragoons eighteen
pence, in the Foot Guards tenpence, and in the line eightpence.
The discipline was lax, and indeed could not be otherwise. The
common law of England knew nothing of courts martial, and made no
distinction, in time of peace, between a soldier and any other
subject; nor could the government then venture to ask even the
most loyal Parliament for a Mutiny Bill. A soldier, therefore, by
knocking down his colonel, incurred only the ordinary penalties
of assault and battery, and by refusing to obey orders, by
sleeping on guard, or by deserting his colours, incurred no legal
penalty at all. Military punishments were doubtless inflicted
during the reign of Charles the Second; but they were inflicted
very sparingly, and in such a manner as not to attract public
notice, or to produce an appeal to the courts of Westminster
Hall.
Such an army as has been described was not very likely to enslave
five millions of Englishmen. It would indeed have been unable to
suppress an insurrection in London, if the trainbands of the City
had joined the insurgents. Nor could the King expect that, if a
rising took place in England, he would obtain effectual help from
his other dominions. For, though both Scotland and Ireland
supported separate military establishments, those establishments
were not more than sufficient to keep down the Puritan
malecontents of the former kingdom and the Popish malecontents of
the latter. The government had, however, an important military
resource which must not be left unnoticed. There were in the pay
of the United Provinces six fine regiments, of which three had
been raised in England and three in Scotland. Their native prince
had reserved to himself the power of recalling them, if he needed
their help against a foreign or domestic enemy. In the meantime
they were maintained without any charge to him, and were kept
under an excellent discipline to which he could not have ventured
to subject them.46
If the jealousy of the Parliament and of the nation made it
impossible for the King to maintain a formidable standing army,
no similar impediment prevented him from making England the first
of maritime powers. Both Whigs and Tories were ready to applaud
every step tending to increase the efficiency of that force
which, while it was the best protection of the island against
foreign enemies, was powerless against civil liberty. All the
greatest exploits achieved within the memory of that generation
by English soldiers had been achieved in war against English
princes. The victories of our sailors had been won over foreign
foes, and had averted havoc and rapine from our own soil. By at
least half the nation the battle of Naseby was remembered with
horror, and the battle of Dunbar with pride chequered by many
painful feelings: but the defeat of the Armada, and the
encounters of Blake with the Hollanders and Spaniards were
recollected with unmixed exultation by all parties. Ever since
the Restoration, the Commons, even when most discontented and
most parsimonious, had always been bountiful to profusion where
the interest of the navy was concerned. It had been represented
to them, while Danby was minister, that many of the vessels in
the royal fleet were old and unfit for sea; and, although the
House was, at that time, in no giving mood, an aid of near six
hundred thousand pounds had been granted for the building of
thirty new men of war.
But the liberality of the nation had been made fruitless by the
vices of the government. The list of the King's ships, it is
true, looked well. There were nine first rates, fourteen second
rates, thirty-nine third rates, and many smaller vessels. The
first rates, indeed, were less than the third rates of our time;
and the third rates would not now rank as very large frigates.
This force, however, if it had been efficient, would in those
days have been regarded by the greatest potentate as formidable.
But it existed only on paper. When the reign of Charles
terminated, his navy had sunk into degradation and decay, such as
would be almost incredible if it were not certified to us by the
independent and concurring evidence of witnesses whose authority
is beyond exception. Pepys, the ablest man in the English
Admiralty, drew up, in the year 1684, a memorial on the state of
his department, for the information of Charles. A few months
later Bonrepaux, the ablest man in the French Admiralty, having
visited England for the especial purpose of ascertaining her
maritime strength, laid the result of his inquiries before Lewis.
The two reports are to the same effect. Bonrepaux declared that
he found everything in disorder and in miserable condition, that
the superiority of the French marine was acknowledged with shame
and envy at Whitehall, and that the state of our shipping and
dockyards was of itself a sufficient guarantee that we should not
meddle in the disputes of Europe.47 Pepys informed his master
that the naval administration was a prodigy of wastefulness,
corruption, ignorance, and indolence, that no estimate could be
trusted, that no contract was performed, that no check was
enforced. The vessels which the recent liberality of Parliament
had enabled the government to build, and which had never been out
of harbour, had been made of such wretched timber that they were
more unfit to go to sea than the old hulls which had been
battered thirty years before by Dutch and Spanish broadsides.
Some of the new men of war, indeed, were so rotten that, unless
speedily repaired, they would go down at their moorings. The
sailors were paid with so little punctuality that they were glad
to find some usurer who would purchase their tickets at forty per
cent. discount. The commanders who had not powerful friends at
court were even worse treated. Some officers, to whom large
arrears were due. after vainly importuning the government during
many years, had died for want of a morsel of bread.
Most of the ships which were afloat were commanded by men who had
not been bred to the sea. This, it is true, was not an abuse
introduced by the government of Charles. No state, ancient or
modern, had, before that time, made a complete separation between
the naval and military service. In the great civilised nations of
antiquity, Cimon and Lysander, Pompey and Agrippa, had fought
battles by sea as well as by land. Nor had the impulse which
nautical science received at the close of the fifteenth century
produced any new division of labour. At Flodden the right wing of
the victorious army was led by the Admiral of England. At Jarnac
and Moncontour the Huguenot ranks were marshalled by the Admiral
of France. Neither John of Austria, the conqueror of Lepanto, nor
Lord Howard of Effingham, to whose direction the marine of
England was confided when the Spanish invaders were approaching
our shores, had received the education of a sailor. Raleigh,
highly celebrated as a naval commander, had served during many
years as a soldier in France, the Netherlands, and Ireland. Blake
had distinguished himself by his skilful and valiant defence of
an inland town before he humbled the pride of Holland and of
Castile on the ocean. Since the Restoration the same system had
been followed. Great fleets had been entrusted to the direction
of Rupert and Monk; Rupert, who was renowned chiefly as a hot and
daring cavalry officer, and Monk, who, when he wished his ship to
change her course, moved the mirth of his crew by calling out,
"Wheel to the left!"
But about this time wise men began to perceive that the rapid
improvement, both of the art of war and of the art of navigation,
made it necessary to draw a line between two professions which
had hitherto been confounded. Either the command of a regiment or
the command of a ship was now a matter quite sufficient to occupy
the attention of a single mind. In the year 1672 the French
government determined to educate young men of good family from a
very early age especially for the sea service. But the English
government, instead of following this excellent example, not only
continued to distribute high naval commands among landsmen, but
selected for such commands landsmen who, even on land, could not
safely have been put in any important trust. Any lad of noble
birth, any dissolute courtier for whom one of the King's
mistresses would speak a word, might hope that a ship of the
line, and with it the honour of the country and the lives of
hundreds of brave men, would be committed to his care. It
mattered not that he had never in his life taken a voyage except
on the Thames, that he could not keep his feet in a breeze, that
he did not know the difference between latitude and longitude. No
previous training was thought necessary; or, at most, he was sent
to make a short trip in a man of war, where he was subjected to
no discipline, where he was treated with marked respect, and
where he lived in a round of revels and amusements. If, in the
intervals of feasting, drinking, and gambling, he succeeded in
learning the meaning of a few technical phrases and the names of
the points of the compass, he was thought fully qualified to take
charge of a three-decker. This is no imaginary description. In
1666, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, at seventeen years of
age, volunteered to serve at sea against the Dutch. He passed six
weeks on board, diverting himself, as well as he could, in the
society of some young libertines of rank, and then returned home
to take the command of a troop of horse. After this he was never
on the water till the year 1672, when he again joined the fleet,
and was almost immediately appointed Captain of a ship of
eighty-four guns, reputed the finest in the navy. He was then
twenty-three years old, and had not, in the whole course of his
life, been three months afloat. As soon as he came back from sea
he was made Colonel of a regiment of foot. This is a specimen of
the manner in which naval commands of the highest importance were
then given; and a very favourable specimen; for Mulgrave, though
he wanted experience, wanted neither parts nor courage. Others
were promoted in the same way who not only were not good
officers, but who were intellectually and morally incapable of
ever becoming good officers, and whose only recommendation was
that they had been ruined by folly and vice. The chief bait which
allured these men into the service was the profit of conveying
bullion and other valuable commodities from port to port; for
both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean were then so much
infested by pirates from Barbary that merchants were not willing
to trust precious cargoes to any custody but that of a man of
war. A Captain might thus clear several thousands of pounds by a
short voyage; and for this lucrative business he too often
neglected the interests of his country and the honour of his
flag, made mean submissions to foreign powers, disobeyed the most
direct injunctions of his superiors, lay in port when he was
ordered to chase a Sallee rover, or ran with dollars to Leghorn
when his instructions directed him to repair to Lisbon. And all
this he did with impunity. The same interest which had placed him
in a post for which he was unfit maintained him there. No
Admiral, bearded by these corrupt and dissolute minions of the
palace, dared to do more than mutter something about a court
martial. If any officer showed a higher sense of duty than his
fellows, he soon found out he lost money without acquiring honor.
One Captain, who, by strictly obeying the orders of the
Admiralty, missed a cargo which would have been worth four
thousand pounds to him, was told by Charles, with ignoble levity,
that he was a great fool for his pains.
The discipline of the navy was of a piece throughout. As the
courtly Captain despised the Admiralty, he was in turn despised
by his crew. It could not be concealed that he was inferior in
Seamanship to every foremast man on board. It was idle to expect
that old sailors, familiar with the hurricanes of the tropics and
with the icebergs of the Arctic Circle, would pay prompt and
respectful obedience to a chief who knew no more of winds and
waves than could be learned in a gilded barge between Whitehall
Stairs and Hampton Court. To trust such a novice with the working
of a ship was evidently impossible. The direction of the
navigation was therefore taken from the Captain and given to the
Master; but this partition of authority produced innumerable
inconveniences. The line of demarcation was not, and perhaps
could not be, drawn with precision. There was therefore constant
wrangling. The Captain, confident in proportion to his ignorance,
treated the Master with lordly contempt. The Master, well aware
of the danger of disobliging the powerful, too often, after a
struggle, yielded against his better judgment; and it was well if
the loss of ship and crew was not the consequence. In general the
least mischievous of the aristocratical Captains were those who
completely abandoned to others the direction of the vessels, and
thought only of making money and spending it. The way in which
these men lived was so ostentatious and voluptuous that, greedy
as they were of gain, they seldom became rich. They dressed as if
for a gala at Versailles, ate off plate, drank the richest wines,
and kept harems on board, while hunger and scurvy raged among the
crews, and while corpses were daily flung out of the portholes.
Such was the ordinary character of those who were then called
gentlemen Captains. Mingled with them were to be found, happily
for our country, naval commanders of a very different
description, men whose whole life had been passed on the deep,
and who had worked and fought their way from the lowest offices
of the forecastle to rank and distinction. One of the most
eminent of these officers was Sir Christopher Mings, who entered
the service as a cabin boy, who fell fighting bravely against the
Dutch, and whom his crew, weeping and vowing vengeance, carried
to the grave. From him sprang, by a singular kind of descent, a
line of valiant and expert sailors. His cabin boy was Sir John
Narborough; and the cabin boy of Sir John Narborough was Sir
Cloudesley Shovel. To the strong natural sense and dauntless
courage of this class of men England owes a debt never to be
forgotten. It was by such resolute hearts that, in spite of much
maladministration, and in spite of the blunders and treasons of
more courtly admirals, our coasts were protected and the
reputation of our flag upheld during many gloomy and perilous
years. But to a landsman these tarpaulins, as they were called,
seemed a strange and half savage race. All their knowledge was
professional; and their professional knowledge was practical
rather than scientific. Off their own element they were as simple
as children. Their deportment was uncouth. There was roughness in
their very good nature; and their talk, where it was not made up
of nautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and
curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school were formed
those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in the next age, drew
Lieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion. But it does not appear
that there was in the service of any of the Stuarts a. single
naval officer such as, according to the notions of our times, a
naval officer ought to be, that is to say, a man versed in the
theory and practice of his calling, and steeled against all the
dangers of battle and tempest, yet of cultivated mind and
polished manners. There were gentlemen and there were seamen in
the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not
gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.
The English navy at that time might, according to the most exact
estimates which have come down to us, have been kept in an
efficient state for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds a
year. Four hundred thousand pounds a year was the sum actually
expended, but expended, as we have seen, to very little purpose.
The cost of the French marine was nearly the same the cost of the
Dutch marine considerably more.48
The charge of the English ordnance in the seventeenth century
was, as compared with other military and naval charges, much
smaller than at present. At most of the garrisons there were
gunners: and here and there, at an important post, an engineer
was to be found. But there was no regiment of artillery, no
brigade of sappers and miners, no college in which young soldiers
could learn the scientific part of the art of war. The difficulty
of moving field pieces was extreme. When, a few years later,
William marched from Devonshire to London, the apparatus which he
brought with him, though such as had long been in constant use on
the Continent, and such as would now be regarded at Woolwich as
rude and cumbrous, excited in our ancestors an admiration
resembling that which the Indians of America felt for the
Castilian harquebusses. The stock of gunpowder kept in the
English forts and arsenals was boastfully mentioned by patriotic
writers as something which might well impress neighbouring
nations with awe. It amounted to fourteen or fifteen thousand
barrels, about a twelfth of the quantity which it is now thought
necessary to have in store. The expenditure under the head of
ordnance was on an average a little above sixty thousand pounds a
year.49
The whole effective charge of the army, navy, and ordnance, was
about seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The noneffective
charge, which is now a heavy part of our public burdens, can
hardly be said to have existed. A very small number of naval
officers, who were not employed in the public service, drew half
pay. No Lieutenant was on the list, nor any Captain who had not
commanded a ship of the first or second rate. As the country then
possessed only seventeen ships of the first and second rate that
had ever been at sea, and as a large proportion of the persons
who had commanded such ships had good posts on shore, the
expenditure under this head must have been small indeed.50 In the
army, half pay was given merely as a special and temporary
allowance to a small number of officers belonging to two
regiments, which were peculiarly situated.51 Greenwich Hospital
had not been founded. Chelsea Hospital was building: but the cost
of that institution was defrayed partly by a deduction from the
pay of the troops, and partly by private subscription. The King
promised to contribute only twenty thousand pounds for
architectural expenses, and five thousand a year for the
maintenance of the invalids.52 It was no part of the plan that
there should be outpensioners. The whole noneffective charge,
military and naval, can scarcely have exceeded ten thousand
pounds a year. It now exceeds ten thousand pounds a day.
Of the expense of civil government only a small portion was
defrayed by the crown. The great majority of the functionaries
whose business was to administer justice and preserve order
either gave their services to the public gratuitously, or were
remunerated in a manner which caused no drain on the revenue of
the state. The Sheriffs, mayors, and aldermen of the towns, the
country gentlemen who were in the commission of the peace, the
headboroughs, bailiffs, and petty constables, cost the King
nothing. The superior courts of law were chiefly supported by
fees.
Our relations with foreign courts had been put on the most
economical footing. The only diplomatic agent who had the title
of Ambassador resided at Constantinople, and was partly supported
by the Turkish Company. Even at the court of Versailles England
had only an Envoy; and she had not even an Envoy at the Spanish,
Swedish, and Danish courts. The whole expense under this head
cannot, in the last year of the reign of Charles the Second, have
much exceeded twenty thousand pounds.53
In this frugality there was nothing laudable. Charles was, as
usual, niggardly in the wrong place, and munificent in the wrong
place. The public service was starved that courtiers might be
pampered. The expense of the navy, of the ordnance, of pensions
to needy old officers, of missions to foreign courts, must seem
small indeed to the present generation. But the personal
favourites of the sovereign, his ministers, and the creatures of
those ministers, were gorged with public money. Their salaries
and pensions, when compared with the incomes of the nobility, the
gentry, the commercial and professional men of that age, will
appear enormous. The greatest estates in the kingdom then very
little exceeded twenty thousand a year. The Duke of Ormond had
twenty-two thousand a year.54 The Duke of Buckingham, before his
extravagance had impaired his great property, had nineteen
thousand six hundred a year.55 George Monk, Duke of Albemarle,
who had been rewarded for his eminent services with immense
grants of crown land, and who had been notorious both for
covetousness and for parsimony, left fifteen thousand a year of
real estate, and sixty thousand pounds in money which probably
yielded seven per cent.56 These three Dukes were supposed to be
three of the very richest subjects in England. The Archbishop of
Canterbury can hardly have had five thousand a year.57 The
average income of a temporal peer was estimated, by the best
informed persons, at about three thousand a year, the average
income of a baronet at nine hundred a year, the average income of
a member of the House of Commons at less than eight hundred a
year.58 A thousand a year was thought a large revenue for a
barrister. Two thousand a year was hardly to be made in the Court
of King's Bench, except by the crown lawyers.59 It is evident,
therefore, that an official man would have been well paid if he
had received a fourth or fifth part of what would now be an
adequate stipend. In fact, however, the stipends of the higher
class of official men were as large as at present, and not seldom
larger. The Lord Treasurer, for example, had eight thousand a
year, and, when the Treasury was in commission, the junior Lords
had sixteen hundred a year each. The Paymaster of the Forces had
a poundage, amounting, in time of peace, to about five thousand a
year, on all the money which passed through his hands. The Groom
of the Stole had five thousand a year, the Commissioners of the
Customs twelve hundred a year each, the Lords of the Bedchamber a
thousand a year each.60 The regular salary, however, was the
smallest part of the gains of an official man at that age. From
the noblemen who held the white staff and the great seal, down to
the humblest tidewaiter and gauger, what would now be called
gross corruption was practiced without disguise and without
reproach. Titles, places, commissions, pardons, were daily sold
in market overt by the great dignitaries of the realm; and every
clerk in every department imitated, to the best of his power, the
evil example.
During the last century no prime minister, however powerful, has
become rich in office; and several prime ministers have impaired
their private fortune in sustaining their public character. In
the seventeenth century, a statesman who was at the head of
affairs might easily, and without giving scandal, accumulate in
no long time an estate amply sufficient to support a dukedom. It
is probable that the income of the prime minister, during his
tenure of power, far exceeded that of any other subject. The
place of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was popularly reported to be
worth forty thousand pounds a year.61 The gains of the Chancellor
Clarendon, of Arlington, of Lauderdale, and of Danby, were
certainly enormous. The sumptuous palace to which the populace of
London gave the name of Dunkirk Mouse, the stately pavilions, the
fishponds, the deer park and the orangery of Euston, the more
than Italian luxury of Ham, with its busts, fountains, and
aviaries, were among the many signs which indicated what was the
shortest road to boundless wealth. This is the true explanation
of the unscrupulous violence with which the statesmen of that day
struggled for office, of the tenacity with which, in spite of
vexations, humiliations and dangers, they clung to it, and of the
scandalous compliances to which they stooped in order to retain
it. Even in our own age, formidable as is the power of opinion,
and high as is the standard of integrity, there would be great
risk of a lamentable change in the character of our public men,
if the place of First Lord of the Treasury or Secretary of State
were worth a hundred thousand pounds a year. Happy for our
country the emoluments of the highest class of functionaries have
not only not grown in proportion to the general growth of our
opulence, but have positively diminished.
The fact that the sum raised in England by taxation has, in a
time not exceeding two long lives, been multiplied forty-fold, is
strange, and may at first sight seem appalling. But those who are
alarmed by the increase of the public burdens may perhaps be
reassured when they have considered the increase of the public
resources. In the year 1685, the value of the produce of the soil
far exceeded the value of all the other fruits of human industry.
Yet agriculture was in what would now be considered as a very
rude and imperfect state. The arable land and pasture land were
not supposed by the best political arithmeticians of that age to
amount to much more than half the area of the kingdom.62 The
remainder was believed to consist of moor, forest, and fen. These
computations are strongly confirmed by the road books and maps of
the seventeenth century. From those books and maps it is clear
that many routes which now pass through an endless succession of
orchards, cornfields, hayfields, and beanfields, then ran through
nothing but heath, swamp, and warren.63 In the drawings of
English landscapes made in that age for the Grand Duke Cosmo,
scarce a hedgerow is to be seen, and numerous tracts; now rich
with cultivation, appear as bare as Salisbury Plain.64 At
Enfield, hardly out of sight of the smoke of the capital, was a
region of five and twenty miles in circumference, which contained
only three houses and scarcely any enclosed fields. Deer, as free
as in an American forest, wandered there by thousands.65 It is to
be remarked, that wild animals of large size were then far more
numerous than at present. The last wild boars, indeed, which had
been preserved for the royal diversion, and had been allowed to
ravage the cultivated land with their tusks, had been slaughtered
by the exasperated rustics during the license of the civil war.
The last wolf that has roamed our island had been slain in
Scotland a short time before the close of the reign of Charles
the Second. But many breeds, now extinct, or rare, both of
quadrupeds and birds, were still common. The fox, whose life is
now, in many counties, held almost as sacred as that of a human
being, was then considered as a mere nuisance. Oliver Saint John
told the Long Parliament that Strafford was to be regarded, not
as a stag or a hare, to whom some law was to be given, but as a
fox, who was to be snared by any means, and knocked on the head
without pity. This illustration would be by no means a happy one,
if addressed to country gentlemen of our time: but in Saint
John's days there were not seldom great massacres of foxes to
which the peasantry thronged with all the dogs that could be
mustered. Traps were set: nets were spread: no quarter was given;
and to shoot a female with cub was considered as a feat which
merited the warmest gratitude of the neighbourhood. The red deer
were then as common in Gloucestershire and Hampshire, as they now
are among the Grampian Hills. On one occasion Queen Anne,
travelling to Portsmouth, saw a herd of no less than five
hundred. The wild bull with his white mane was still to be found
wandering in a few of the southern forests. The badger made his
dark and tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the
copsewood grew thick. The wild cats were frequently heard by
night wailing round the lodges of the rangers of whittlebury and
Needwood. The yellow-breasted martin was still pursued in
Cranbourne Chase for his fur, reputed inferior only to that of
the sable. Fen eagles, measuring more than nine feet between the
extremities of the wings, preyed on fish along the coast of
Norfolk. On all the downs, from the British Channel to Yorkshire
huge bustards strayed in troops of fifty or sixty, and were often
hunted with greyhounds. The marshes of Cambridgeshire and
Lincolnshire were covered during some months of every year by
immense clouds of cranes. Some of these races the progress of
cultivation has extirpated. Of others the numbers are so much
diminished that men crowd to gaze at a specimen as at a Bengal
tiger, or a Polar bear.66
The progress of this great change can nowhere be more clearly
traced than in the Statute Book. The number of enclosure acts
passed since King George the Second came to the throne exceeds
four thousand. The area enclosed under the authority of those
acts exceeds, on a moderate calculation, ten thousand square
miles. How many square miles, which were formerly uncultivated or
ill cultivated, have, during the same period, been fenced and
carefully tilled by the proprietors without any application to
the legislature, can only be conjectured. But it seems highly
probable that a fourth part of England has been, in the course of
little more than a century, turned from a wild into a garden.
Even in those parts of the kingdom which at the close of the
reign of Charles the Second were the best cultivated, the
farming, though greatly improved since the civil war, was not
such as would now be thought skilful. To this day no effectual
steps have been taken by public authority for the purpose of
obtaining accurate accounts of the produce of the English soil.
The historian must therefore follow, with some misgivings, the
guidance of those writers on statistics whose reputation for
diligence and fidelity stands highest. At present an average crop
of wheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, is supposed considerably
to exceed thirty millions of quarters. The crop of wheat would be
thought wretched if it did not exceed twelve millions of
quarters. According to the computation made in the year 1696 by
Gregory King, the whole quantity of wheat, rye, barley, oats, and
beans, then annually grown in the kingdom, was somewhat less than
ten millions of quarters. The wheat, which was then cultivated
only on the strongest clay, and consumed only by those who were
in easy circumstances, he estimated at less than two millions of
quarters. Charles Davenant, an acute and well informed though
most unprincipled and rancorous politician, differed from King as
to some of the items of the account, but came to nearly the same
general conclusions.67
The rotation of crops was very imperfectly understood. It was
known, indeed, that some vegetables lately introduced into our
island, particularly the turnip, afforded excellent nutriment in
winter to sheep and oxen: but it was not yet the practice to feed
cattle in this manner. It was therefore by no means easy to keep
them alive during the season when the grass is scanty. They were
killed and salted in great numbers at the beginning of the cold
weather; and, during several months, even the gentry tasted
scarcely any fresh animal food, except game and river fish, which
were consequently much more important articles in housekeeping
than at present. It appears from the Northumberland Household
Book that, in the reign of Henry the Seventh, fresh meat was
never eaten even by the gentlemen attendant on a great Earl,
except during the short interval between Midsummer and
Michaelmas. But in the course of two centuries an improvement had
taken place; and under Charles the Second it was not till the
beginning of November that families laid in their stock of salt
provisions, then called Martinmas beef.68
The sheep and the ox of that time were diminutive when compared
with the sheep and oxen which are now driven to our markets.69
Our native horses, though serviceable, were held in small esteem,
and fetched low prices. They were valued, one with another, by
the ablest of those who computed the national wealth, at not more
than fifty shillings each. Foreign breeds were greatly preferred.
Spanish jennets were regarded as the finest chargers, and were
imported for purposes of pageantry and war. The coaches of the
aristocracy were drawn by grey Flemish mares, which trotted, as
it was thought, with a peculiar grace, and endured better than
any cattle reared in our island the work of dragging a ponderous
equipage over the rugged pavement of London. Neither the modern
dray horse nor the modern race horse was then known. At a much
later period the ancestors of the gigantic quadrupeds, which all
foreigners now class among the chief wonders of London, were
brought from the marshes of Walcheren; the ancestors of Childers
and Eclipse from the sands of Arabia. Already, however, there was
among our nobility and gentry a passion for the amusements of the
turf. The importance of improving our studs by an infusion of new
blood was strongly felt; and with this view a considerable number
of barbs had lately been brought into the country. Two men whose
authority on such subjects was held in great esteem, the Duke of
Newcastle and Sir John Fenwick, pronounced that the meanest hack
ever imported from Tangier would produce a diner progeny than
could be expected from the best sire of our native breed. They
would not readily have believed that a time would come when the
princes and nobles of neighbouring lands would be as eager to
obtain horses from England as ever the English had been to obtain
horses from Barbary.70
The increase of vegetable and animal produce, though great, seems
small when compared with the increase of our mineral wealth. In
1685 the tin of Cornwall, which had, more than two thousand years
before, attracted the Tyrian sails beyond the pillars of
Hercules, was still one of the most valuable subterranean
productions of the island. The quantity annually extracted from
the earth was found to be, some years later, sixteen hundred
tons, probably about a third of what it now is.71 But the veins
of copper which lie in the same region were, in the time of
Charles the Second, altogether neglected, nor did any landowner
take them into the account in estimating the value of his
property. Cornwall and Wales at present yield annually near
fifteen thousand tons of copper, worth near a million and a half
sterling; that is to say, worth about twice as much as the annual
produce of all English mines of all descriptions in the
seventeenth century.72 The first bed of rock salt had been
discovered in Cheshire not long after the Restoration, but does
not appear to have been worked till much later. The salt which
was obtained by a rude process from brine pits was held in no
high estimation. The pans in which the manufacture was carried on
exhaled a sulphurous stench; and, when the evaporation was
complete, the substance which was left was scarcely fit to be
used with food. Physicians attributed the scorbutic and pulmonary
complaints which were common among the English to this
unwholesome condiment. It was therefore seldom used by the upper
and middle classes; and there was a regular and considerable
importation from France. At present our springs and mines not
only supply our own immense demand, but send annually more than
seven hundred millions of pounds of excellent salt to foreign
countries.73
Far more important has been the improvement of our iron works.
Such works had long existed in our island, but had not prospered,
and had been regarded with no favourable eye by the government
and by the public. It was not then the practice to employ coal
for smelting the ore; and the rapid consumption of wood excited
the alarm of politicians. As early as the reign of Elizabeth,
there had been loud complaints that whole forests were cut down
for the purpose of feeding the furnaces; and the Parliament had
interfered to prohibit the manufacturers from burning timber. The
manufacture consequently languished. At the close of the reign of
Charles the Second, great part of the iron which was used in this
country was imported from abroad; and the whole quantity cast
here annually seems not to have exceeded ten thousand tons. At
present the trade is thought to be in a depressed state if less
than a million of tons are produced in a year.74
One mineral, perhaps more important than iron itself, remains to
be mentioned. Coal, though very little used in any species of
manufacture, was already the ordinary fuel in some districts
which were fortunate enough to possess large beds, and in the
capital, which could easily be supplied by water carriage, It
seems reasonable to believe that at least one half of the
quantity then extracted from the pits was consumed in London. The
consumption of London seemed to the writers of that age enormous,
and was often mentioned by them as a proof of the greatness of
the imperial city. They scarcely hoped to be believed when they
affirmed that two hundred and eighty thousand chaldrons that is
to say, about three hundred and fifty thousand tons, were, in the
last year of the reign of Charles the Second, brought to the
Thames. At present three millions and a half of tons are required
yearly by the metropolis; and the whole annual produce cannot, on
the most moderate computation, be estimated at less than thirty
millions of tons.75
While these great changes have been in progress, the rent of land
has, as might be expected, been almost constantly rising. In some
districts it has multiplied more than tenfold. In some it has not
more than doubled. It has probably, on the average, quadrupled.
Of the rent, a large proportion was divided among the country
gentlemen, a class of persons whose position and character it is
most important that we. should clearly understand; for by their
influence and by their passions the fate of the nation was, at
several important conjunctures, determined.
We should be much mistaken if we pictured to ourselves the
squires of the seventeenth century as men bearing a close
resemblance to their descendants, the county members and chairmen
of quarter sessions with whom we are familiar. The modern country
gentleman generally receives a liberal education, passes from a
distinguished school to a distinguished college, and has ample
opportunity to become an excellent scholar. He has generally seen
something of foreign countries. A considerable part of his life
has generally been passed in the capital; and the refinements of
the capital follow him into the country. There is perhaps no
class of dwellings so pleasing as the rural seats of the English
gentry. In the parks and pleasure grounds, nature, dressed yet
not disguised by art, wears her most alluring form. In the
buildings, good sense and good taste combine to produce a happy
union of the comfortable and the graceful. The pictures, the
musical instruments, the library, would in any other country be
considered as proving the owner to be an eminently polished and
accomplished man. A country gentleman who witnessed the
Revolution was probably in receipt of about a fourth part of the
rent which his acres now yield to his posterity. He was,
therefore, as compared with his posterity, a poor man, and was
generally under the necessity of residing, with little
interruption, on his estate. To travel on the Continent, to
maintain an establishment in London, or even to visit London
frequently, were pleasures in which only the great proprietors
could indulge. It may be confidently affirmed that of the squires
whose names were then in the Commissions of Peace and Lieutenancy
not one in twenty went to town once in five years, or had ever in
his life wandered so far as Paris. Many lords of manors had
received an education differing little from that of their menial
servants. The heir of an estate often passed his boyhood and
youth at the seat of his family with no better tutors than grooms
and gamekeepers, and scarce attained learning enough to sign his
name to a Mittimus. If he went to school and to college, he
generally returned before he was twenty to the seclusion of the
old hall, and there, unless his mind were very happily
constituted by nature, soon forgot his academical pursuits in
rural business and pleasures. His chief serious employment was
the care of his property. He examined samples of grain, handled
pigs, and, on market days, made bargains over a tankard with
drovers and hop merchants. His chief pleasures were commonly
derived from field sports and from an unrefined sensuality. His
language and pronunciation were such as we should now expect to
hear only from the most ignorant clowns. His oaths, coarse jests,
and scurrilous terms of abuse, were uttered with the broadest
accent of his province. It was easy to discern, from the first
words which he spoke, whether he came from Somersetshire or
Yorkshire. He troubled himself little about decorating his abode,
and, if he attempted decoration, seldom produced anything but
deformity. The litter of a farmyard gathered under the windows of
his bedchamber, and the cabbages and gooseberry bushes grew close
to his hall door. His table was loaded with coarse plenty; and
guests were cordially welcomed to it. But, as the habit of
drinking to excess was general in the class to which he belonged,
and as his fortune did not enable him to intoxicate large
assemblies daily with claret or canary, strong beer was the
ordinary beverage. The quantity of beer consumed in those days
was indeed enormous. For beer then was to the middle and lower
classes, not only all that beer is, but all that wine, tea, and
ardent spirits now are. It was only at great houses, or on great
occasions, that foreign drink was placed on the board. The ladies
of the house, whose business it had commonly been to cook the
repast, retired as soon as the dishes had been devoured, and left
the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco. The coarse jollity of the
afternoon was often prolonged till the revellers were laid under
the table.
It was very seldom that the country gentleman caught glimpses of
the great world; and what he saw of it tended rather to confuse
than to enlighten his understanding. His opinions respecting
religion, government, foreign countries and former times, having
been derived, not from study, from observation, or from
conversation with enlightened companions, but from such
traditions as were current in his own small circle, were the
opinions of a child. He adhered to them, however, with the
obstinacy which is generally found in ignorant men accustomed to
be fed with flattery. His animosities were numerous and bitter.
He hated Frenchmen and Italians, Scotchmen and Irishmen, Papists
and Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists, Quakers and Jews.
Towards London and Londoners he felt an aversion which more than
once produced important political effects. His wife and daughter
were in tastes and acquirements below a housekeeper or a
stillroom maid of the present day. They stitched and spun, brewed
gooseberry wine, cured marigolds, and made the crust for the
venison pasty.
From this description it might be supposed that the English
esquire of the seventeenth century did not materially differ from
a rustic miller or alehouse keeper of our time. There are,
however, some important parts of his character still to be noted,
which will greatly modify this estimate. Unlettered as he was and
unpolished, he was still in some most important points a
gentleman. He was a member of a proud and powerful aristocracy,
and was distinguished by many both of the good and of the bad
qualities which belong to aristocrats. His family pride was
beyond that of a Talbot or a Howard. He knew the genealogies and
coats of arms of all his neighbours, and could tell which of them
had assumed supporters without any right, and which of them were
so unfortunate as to be greatgrandsons of aldermen. He was a
magistrate, and, as such, administered gratuitously to those who
dwelt around him a rude patriarchal justice, which, in spite of
innumerable blunders and of occasional acts of tyranny, was yet
better than no justice at all. He was an officer of the
trainbands; and his military dignity, though it might move the
mirth of gallants who had served a campaign in Flanders, raised
his character in his own eyes and in the eyes of his neighbours.
Nor indeed was his soldiership justly a subject of derision. In
every county there were elderly gentlemen who had seen service
which was no child's play. One had been knighted by Charles the
First, after the battle of Edgehill. Another still wore a patch
over the scar which he had received at Naseby. A third had
defended his old house till Fairfax had blown in the door with a
petard. The presence of these old Cavaliers, with their old
swords and holsters, and with their old stories about Goring and
Lunsford, gave to the musters of militia an earnest and warlike
aspect which would otherwise have been wanting. Even those
country gentlemen who were too young to have themselves exchanged
blows with the cuirassiers of the Parliament had, from childhood,
been surrounded by the traces of recent war, and fed with stories
of the martial exploits of their fathers and uncles. Thus the
character of the English esquire of the seventeenth century was
compounded of two elements which we seldom or never find united.
His ignorance and uncouthness, his low tastes and gross phrases,
would, in our time, be considered as indicating a nature and a
breeding thoroughly plebeian. Yet he was essentially a patrician,
and had, in large measure both the virtues and the vices which
flourish among men set from their birth in high place, and used
to respect themselves and to be respected by others. It is not
easy for a generation accustomed to find chivalrous sentiments
only in company with liberal Studies and polished manners to
image to itself a man with the deportment, the vocabulary, and
the accent of a carter, yet punctilious on matters of genealogy
and precedence, and ready to risk his life rather than see a
stain cast on the honour of his house. It is however only by thus
joining together things seldom or never found together in our own
experience, that we can form a just idea of that rustic
aristocracy which constituted the main strength of the armies of
Charles the First, and which long supported, with strange
fidelity, the interest of his descendants.
The gross, uneducated; untravelled country gentleman was commonly
a Tory; but, though devotedly attached to hereditary monarchy, he
had no partiality for courtiers and ministers. He thought, not
without reason, that Whitehall was filled with the most corrupt
of mankind, and that of the great sums which the House of Commons
had voted to the crown since the Restoration part had been
embezzled by cunning politicians, and part squandered on buffoons
and foreign courtesans. His stout English heart swelled with
indignation at the thought that the government of his country
should be subject to French dictation. Being himself generally an
old Cavalier, or the son of an old Cavalier, he reflected with
bitter resentment on the ingratitude with which the Stuarts had
requited their best friends. Those who heard him grumble at the
neglect with which he was treated, and at the profusion with
which wealth was lavished on the bastards of Nell Gwynn and Madam
Carwell, would have supposed him ripe for rebellion. But all this
ill humour lasted only till the throne was really in danger. It
was precisely when those whom the sovereign had loaded with
wealth and honours shrank from his side that the country
gentlemen, so surly and mutinous in the season of his prosperity,
rallied round him in a body. Thus, after murmuring twenty years
at the misgovernment of Charles the Second, they came to his
rescue in his extremity, when his own Secretaries of State and
the Lords of his own Treasury had deserted him, and enabled him
to gain a complete victory over the opposition; nor can there be
any doubt that they would have shown equal loyalty to his brother
James, if James would, even at the last moment, have refrained
from outraging their strongest feeling. For there was one
institution, and one only, which they prized even more than
hereditary monarchy; and that institution was the Church of
England. Their love of the Church was not, indeed, the effect of
study or meditation. Few among them could have given any reason,
drawn from Scripture or ecclesiastical history, for adhering to
her doctrines, her ritual, and her polity; nor were they, as a
class, by any means strict observers of that code of morality
which is common to all Christian sects. But the experience of
many ages proves that men may be ready to fight to the death, and
to persecute without pity, for a religion whose creed they do not
understand, and whose precepts they habitually disobey.76
The rural clergy were even more vehement in Toryism than the
rural gentry, end were a class scarcely less important. It is to
be observed, however, that the individual clergyman, as compared
with the individual gentleman, then ranked much lower than in our
days. The main support of the Church was derived from the tithe;
and the tithe bore to the rent a much smaller ratio than at
present. King estimated the whole income of the parochial and
collegiate clergy at only four hundred and eighty thousand pounds
a year; Davenant at only five hundred and forty-four thousand a
year. It is certainly now more than seven times as great as the
larger of these two sums. The average rent of the land has not,
according to any estimate, increased proportionally. It follows
that the rectors and vicars must have been, as compared with the
neighbouring knights and squires, much poorer in the seventeenth
than in the nineteenth century.
The place of the clergyman in society had been completely changed
by the Reformation. Before that event, ecclesiastics had formed
the majority of the House of Lords, had, in wealth and splendour,
equalled, and sometimes outshone, the greatest of the temporal
barons, and had generally held the highest civil offices. Many of
the Treasurers, and almost all the Chancellors of the
Plantagenets were Bishops. The Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and
the Master of the Rolls were ordinarily churchmen. Churchmen
transacted the most important diplomatic business. Indeed all
that large portion of the administration which rude and warlike
nobles were incompetent to conduct was considered as especially
belonging to divines. Men, therefore, who were averse to the life
of camps, and who were, at the same time, desirous to rise in the
state, commonly received the tonsure. Among them were sons of all
the most illustrious families, and near kinsmen of the throne,
Scroops and Nevilles, Bourchiers, Staffords and Poles. To the
religious houses belonged the rents of immense domains, and all
that large portion of the tithe which is now in the hands of
laymen. Down to the middle of the reign of Henry the Eighth,
therefore, no line of life was so attractive to ambitious and
covetous natures as the priesthood. Then came a violent
revolution. The abolition of the monasteries deprived the Church
at once of the greater part of her wealth, and of her
predominance in the Upper House of Parliament. There was no
longer an Abbot of Glastonbury or an Abbot of Reading, seated
among the peers, and possessed of revenues equal to those of a
powerful Earl. The princely splendour of William of Wykeham and
of William of Waynflete had disappeared. The scarlet hat of the
Cardinal, the silver cross of the Legate, were no more. The
clergy had also lost the ascendency which is the natural reward
of superior mental cultivation. Once the circumstance that a man
could read had raised a presumption that he was in orders. But,
in an age which produced such laymen as William Cecil and
Nicholas Bacon, Roger Ascham and Thomas Smith, Walter Mildmay and
Francis Walsingham, there was no reason for calling away prelates
from their dioceses to negotiate treaties, to superintend the
finances, or to administer justice. The spiritual character not
only ceased to be a qualification for high civil office, but
began to be regarded as a disqualification. Those worldly
motives, therefore, which had formerly induced so many able,
aspiring, and high born youths to assume the ecclesiastical
habit, ceased to operate. Not one parish in two hundred then
afforded what a man of family considered as a maintenance. There
were still indeed prizes in the Church: but they were few; and
even the highest were mean, when compared with the glory which
had once surrounded the princes of the hierarchy. The state kept
by Parker and Grindal seemed beggarly to those who remembered the
imperial pomp of Wolsey, his palaces, which had become the
favorite abodes of royalty, Whitehall and Hampton Court, the
three sumptuous tables daily spread in his refectory, the
forty-four gorgeous copes in his chapel, his running footmen in
rich liveries, and his body guards with gilded poleaxes. Thus the
sacerdotal office lost its attraction for the higher classes.
During the century which followed the accession of Elizabeth,
scarce a single person of noble descent took orders. At the close
of the reign of Charles the Second, two sons of peers were
Bishops; four or five sons of peers were priests, and held
valuable preferment: but these rare exceptions did not take away
the reproach which lay on the body. The clergy were regarded as,
on the whole, a plebeian class.77 And, indeed, for one who made
the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants. A large
proportion of those divines who had no benefices, or whose
benefices were too small to afford a comfortable revenue, lived
in the houses of laymen. It had long been evident that this
practice tended to degrade the priestly character. Laud had
exerted himself to effect a change; and Charles the First had
repeatedly issued positive orders that none but men of high rank
should presume to keep domestic chaplains.78 But these
injunctions had become obsolete. Indeed during the domination of
the Puritan, many of the ejected ministers of the Church of
England could obtain bread and shelter only by attaching
themselves to the households of royalist gentlemen; and the
habits which had been formed in those times of trouble continued
long after the reestablishment of monarchy and episcopacy. In the
mansions of men of liberal sentiments and cultivated
understandings, the chaplain was doubtless treated with urbanity
and kindness. His conversation, his literary assistance, his
spiritual advice, were considered as an ample return for his
food, his lodging, and his stipend. But this was not the general
feeling of the country gentlemen. The coarse and ignorant squire,
who thought that it belonged to his dignity to have grace said
every day at his table by an ecclesiastic in full canonicals,
found means to reconcile dignity with economy. A young Levite-
such was the phrase then in use-might be had for his board, a
small garret, and ten pounds a year, and might not only perform
his own professional functions, might not only be the most
patient of butts and of listeners, might not only be always ready
in fine weather for bowls, and in rainy weather for shovelboard,
but might also save the expense of a gardener, or of a groom.
Sometimes the reverend man nailed up the apricots; and sometimes
he curried the coach horses. He cast up the farrier's bills. He
walked ten miles with a message or a parcel. He was permitted to
dine with the family; but he was expected to content himself with
the plainest fare. He might fill himself with the corned beef and
the carrots: but, as soon as the tarts and cheesecakes made their
appearance, he quitted his seat, and stood aloof till he was
summoned to return thanks for the repast, from a great part of
which he had been excluded.79
Perhaps, after some years of service, he was presented to a
living sufficient to support him; but he often found it necessary
to purchase his preferment by a species of Simony, which
furnished an inexhaustible subject of pleasantry to three or four
generations of scoffers. With his cure he was expected to take a
wife. The wife had ordinarily been in the patron's service; and
it was well if she was not suspected of standing too high in the
patron's favor. Indeed the nature of the matrimonial connections
which the clergymen of that age were in the habit of forming is
the most certain indication of the place which the order held in
the social system. An Oxonian, writing a few months after the
death of Charles the Second, complained bitterly, not only that
the country attorney and the country apothecary looked down with
disdain on the country clergyman but that one of the lessons most
earnestly inculcated on every girl of honourable family was to
give no encouragement to a lover in orders, and that, if any
young lady forgot this precept, she was almost as much disgraced
as by an illicit amour.80 Clarendon, who assuredly bore no ill
will to the priesthood, mentions it as a sign of the confusion of
ranks which the great rebellion had produced, that some damsels
of noble families had bestowed themselves on divines.81 A waiting
woman was generally considered as the most suitable helpmate for
a parson. Queen Elizabeth, as head of the Church, had given what
seemed to be a formal sanction to this prejudice, by issuing
special orders that no clergyman should presume to espouse a
servant girl, without the consent of the master or mistress.82
During several generations accordingly the relation between
divines and handmaidens was a theme for endless jest; nor would
it be easy to find, in the comedy of the seventeenth century, a
single instance of a clergyman who wins a spouse above the rank
of cook.83 Even so late as the time of George the Second, the
keenest of all observers of life and manners, himself a priest,
remarked that, in a great household, the chaplain was the
resource of a lady's maid whose character had been blown upon,
and who was therefore forced to give up hopes of catching the
steward.84
In general the divine who quitted his chaplainship for a benefice
and a wife found that he had only exchanged one class of
vexations for another. Hardly one living in fifty enabled the
incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. As children
multiplied end grew, the household of the priest became more and
more beggarly. Holes appeared more and more plainly in the thatch
of his parsonage and in his single cassock. Often it was only by
toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine, and by loading dungcarts,
that he could obtain daily bread; nor did his utmost exertions
always prevent the bailiffs from taking his concordance and his
inkstand in execution. It was a white day on which he was
admitted into the kitchen of a great house, and regaled by the
servants with cold meat and ale. His children were brought up
like the children of the neighbouring peasantry. His boys
followed the plough; and his girls went out to service.85 Study
he found impossible: for the advowson of his living would hardly
have sold for a sum sufficient to purchase a good theological
library; and he might be considered as unusually lucky if he had
ten or twelve dogeared volumes among the pots and pans on his
shelves. Even a keen and strong intellect might be expected to
rust in so unfavourable a situation.
Assuredly there was at that time no lack in the English Church of
ministers distinguished by abilities and learning But it is to be
observed that these ministers were not scattered among the rural
population. They were brought together at a few places where the
means of acquiring knowledge were abundant, and where the
opportunities of vigorous intellectual exercise were frequent.86
At such places were to be found divines qualified by parts, by
eloquence, by wide knowledge of literature, of science, and of
life, to defend their Church victoriously against heretics and
sceptics, to command the attention of frivolous and worldly
congregations, to guide the deliberations of senates, and to make
religion respectable, even in the most dissolute of courts. Some
laboured to fathom the abysses of metaphysical theology: some
were deeply versed in biblical criticism; and some threw light on
the darkest parts of ecclesiastical history. Some proved
themselves consummate masters of logic. Some cultivated rhetoric
with such assiduity and success that their discourses are still
justly valued as models of style. These eminent men were to be
found, with scarcely a single exception, at the Universities, at
the great Cathedrals, or in the capital. Barrow had lately died
at Cambridge; and Pearson had gone thence to the episcopal bench.
Cudworth and Henry More were still living there. South and
Pococke, Jane and Aldrich, were at Oxford, Prideaux was in the
close of Norwich, and Whitby in the close of Salisbury. But it
was chiefly by the London clergy, who were always spoken of as a
class apart, that the fame of their profession for learning and
eloquence was upheld. The principal pulpits of the metropolis
were occupied about this time by a crowd of distinguished men,
from among whom was selected a large proportion of the rulers of
the Church. Sherlock preached at the Temple, Tillotson at
Lincoln's Inn, Wake and Jeremy Collier at Gray's Inn, Burnet at
the Rolls, Stillingfleet at Saint Paul's Cathedral, Patrick at
Saint Paul's in Covent Garden, Fowler at Saint Giles's,
Cripplegate, Sharp at Saint Giles's in the Fields, Tenison at
Saint Martin's, Sprat at Saint Margaret's, Beveridge at Saint
Peter's in Cornhill. Of these twelve men, all of high note in
ecclesiastical history, ten became Bishops, and four Archbishops.
Meanwhile almost the only important theological works which came
forth from a rural parsonage were those of George Bull,
afterwards Bishop of Saint David's; and Bull never would have
produced those works, had he not inherited an estate, by the sale
of which he was enabled to collect a library, such as probably no
other country clergyman in England possessed.87
Thus the Anglican priesthood was divided into two sections,
which, in acquirements, in manners, and in social position,
differed widely from each other. One section, trained for cities
and courts, comprised men familiar with all ancient and modern
learning; men able to encounter Hobbes or Bossuet at all the
weapons of controversy; men who could, in their sermons, set
forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity with such justness
of thought, and such energy of language, that the indolent
Charles roused himself to listen and the fastidious Buckingham
forgot to sneer; men whose address, politeness, and knowledge of
the world qualified them to manage the consciences of the wealthy
and noble; men with whom Halifax loved to discuss the interests
of empires, and from whom Dryden was not ashamed to own that he
had learned to write.88 The other section was destined to ruder
and humbler service. It was dispersed over the country, and
consisted chiefly of persons not at all wealthier, and not much
more refined, than small farmers or upper servants. Yet it was in
these rustic priests, who derived but a scanty subsistence from
their tithe sheaves and tithe pigs, and who had not the smallest
chance of ever attaining high professional honours, that the
professional spirit was strongest. Among those divines who were
the boast of the Universities and the delight of the capital, and
who had attained, or might reasonably expect to attain, opulence
and lordly rank, a party, respectable in numbers, and more
respectable in character, leaned towards constitutional
principles of government, lived on friendly terms with
Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, would gladly have seen
a full toleration granted to all Protestant sects, and would even
have consented to make alterations in the Liturgy, for the
purpose of conciliating honest and candid Nonconformists. But
such latitudinarianism was held in horror by the country parson.
He took, indeed, more pride in his ragged gown than his superiors
in their lawn and their scarlet hoods. The very consciousness
that there was little in his worldly circumstances to distinguish
him from the villagers to whom he preached led him to hold
immoderately high the dignity of that sacerdotal office which was
his single title to reverence. Having lived in seclusion, and
having had little opportunity of correcting his opinions by
reading or conversation, he held and taught the doctrines of
indefeasible hereditary right, of passive obedience, and of
nonresistance, in all their crude absurdity. Having been long
engaged in a petty war against the neighbouring dissenters, he
too often hated them for the wrong which he had done them, and
found no fault with the Five Mile Act and the Conventicle Act,
except that those odious laws had not a sharper edge. Whatever
influence his office gave him was exerted with passionate zeal on
the Tory side; and that influence was immense. It would be a
great error to imagine, because the country rector was in general
not regarded as a gentleman, because he could not dare to aspire
to the hand of one of the young ladies at the manor house,
because he was not asked into the parlours of the great, but was
left to drink and smoke with grooms and butlers, that the power
of the clerical body was smaller than at present. The influence
of a class is by no means proportioned to the consideration which
the members of that class enjoy in their individual capacity. A
Cardinal is a much more exalted personage than a begging friar:
but it would he a grievous mistake to suppose that the College of
Cardinals has exercised greater dominion over the public mind of
Europe than the Order of Saint Francis. In Ireland, at present, a
peer holds a far higher station in society than a Roman Catholic
priest: yet there are in Munster and Connaught few counties where
a combination of priests would not carry an election against a
combination of peers. In the seventeenth century the pulpit was
to a large portion of the population what the periodical press
now is. Scarce any of the clowns who came to the parish church
ever saw a Gazette or a political pamphlet. Ill informed as their
spiritual pastor might be, he was yet better informed than
themselves: he had every week an opportunity of haranguing them;
and his harangues were never answered. At every important
conjuncture, invectives against the Whigs and exhortations to
obey the Lord's anointed resounded at once from many thousands of
pulpits; and the effect was formidable indeed. Of all the causes
which, after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, produced
the violent reaction against the Exclusionists, the most potent
seems to have been the oratory of the country clergy.
The power which the country gentleman and the country clergyman
exercised in the rural districts was in some measure
counterbalanced by the power of the yeomanry, an eminently manly
and truehearted race. The petty proprietors who cultivated their
own fields with their own hands, and enjoyed a modest competence,
without affecting to have scutcheons and crests, or aspiring to
sit on the bench of justice, then formed a much more important
part of the nation than at present. If we may trust the best
statistical writers of that age, not less than a hundred and
sixty thousand proprietors, who with their families must have
made up more than a seventh of the whole population, derived
their subsistence from little freehold estates. The average
income of these small landholders, an income mace up of rent,
profit, and wages, was estimated at between sixty and seventy
pounds a year. It was computed that the number of persons who
tilled their own land was greater than the number of those who
farmed the land of others.89 A large portion of the yeomanry had,
from the time of the Reformation, leaned towards Puritanism, had,
in the civil war, taken the side of the Parliament, had, after
the Restoration, persisted in hearing Presbyterian and
Independent preachers, had, at elections, strenuously supported
the Exclusionists and had continued even after the discovery of
the Rye House plot and the proscription of the Whig leaders, to
regard Popery and arbitrary power with unmitigated hostility.
Great as has been the change in the rural life of England since
the Revolution, the change which has come to pass in the cities
is still more amazing. At present above a sixth part of the
nation is crowded into provincial towns of more than thirty
thousand inhabitants. In the reign of Charles the second no
provincial town in the kingdom contained thirty thousand
inhabitants; and only four provincial towns contained so many as
ten thousand inhabitants.
Next to the capital, but next at an immense distance, stood
Bristol, then the first English seaport, and Norwich, then the
first English manufacturing town. Both have since that time been
far outstripped by younger rivals; yet both have made great
positive advances. The population of Bristol has quadrupled. The
population of Norwich has more than doubled.
Pepys, who visited Bristol eight years after the Restoration, was
struck by the splendour of the city. But his standard was not
high; for he noted down as a wonder the circumstance that, in
Bristol, a man might look round him and see nothing but houses.
It seems that, in no other place with which he was acquainted,
except London, did the buildings completely shut out the woods
and fields. Large as Bristol might then appear, it occupied but a
very small portion of the area on which it now stands. A few
churches of eminent beauty rose out of a labyrinth of narrow
lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If a coach or a
cart entered those alleys, there was danger that it would be
wedged between the houses, and danger also that it would break in
the cellars. Goods were therefore conveyed about the town almost
exclusively in trucks drawn by dogs; and the richest inhabitants
exhibited their wealth, not by riding in gilded carriages, but by
walking the streets with trains of servants in rich liveries, and
by keeping tables loaded with good cheer. The pomp of the
christenings and burials far exceeded what was seen at any other
place in England. The hospitality of the city was widely
renowned, and especially the collations with which the sugar
refiners regaled their visitors. The repast was dressed in the
furnace, and was accompanied by a rich beverage made of the best
Spanish wine, and celebrated over the whole kingdom as Bristol
milk. This luxury was supported by a thriving trade with the
North American plantations and with the West Indies. The passion
for colonial traffic was so strong that there was scarcely a
small shopkeeper in Bristol who had not a venture on board of
some ship bound for Virginia or the Antilles. Some of these
ventures indeed were not of the most honourable kind. There was,
in the Transatlantic possessions of the crown, a great demand for
labour; and this demand was partly supplied by a system of
crimping and kidnapping at the principal English seaports.
Nowhere was this system in such active and extensive operation as
at Bristol. Even the first magistrates of that city were not
ashamed to enrich themselves by so odious a commerce. The number
of houses appears, from the returns of the hearth money, to have
been in the year 1685, just five thousand three hundred. We can
hardly suppose the number of persons in a house to have been
greater than in the city of London; and in the city of London we
learn from the best authority that there were then fifty-five
persons to ten houses. The population of Bristol must therefore
have been about twenty-nine thousand souls.90
Norwich was the capital of a large and fruitful province. It was
the residence of a Bishop and of a Chapter. It was the chief seat
of the chief manufacture of the realm. Some men distinguished by
learning and science had recently dwelt there and no place in the
kingdom, except the capital and the Universities, had more
attractions for the curious. The library, the museum, the aviary,
and the botanical garden of Sir Thomas Browne, were thought by
Fellows of the Royal Society well worthy of a long pilgrimage.
Norwich had also a court in miniature. In the heart of the city
stood an old palace of the Dukes of Norfolk, said to be the
largest town house in the kingdom out of London. In this mansion,
to which were annexed a tennis court, a bowling green, and a
wilderness stretching along the banks of the Wansum, the noble
family of Howard frequently resided, and kept a state resembling
that of petty sovereigns. Drink was served to guests in goblets
of pure gold. The very tongs and shovels were of silver. Pictures
by Italian masters adorned the walls. The cabinets were filled
with a fine collection of gems purchased by that Earl of Arundel
whose marbles are now among the ornaments of Oxford. Here, in the
year 1671, Charles and his court were sumptuously entertained.
Here, too, all comers were annually welcomed, from Christmas to
Twelfth Night. Ale flowed in oceans for the populace. Three
coaches, one of which had been built at a cost of five hundred
pounds to contain fourteen persons, were sent every afternoon
round the city to bring ladies to the festivities; and the dances
were always followed by a luxurious banquet. When the Duke of
Norfolk came to Norwich, he was greeted like a King returning to
his capital. The bells of the Cathedral and of St. Peter Mancroft
were rung: the guns of the castle were fired; and the Mayor and
Aldermen waited on their illustrious fellow citizen with
complimentary addresses. In the year 1693 the population of
Norwich was found by actual enumeration, to be between
twenty-eight and twenty-nine thousand souls.91
Far below Norwich, but still high in dignity and importance, were
some other ancient capitals of shires. In that age it was seldom
that a country gentleman went up with his family to London. The
county town was his metropolis. He sometimes made it his
residence during part of the year. At all events, he was often
attracted thither by business and pleasure, by assizes, quarter
sessions, elections, musters of militia, festivals, and races.
There were the halls where the judges, robed in scarlet and
escorted by javelins and trumpets, opened the King's commission
twice a year. There were the markets at which the corn, the
cattle, the wool, and the hops of the surrounding country were
exposed to sale. There were the great fairs to which merchants
came clown from London, and where the rural dealer laid in his
annual stores of sugar, stationery, cutlery, and muslin. There
were the shops at which the best families of the neighbourhood
bought grocery and millinery. Some of these places derived
dignity from interesting historical recollections, from
cathedrals decorated by all the art and magnificence of the
middle ages, from palaces where a long succession of prelates had
dwelt, from closes surrounded by the venerable abodes of deans
and canons, and from castles which had in the old time repelled
the Nevilles or de Veres, and which bore more recent traces of
the vengeance of Rupert or of Cromwell.
Conspicuous amongst these interesting cities were York, the
capital of the north, and Exeter, the capital of the west.
Neither can have contained much more than ten thousand
inhabitants. Worcester, the queen of the cider land had but eight
thousand; Nottingham probably as many. Gloucester, renowned for
that resolute defence which had been fatal to Charles the First,
had certainly between four and five thousand; Derby not quite
four thousand. Shrewsbury was the chief place of an extensive and
fertile district. The Court of the Marches of Wales was held
there. In the language of the gentry many miles round the Wrekin,
to go to Shrewsbury was to go to town. The provincial wits and
beauties imitated, as well as they could, the fashions of Saint
James's Park, in the walks along the side of the Severn. The
inhabitants were about seven thousand.92
The population of every one of these places has, since the
Revolution, much more than doubled. The population of some has
multiplied sevenfold. The streets have been almost entirely
rebuilt. Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber. The
pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the principal
shops, and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings occupied by
the gentry would, in the seventeenth century, have seemed
miraculous. Yet is the relative importance of the old capitals of
counties by no means what it was. Younger towns, towns which are
rarely or never mentioned in our early history and which sent no
representatives to our early Parliaments, have, within the memory
of persons still living, grown to a greatness which this
generation contemplates with wonder and pride, not unaccompanied
by awe and anxiety.
The most eminent of these towns were indeed known in the
seventeenth century as respectable seats of industry. Nay, their
rapid progress and their vast opulence were then sometimes
described in language which seems ludicrous to a man who has seen
their present grandeur. One of the most populous and prosperous
among them was Manchester. Manchester had been required by the
Protector to send one representative to his Parliament, and was
mentioned by writers of the time of Charles the Second as a busy
and opulent place. Cotton had, during half a century, been
brought thither from Cyprus and Smyrna; but the manufacture was
in its infancy. Whitney had not yet taught how the raw material
might be furnished in quantities almost fabulous. Arkwright had
not yet taught how it might be worked up with a speed and
precision which seem magical. The whole annual import did not, at
the end of the seventeenth century, amount to two millions of
pounds, a quantity which would now hardly supply the demand of
forty-eight hours. That wonderful emporium, which in population
and wealth far surpassed capitals so much renowned as Berlin,
Madrid, and Lisbon, was then a mean and ill built market town
containing under six thousand people. It then had not a single
press. It now supports a hundred printing establishments. It then
had not a single coach. It now Supports twenty coach. makers.93
Leeds was already the chief seat of the woollen manufactures of
Yorkshire; but the elderly inhabitants could still remember the
time when the first brick house, then and long after called the
Red House, was built. They boasted loudly of their increasing
wealth, and of the immense sales of cloth which took place in the
open air on the bridge. Hundreds, nay thousands of pounds, had
been paid down in the course of one busy market day. The rising
importance of Leeds had attracted the notice of successive
governments. Charles the First had granted municipal privileges
to the town. Oliver had invited it to send one member to the
House of Commons. But from the returns of the hearth money it
seems certain that the whole population of the borough, an
extensive district which contains many hamlets, did not, in the
reign of Charles the Second, exceed seven thousand souls. In 1841
there were more than a hundred and fifty thousand.94
About a day's journey south of Leeds, on the verge of a wild
moorland tract, lay an ancient manor, now rich with cultivation,
then barren and unenclosed, which was known by the name of
Hallamshire. Iron abounded there; and, from a very early period,
the rude whittles fabricated there had been sold all over the
kingdom. They had indeed been mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in
one of his Canterbury Tales. But the manufacture appears to have
made little progress during the three centuries which followed
his time. This languor may perhaps be explained by the fact that
the trade was, during almost the whole of this long period,
subject to such regulations as the lord and his court feet
thought fit to impose. The more delicate kinds of cutlery were
either made in the capital or brought from the Continent. Indeed
it was not till the reign of George the First that the English
surgeons ceased to import from France those exquisitely fine
blades which are required for operations on the human frame. Most
of the Hallamshire forges were collected in a market town which
had sprung up near the castle of the proprietor, and which, in
the reign of James the First, had been a singularly miserable
place, containing about two thousand inhabitants, of whom a third
were half starved and half naked beggars. It seems certain from
the parochial registers that the population did not amount to
four thousand at the end of the reign of Charles the Second. The
effects of a species of toil singularly unfavourable to the
health and vigour of the human frame were at once discerned by
every traveller. A large proportion of the people had distorted
limbs. This is that Sheffield which now, with its dependencies,
contains a hundred and twenty thousand souls, and which sends
forth its admirable knives, razors, and lancets to the farthest
ends of the world.95
Birmingham had not been thought of sufficient importance to
return a member to Oliver's Parliament. Yet the manufacturers of
Birmingham were already a busy and thriving race. They boasted
that their hardware was highly esteemed, not indeed as now, at
Pekin and Lima, at Bokhara and Timbuctoo, but in London, and even
as far off as Ireland. They had acquired a less honourable renown
as coiners of bad money. In allusion to their spurious groats,
some Tory wit had fixed on demagogues, who hypocritically
affected zeal against Popery, the nickname of Birminghams. Yet in
1685 the population, which is now little less than two hundred
thousand, did not amount to four thousand. Birmingham buttons
were just beginning to he known: of Birmingham guns nobody had
yet heard; and the place whence, two generations later, the
magnificent editions of Baskerville went forth to astonish all
the librarians of Europe, did not contain a single regular shop
where a Bible or an almanack could be bought. On Market days a
bookseller named Michael Johnson, the father of the great Samuel
Johnson, came over from Lichfield, and opened stall during a few
hours. This supply of literature was long found equal to the
demand.96
These four chief seats of our great manufactures deserve especial
mention. It would be tedious to enumerate all the populous and
opulent hives of industry which, a hundred and fifty years ago,
were hamlets without parish churches, or desolate moors,
inhabited only by grouse and wild deer. Nor has the change been
less signal in those outlets by which the products of the English
looms and forges are poured forth over the whole world. At
present Liverpool contains more than three hundred thousand
inhabitants. The shipping registered at her port amounts to
between four and five hundred thousand tons. Into her custom
house has been repeatedly paid in one year a sum more than thrice
as great as the whole income of the English crown in 1685. The
receipts of her post office, even since the great reduction of
the duty, exceed the sum which the postage of the whole kingdom
yielded to the Duke of York. Her endless docks, quays, and
warehouses are among the wonders of the world. Yet even those
docks and quays and warehouses seem hardly to suffice for the
gigantic trade of the Mersey; and already a rival city is growing
fast on the opposite shore. In the days of Charles the Second
Liverpool was described as a rising town which had recently made
great advances, and which maintained a profitable intercourse
with Ireland and with the sugar colonies. The customs had
multiplied eight-fold within sixteen years, and amounted to what
was then considered as the immense sum of fifteen thousand pounds
annually. But the population can hardly have exceeded four
thousand: the shipping was about fourteen hundred tons, less than
the tonnage of a single modern Indiaman of the first class, and
the whole number of seamen belonging to the port cannot be
estimated at more than two hundred.97
Such has been the progress of those towns where wealth is created
and accumulated. Not less rapid has been the progress of towns of
a very different kind, towns in which wealth, created and
accumulated elsewhere, is expended for purposes of health and
recreation. Some of the most remarkable of these gay places have
sprung into existence since the time of the Stuarts. Cheltenham
is now a greater city than any which the kingdom contained in the
seventeenth century, London alone excepted. But in the
seventeenth century, and at the beginning of the eighteenth,
Cheltenham was mentioned by local historians merely as a rural
parish lying under the Cotswold Hills, and affording good ground
both for tillage and pasture. Corn grew and cattle browsed over
the space now covered by that long succession of streets and
villas.98 Brighton was described as a place which had once been
thriving, which had possessed many small fishing barks, and which
had, when at the height of prosperity, contained above two
thousand inhabitants, but which was sinking fast into decay. The
sea was gradually gaining on the buildings, which at length
almost entirely disappeared. Ninety years ago the ruins of an old
fort were to be seen lying among the pebbles and seaweed on the
beach; and ancient men could still point out the traces of
foundations on a spot where a street of more than a hundred huts
had been swallowed up by the waves. So desolate was the place
after this calamity, that the vicarage was thought scarcely worth
having. A few poor fishermen, however, still continued to dry
their nets on those cliffs, on which now a town, more than twice
as large and populous as the Bristol of the Stuarts, presents,
mile after mile, its gay and fantastic front to the sea.99
England, however, was not, in the seventeenth century, destitute
of watering places. The gentry of Derbyshire and of the
neighbouring counties repaired to Buxton, where they were lodged
in low rooms under bare rafters, and regaled with oatcake, and
with a viand which the hosts called mutton, but which the guests
suspected to be dog. A single good house stood near the
spring.100 Tunbridge Wells, lying within a day's journey of the
capital, and in one of the richest and most highly civilised
parts of the kingdom, had much greater attractions. At present we
see there a town which would, a hundred and sixty years ago, have
ranked, in population, fourth or fifth among the towns of
England. The brilliancy of the shops and the luxury of the
private dwellings far surpasses anything that England could then
show. When the court, soon after the Restoration, visited
Tunbridge Wells, there was no town: but, within a mile of the
spring, rustic cottages, somewhat cleaner and neater than the
ordinary cottages of that time, were scattered over the heath.
Some of these cabins were movable and were carried on sledges
from one part of the common to another. To these huts men of
fashion, wearied with the din and smoke of London, sometimes came
in the summer to breathe fresh air, and to catch a glimpse of
rural life. During the season a kind of fair was daily held near
the fountain. The wives and daughters of the Kentish farmers came
from the neighbouring villages with cream, cherries, wheatears,
and quails. To chaffer with them, to flirt with them, to praise
their straw hats and tight heels, was a refreshing pastime to
voluptuaries sick of the airs of actresses and maids of honour.
Milliners, toymen, and jewellers came down from London, and
opened a bazaar under the trees. In one booth the politician
might find his coffee and the London Gazette; in another were
gamblers playing deep at basset; and, on fine evenings, the
fiddles were in attendance. and there were morris dances on the
elastic turf of the bowling green. In 1685 a subscription had
just been raised among those who frequented the wells for
building a church, which the Tories, who then domineered
everywhere, insisted on dedicating to Saint Charles the
Martyr.101
But at the head of the English watering places, without a rival.
was Bath. The springs of that city had been renowned from the
days of the Romans. It had been, during many centuries, the seat
of a Bishop. The sick repaired thither from every part of the
realm. The King sometimes held his court there. Nevertheless,
Bath was then a maze of only four or five hundred houses, crowded
within an old wall in the vicinity of the Avon. Pictures of what
were considered as the finest of those houses are still extant,
and greatly resemble the lowest rag shops and pothouses of
Ratcliffe Highway. Travellers indeed complained loudly of the
narrowness and meanness of the streets. That beautiful city which
charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and
Palladio, and which the genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of
Frances Burney and of Jane Austen, has made classic ground, had
not begun to exist. Milsom Street itself was an open field lying
far beyond the walls; and hedgerows intersected the space which
is now covered by the Crescent and the Circus. The poor patients
to whom the waters had been recommended lay on straw in a place
which, to use the language of a contemporary physician, was a
covert rather than a lodging. As to the comforts and luxuries
which were to be found in the interior of the houses of Bath by
the fashionable visitors who resorted thither in search of health
or amusement, we possess information more complete and minute
than can generally be obtained on such subjects. A writer who
published an account of that city about sixty years after the
Revolution has accurately described the changes which had taken
place within his own recollection. He assures us that, in his
younger days, the gentlemen who visited the springs slept in
rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see
occupied by footmen. The floors of the dining rooms were
uncarpeted, and were coloured brown with a wash made of soot and
small beer, in order to hide the dirt. Not a wainscot was
painted. Not a hearth or a chimneypiece was of marble. A slab of
common free-stone and fire irons which had cost from three to
four shillings were thought sufficient for any fireplace. The
best-apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff, and were
furnished with rushbottomed chairs. Readers who take an interest
in the progress of civilisation and of the useful arts will be
grateful to the humble topographer who has recorded these facts,
and will perhaps wish that historians of far higher pretensions
had sometimes spared a few pages from military evolutions and
political intrigues, for the purpose of letting us know how the
parlours and bedchambers of our ancestors looked.102
The position of London, relatively to the other towns of the
empire, was, in the time of Charles the Second, far higher than
at present. For at present the population of London is little
more than six times the population of Manchester or of Liverpool.
In the days of Charles the Second the population of London was
more than seventeen times the population of Bristol or of
Norwich. It may be doubted whether any other instance can be
mentioned of a great kingdom in which the first city was more
than seventeen times as large as the second. There is reason to
believe that, in 1685, London had been, during about half a
century, the most populous capital in Europe. The inhabitants,
who are now at least nineteen hundred thousand, were then
probably little more shall half a million.103 London had in the
world only one commercial rival, now long ago outstripped, the
mighty and opulent Amsterdam. English writers boasted of the
forest of masts and yardarms which covered the river from the
Bridge to the Tower, and of the stupendous sums which were
collected at the Custom House in Thames Street. There is, indeed,
no doubt that the trade of the metropolis then bore a far greater
proportion than at present to the whole trade of the country; yet
to our generation the honest vaunting of our ancestors must
appear almost ludicrous. The shipping which they thought
incredibly great appears not to have exceeded seventy thousand
tons. This was, indeed, then more than a third of the whole
tonnage of the kingdom, but is now less than a fourth of the
tonnage of Newcastle, and is nearly equalled by the tonnage of
the steam vessels of the Thames.
The customs of London amounted, in 1685, to about three hundred
and thirty thousand pounds a year. In our time the net duty paid
annually, at the same place, exceeds ten millions.104
Whoever examines the maps of London which were published towards
the close of the reign of Charles the Second will see that only
the nucleus of the present capital then existed. The town did
not, as now, fade by imperceptible degrees into the country. No
long avenues of villas, embowered in lilacs and laburnums,
extended from the great centre of wealth and civilisation almost
to the boundaries of Middlesex and far into the heart of Kent and
Surrey. In the east, no part of the immense line of warehouses
and artificial lakes which now stretches from the Tower to
Blackwall had even been projected. On the west, scarcely one of
those stately piles of building which are inhabited by the noble
and wealthy was in existence; and Chelsea, which is now peopled
by more than forty thousand human beings, was a quiet country
village with about a thousand inhabitants.105 On the north,
cattle fed, and sportsmen wandered with dogs and guns, over the
site of the borough of Marylebone, and over far the greater part
of the space now covered by the boroughs of Finsbury and of the
Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a solitude; and poets loved
to contrast its silence and repose with the din and turmoil of
the monster London.106 On the south the capital is now connected
with its suburb by several bridges, not inferior in magnificence
and solidity to the noblest works of the Caesars. In 1685, a
single line of irregular arches, overhung by piles of mean and
crazy houses, and garnished, after a fashion worthy of the naked
barbarians of Dahomy, with scores of mouldering heads, impeded
the navigation of the river.
Of the metropolis, the City, properly so called, was the most
important division. At the time of the Restoration it had been
built, for the most part, of wood and plaster; the few bricks
that were used were ill baked; the booths where goods were
exposed to sale projected far into the streets, and were overhung
by the upper stories. A few specimens of this architecture may
still be seen in those districts which were not reached by the
great fire. That fire had, in a few days, covered a space of
little less shall a square mile with the ruins of eighty-nine
churches and of thirteen thousand houses. But the City had risen
again with a celerity which had excited the admiration of
neighbouring countries. Unfortunately, the old lines of the
streets had been to a great extent preserved; and those lines,
originally traced in an age when even princesses performed their
journeys on horseback, were often too narrow to allow wheeled
carriages to pass each other with ease, and were therefore ill
adapted for the residence of wealthy persons in an age when a
coach and six was a fashionable luxury. The style of building
was, however, far superior to that of the City which had
perished. The ordinary material was brick, of much better quality
than had formerly been used. On the sites of the ancient parish
churches had arisen a multitude of new domes, towers, and spires
which bore the mark of the fertile genius of Wren. In every place
save one the traces of the great devastation had been completely
effaced. But the crowds of workmen, the scaffolds, and the masses
of hewn stone were still to be seen where the noblest of
Protestant temples was slowly rising on the ruins of the Old
Cathedral of Saint Paul.107
The whole character of the City has, since that time, undergone a
complete change. At present the bankers, the merchants, and the
chief shopkeepers repair thither on six mornings of every week
for the transaction of business; but they reside in other
quarters of the metropolis, or at suburban country seats
surrounded by shrubberies and flower gardens. This revolution in
private habits has produced a political revolution of no small
importance. The City is no longer regarded by the wealthiest
traders with that attachment which every man naturally feels for
his home. It is no longer associated in their minds with domestic
affections and endearments. The fireside, the nursery, the social
table, the quiet bed are not there. Lombard Street and
Threadneedle Street are merely places where men toil and
accumulate. They go elsewhere to enjoy and to expend. On a
Sunday, or in an evening after the hours of business, some courts
and alleys, which a few hours before had been alive with hurrying
feet and anxious faces, are as silent as the glades of a forest.
The chiefs of the mercantile interest are no longer citizens.
They avoid, they almost contemn, municipal honours and duties.
Those honours and duties are abandoned to men who, though useful
and highly respectable, seldom belong to the princely commercial
houses of which the names are renowned throughout the world.
In the seventeenth century the City was the merchant's residence.
Those mansions of the great old burghers which still exist have
been turned into counting houses and warehouses: but it is
evident that they were originally not inferior in magnificence to
the dwellings which were then inhabited by the nobility. They
sometimes stand in retired and gloomy courts, and are accessible
only by inconvenient passages: but their dimensions are ample,
and their aspect stately. The entrances are decorated with richly
carved pillars and canopies. The staircases and landing places
are not wanting in grandeur. The floors are sometimes of wood
tessellated after the fashion of France. The palace of Sir Robert
Clayton, in the Old Jewry, contained a superb banqueting room
wainscoted with cedar, and adorned with battles of gods and
giants in fresco.108 Sir Dudley North expended four thousand
pounds, a sum which would then have been important to a Duke, on
the rich furniture of his reception rooms in Basinghall
Street.109 In such abodes, under the last Stuarts, the heads of
the great firms lived splendidly and hospitably. To their
dwelling place they were bound by the strongest ties of interest
and affection. There they had passed their youth, had made their
friendships, had courted their wives had seen their children grow
up, had laid the remains of their parents in the earth, and
expected that their own remains would be laid. That intense
patriotism which is peculiar to the members of societies
congregated within a narrow space was, in such circumstances,
strongly developed. London was, to the Londoner, what Athens was
to the Athenian of the age of Pericles, what Florence was to the
Florentine of the fifteenth century. The citizen was proud of the
grandeur of his city, punctilious about her claims to respect,
ambitious of her offices, and zealous for her franchises.
At the close of the reign of Charles the Second the pride of the
Londoners was smarting from a cruel mortification. The old
charter had been taken away; and the magistracy had been
remodelled. All the civic functionaries were Tories: and the
Whigs, though in numbers and in wealth superior to their
opponents, found themselves excluded from every local dignity.
Nevertheless, the external splendour of the municipal government
was not diminished, nay, was rather increased by this change.
For, under the administration of some Puritans who had lately
borne rule, the ancient fame of the City for good cheer had
declined: but under the new magistrates, who belonged to a more
festive party, and at whose boards guests of rank and fashion
from beyond Temple Bar were often seen, the Guildhall and the
halls of the great companies were enlivened by many sumptuous
banquets. During these repasts, odes composed by the poet
laureate of the corporation, in praise of the King, the Duke, and
the Mayor, were sung to music. The drinking was deep and the
shouting loud. An observant Tory, who had often shared in these
revels, has remarked that the practice of huzzaing after drinking
healths dates from this joyous period.110
The magnificence displayed by the first civic magistrate was
almost regal. The gilded coach, indeed, which is now annually
admired by the crowd, was not yet a part of his state. On great
occasions he appeared on horseback, attended by a long cavalcade
inferior in magnificence only to that which, before a coronation,
escorted the sovereign from the Tower to Westminster. The Lord
Mayor was never seen in public without his rich robe, his hood of
black velvet, his gold chain, his jewel, and a great attendance
of harbingers and guards.111 Nor did the world find anything
ludicrous in the pomp which constantly surrounded him. For it was
not more than became the place which, as wielding the strength
and representing the dignity of the City of London, he was
entitled to occupy in the State. That City, being then not only
without equal in the country, but without second, had, during
five and forty years, exercised almost as great an influence on
the politics of England as Paris has, in our own time, exercised
on the politics of France. In intelligence London was greatly in
advance of every other part of the kingdom. A government,
supported and trusted by London, could in a day obtain such
pecuniary means as it would have taken months to collect from the
rest of the island. Nor were the military resources of the
capital to be despised. The power which the Lord Lieutenants
exercised in other parts of the kingdom was in London entrusted
to a Commission of eminent citizens. Under the order of this
Commission were twelve regiments of foot and two regiments of
horse. An army of drapers' apprentices and journeymen tailors,
with common councilmen for captains and aldermen for colonels,
might not indeed have been able to stand its ground against
regular troops; but there were then very few regular troops in
the kingdom. A town, therefore, which could send forth, at an
hour's notice, thousands of men, abounding in natural courage,
provided with tolerable weapons, and not altogether untinctured
with martial discipline, could not but be a valuable ally and a
formidable enemy. It was not forgotten that Hampden and Pym had
been protected from lawless tyranny by the London trainbands;
that, in the great crisis of the civil war, the London trainbands
had marched to raise the siege of Gloucester; or that, in the
movement against the military tyrants which followed the downfall
of Richard Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal
part. In truth, it is no exaggeration to say that, but for the
hostility of the City, Charles the First would never have been
vanquished, and that, without the help of the City, Charles the
Second could scarcely have been restored.
These considerations may serve to explain why, in spite of that
attraction which had, during a long course of years, gradually
drawn the aristocracy westward, a few men of high rank had
continued, till a very recent period, to dwell in the vicinity of
the Exchange and of the Guildhall. Shaftesbury and Buckingham,
while engaged in bitter and unscrupulous opposition to the
government, had thought that they could nowhere carry on their
intrigues so conveniently or so securely as under the protection
of the City magistrates and the City militia. Shaftesbury had
therefore lived in Aldersgate Street, at a house which may still
be easily known by pilasters and wreaths, the graceful work of
Inigo. Buckingham had ordered his mansion near Charing Cross,
once the abode of the Archbishops of York, to be pulled down;
and, while streets and alleys which are still named after him
were rising on that site, chose to reside in Dowgate.112
These, however, were rare exceptions. Almost all the noble
families of England had long migrated beyond the walls. The
district where most of their town houses stood lies between the
city and the regions which are now considered as fashionable. A
few great men still retained their hereditary hotels in the
Strand. The stately dwellings on the south and west of Lincoln's
Inn Fields, the Piazza of Covent Garden, Southampton Square,
which is now called Bloomsbury Square, and King's Square in Soho
Fields, which is now called Soho Square, were among the favourite
spots. Foreign princes were carried to see Bloomsbury Square, as
one of the wonders of England.113 Soho Square, which had just
been built, was to our ancestors a subject of pride with which
their posterity will hardly sympathise. Monmouth Square had been
the name while the fortunes of the Duke of Monmouth flourished;
and on the southern side towered his mansion. The front, though
ungraceful, was lofty and richly adorned. The walls of the
principal apartments were finely sculptured with fruit, foliage,
and armorial bearings, and were hung with embroidered satin.114
Every trace of this magnificence has long disappeared; and no
aristocratical mansion is to be found in that once aristocratical
quarter. A little way north from Holborn, and on the verge of the
pastures and corn-fields, rose two celebrated palaces, each with
an ample garden. One of them, then called Southampton House, and
subsequently Bedford House, was removed about fifty years ago to
make room for a new city, which now covers with its squares,
streets, and churches, a vast area, renowned in the seventeenth
century for peaches and snipes. The other, Montague House,
celebrated for its frescoes and furniture, was, a few months
after the death of Charles the Second, burned to the ground, and
was speedily succeeded by a more magnificent Montague House,
which, having been long the repository of such various and
precious treasures of art, science, and learning as were scarcely
ever before assembled under a single roof, has now given place to
an edifice more magnificent still.115
Nearer to the Court, on a space called St. James's Fields, had
just been built St. James's Square and Jermyn Street. St. James's
Church had recently been opened for the accommodation of the
inhabitants of this new quarter.116 Golden Square, which was in
the next generation inhabited by lords and ministers of state,
had not yet been begun. Indeed the only dwellings to be seen on
the north of Piccadilly were three or four isolated and almost
rural mansions, of which the most celebrated was the costly pile
erected by CIarendon, and nicknamed Dunkirk House. It had been
purchased after its founder's downfall by the Duke of Albemarle.
The Clarendon Hotel and Albemarle Street still preserve the
memory of the site.
He who then rambled to what is now the gayest and most crowded
part of Regent Street found himself in a solitude, and, was
sometimes so fortunate as to have a shot at a woodcock.117 On the
north the Oxford road ran between hedges. Three or four hundred
yards to the south were the garden walls of a few great houses
which were considered as quite out of town. On the west was a
meadow renowned for a spring from which, long afterwards, Conduit
Street was named. On the east was a field not to be passed
without a shudder by any Londoner of that age. There, as in a
place far from the haunts of men, had been dug, twenty years
before, when the great plague was raging, a pit into which the
dead carts had nightly shot corpses by scores. It was popularly
believed that the earth was deeply tainted with infection, and
could not be disturbed without imminent risk to human life. No
foundations were laid there till two generations had passed
without any return of the pestilence, and till the ghastly spot
had long been surrounded by buildings.118
We should greatly err if we were to suppose that any of the
streets and squares then bore the same aspect as at present. The
great majority of the houses, indeed. have, since that time, been
wholly, or in great part, rebuilt. If the most fashionable parts
of the capital could be placed before us such as they then were,
we should be disgusted by their squalid appearance, and poisoned
by their noisome atmosphere.
In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the
dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought,
cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the
thresholds of the Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of
Durham.119
The centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields was an open space where the
rabble congregated every evening, within a few yards of Cardigan
House and Winchester House, to hear mountebanks harangue, to see
bears dance, and to set dogs at oxen. Rubbish was shot in every
part of the area. Horses were exercised there. The beggars were
as noisy and importunate as in the worst governed cities of the
Continent. A Lincoln's Inn mumper was a proverb. The whole
fraternity knew the arms and liveries of every charitably
disposed grandee in the neighbourhood, and as soon as his
lordship's coach and six appeared, came hopping and crawling in
crowds to persecute him. These disorders lasted, in spite of many
accidents, and of some legal proceedings, till, in the reign of
George the Second, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, was
knocked down and nearly killed in the middle of the Square. Then
at length palisades were set up, and a pleasant garden laid
out.120
Saint James's Square was a receptacle for all the offal and
cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster. At
one time a cudgel player kept the ring there. At another time an
impudent squatter settled himself there, and built a shed for
rubbish under the windows of the gilded saloons in which the
first magnates of the realm, Norfolk, Ormond, Kent, and Pembroke,
gave banquets and balls. It was not till these nuisances had
lasted through a whole generation, and till much had been written
about them, that the inhabitants applied to Parliament for
permission to put up rails, and to plant trees.121
When such was the state of the region inhabited by the most
luxurious portion of society, we may easily believe that the
great body of the population suffered what would now be
considered as insupportable grievances. The pavement was
detestable: all foreigners cried shame upon it. The drainage was
so bad that in rainy weather the gutters soon became torrents.
Several facetious poets have commemorated the fury with which
these black rivulets roared down Snow Hill and Ludgate Hill,
bearing to Fleet Ditch a vast tribute of animal and vegetable
filth from the stalls of butchers and greengrocers. This flood
was profusely thrown to right and left by coaches and carts. To
keep as far from the carriage road as possible was therefore the
wish of every pedestrian. The mild and timid gave the wall. The
bold and athletic took it. If two roisterers met they cocked
their hats in each other's faces, and pushed each other about
till the weaker was shoved towards the kennel. If he was a mere
bully he sneaked off, mattering that he should find a time. If he
was pugnacious, the encounter probably ended in a duel behind
Montague House.122
The houses were not numbered. There would indeed have been little
advantage in numbering them; for of the coachmen, chairmen,
porters, and errand boys of London, a very small proportion could
read. It was necessary to use marks which the most ignorant could
understand. The shops were therefore distinguished by painted or
sculptured signs, which gave a gay and grotesque aspect to the
streets. The walk from Charing Cross to Whitechapel lay through
an endless succession of Saracens' Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears,
and Golden Lambs, which disappeared when they were no longer
required for the direction of the common people.
When the evening closed in, the difficulty and danger of walking
about London became serious indeed. The garret windows were
opened, and pails were emptied, with little regard to those who
were passing below. Falls, bruises and broken bones were of
constant occurrence. For, till the last year of the reign of
Charles the Second, most of the streets were left in profound
darkness. Thieves and robbers plied their trade with impunity:
yet they were hardly so terrible to peaceable citizens as another
class of ruffians. It was a favourite amusement of dissolute
young gentlemen to swagger by night about the town, breaking
windows, upsetting sedans, beating quiet men, and offering rude
caresses to pretty women. Several dynasties of these tyrants had,
since the Restoration, domineered over the streets. The Muns and
Tityre Tus had given place to the Hectors, and the Hectors had
been recently succeeded by the Scourers. At a later period arose
the Nicker, the Hawcubite, and the yet more dreaded name of
Mohawk.123 The machinery for keeping the peace was utterly
contemptible. There was an Act of Common Council which provided
that more than a thousand watchmen should be constantly on the
alert in the city, from sunset to sunrise, and that every
inhabitant should take his turn of duty. But this Act was
negligently executed. Few of those who were summoned left their
homes; and those few generally found it more agreeable to tipple
in alehouses than to pace the streets.124
It ought to be noticed that, in the last year of the reign of
Charles the Second, began a great change in the police of London,
a change which has perhaps added as much to the happiness of the
body of the people as revolutions of much greater fame. An
ingenious projector, named Edward Heming, obtained letters patent
conveying to him, for a term of years, the exclusive right of
lighting up London. He undertook, for a moderate consideration,
to place a light before every tenth door, on moonless nights,
from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and from six to twelve of the clock.
Those who now see the capital all the year round, from dusk to
dawn, blazing with a splendour beside which the illuminations for
La Hogue and Blenheim would have looked pale, may perhaps smile
to think of Heming's lanterns, which glimmered feebly before one
house in ten during a small part of one night in three. But such
was not the feeling of his contemporaries. His scheme was
enthusiastically applauded, and furiously attacked. The friends
of improvement extolled him as the greatest of all the
benefactors of his city. What, they asked, were the boasted
inventions of Archimedes, when compared with the achievement of
the man who had turned the nocturnal shades into noon-day? In
spite of these eloquent eulogies the cause of darkness was not
left undefended. There were fools in that age who opposed the
introduction of what was called the new light as strenuously as
fools in our age have opposed the introduction of vaccination and
railroads, as strenuously as the fools of an age anterior to the
dawn of history doubtless opposed the introduction of the plough
and of alphabetical writing. Many years after the date of
Heming's patent there were extensive districts in which no lamp
was seen.125
We may easily imagine what, in such times, must have been the
state of the quarters of London which were peopled by the
outcasts of society. Among those quarters one had attained a
scandalous preeminence. On the confines of the City and the
Temple had been founded, in the thirteenth century, a House of
Carmelite Friars, distinguished by their white hoods. The
precinct of this house had, before the Reformation, been a
sanctuary for criminals, and still retained the privilege of
protecting debtors from arrest. Insolvents consequently were to
be found in every dwelling, from cellar to garret. Of these a
large proportion were knaves and libertines, and were followed to
their asylum by women more abandoned than themselves. The civil
power was unable to keep order in a district swarming with such
inhabitants; and thus Whitefriars became the favourite resort of
all who wished to be emancipated from the restraints of the law.
Though the immunities legally belonging to the place extended
only to cases of debt, cheats, false witnesses, forgers, and
highwaymen found refuge there. For amidst a rabble so desperate
no peace officer's life was in safety. At the cry of "Rescue,"
bullies with swords and cudgels, and termagant hags with spits
and broomsticks, poured forth by hundreds; and the intruder was
fortunate if he escaped back into Fleet Street, hustled,
stripped, and pumped upon. Even the warrant of the Chief Justice
of England could not be executed without the help of a company of
musketeers. Such relics of the barbarism of the darkest ages were
to be found within a short walk of the chambers where Somers was
studying history and law, of the chapel where Tillotson was
preaching, of the coffee house where Dryden was passing judgment
on poems and plays, and of the hall where the Royal Society was
examining the astronomical system of Isaac Newton.126
Each of the two cities which made up the capital of England had
its own centre of attraction. In the metropolis of commerce the
point of convergence was the Exchange; in the metropolis of
fashion the Palace. But the Palace did not retain influence so
long as the Exchange. The Revolution completely altered the
relations between the Court and the higher classes of society. It
was by degrees discovered that the King, in his individual
capacity, had very little to give; that coronets and garters,
bishoprics and embassies, lordships of the Treasury and
tellerships of the Exchequer, nay, even charges in the royal stud
and bedchamber, were really bestowed, not by him, but by his
advisers. Every ambitious and covetous man perceived that he
would consult his own interest far better by acquiring the
dominion of a Cornish borough, and by rendering good service to
the ministry during a critical session, than by becoming the
companion, or even the minion, of his prince. It was therefore in
the antechambers, not of George the First and of George the
Second, but of Walpole and of Pelham, that the daily crowd of
courtiers was to be found. It is also to be remarked that the
same Revolution, which made it impossible that our Kings should
use the patronage of the state merely for the purpose of
gratifying their personal predilections, gave us several Kings
unfitted by their education and habits to be gracious and affable
hosts. They had been born and bred on the Continent. They never
felt themselves at home in our island. If they spoke our
language, they spoke it inelegantly and with effort. Our national
character they never fully understood. Our national manners they
hardly attempted to acquire. The most important part of their
duty they performed better than any ruler who preceded them: for
they governed strictly according to law: but they could not be
the first gentlemen of the realm, the heads of polite society. If
ever they unbent, it was in a very small circle where hardly an
English face was to be seen; and they were never so happy as when
they could escape for a summer to their native land. They had
indeed their days of reception for our nobility and gentry; but
the reception was a mere matter of form, and became at last as
solemn a ceremony as a funeral.
Not such was the court of Charles the Second. Whitehall, when he
dwelt there, was the focus of political intrigue and of
fashionable gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the
metropolis went on under his roof. Whoever could make himself
agreeable to the prince, or could secure the good offices of the
mistress, might hope to rise in the world without rendering any
service to the government, without being even known by sight to
any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate, and that a
company; a third, the pardon of a rich offender; a fourth, a
lease of crown land on easy terms. If the King notified his
pleasure that a briefless lawyer should be made a judge, or that
a libertine baronet should be made a peer, the gravest
counsellors, after a little murmuring, submitted.127 Interest,
therefore, drew a constant press of suitors to the gates of the
palace; and those gates always stood wide. The King kept open
house every day, and all day long, for the good society of
London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly any gentleman had
any difficulty in making his way to the royal presence. The levee
was exactly what the word imports. Some men of quality came every
morning to stand round their master, to chat with him while his
wig was combed and his cravat tied, and to accompany him in his
early walk through the Park. All persons who had been properly
introduced might, without any special invitation, go to see him
dine, sup, dance, and play at hazard, and might have the pleasure
of hearing him tell stories, which indeed he told remarkably
well, about his flight from Worcester, and about the misery which
he had endured when he was a state prisoner in the hands of the
canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanders whom His
Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. This
proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his father
or grandfather had practiced. It was not easy for the most
austere republican of the school of Marvel to resist the,
fascination of so much good humour and affability; and many a
veteran Cavalier, in whose heart the remembrance of unrequited
sacrifices and services had been festering during twenty years,
was compensated in one moment for wounds and sequestrations by
his sovereign's kind nod, and "God bless you, my old friend!"
Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news. Whenever
there was a rumour that anything important had happened or was
about to happen, people hastened thither to obtain intelligence
from the fountain head. The galleries presented the appearance of
a modern club room at an anxious time. They were full of people
enquiring whether the Dutch mail was in, what tidings the express
from France had brought, whether John Sobiesky had beaten the
Turks, whether the Doge of Genoa was really at Paris These were
matters about which it was safe to talk aloud. But there were
subjects concerning which information was asked and given in
whispers. Had Halifax got the better of Rochester? Was there to
be a Parliament? Was the Duke of York really going to Scotland?
Had Monmouth really been summoned from the Hague? Men tried to
read the countenance of every minister as he went through the
throng to and from the royal closet. All sorts of auguries were
drawn from the tone in which His Majesty spoke to the Lord
President, or from the laugh with which His Majesty honoured a
jest of the Lord Privy Seal; and in a few hours the hopes and
fears inspired by such slight indications had spread to all the
coffee houses from Saint James's to the Tower.128
The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It
might indeed at that time have been not improperly called a most
important political institution. No Parliament had sat for years
The municipal council of the City had ceased to speak the sense
of the citizens. Public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the
rest of the modern machinery of agitation had not yet come into
fashion. Nothing resembling the modern newspaper existed. In such
circumstances the coffee houses were the chief organs through
which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself.
The first of these establishments had been set up by a Turkey
merchant, who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste for their
favourite beverage. The convenience of being able to make
appointments in any part of the town, and of being able to pass
evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great that the
fashion spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle class went
daily to his coffee house to learn the news and to discuss it.
Every coffee house had one or more orators to whose eloquence the
crowd listened with admiration, and who soon became, what the
journalists of our time have been called, a fourth Estate of the
realm. The Court had long seen with uneasiness the growth of this
new power in the state. An attempt had been made, during Danby's
administration, to close the coffee houses. But men of all
parties missed their usual places of resort so much that there
was an universal outcry. The government did not venture, in
opposition to a feeling so strong and general, to enforce a
regulation of which the legality might well be questioned. Since
that time ten years had elapsed, and during those years the
number and influence of the coffee houses had been constantly
increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee house was that
which especially distinguished London from all other cities; that
the coffee house was the Londoner's home, and that those who
wished to find a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived
in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the
Grecian or the Rainbow. Nobody was excluded from these places who
laid down his penny at the bar. Yet every rank and profession,
and every shade of religious and political opinion, had its own
headquarters. There were houses near Saint James's Park where
fops congregated, their heads and shoulders covered with black or
flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are now worn by the
Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The wig
came from Paris and so did the rest of the fine gentleman's
ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the
tassel which upheld his pantaloons. The conversation was in that
dialect which, long after it had ceased to be spoken in
fashionable circles, continued, in the mouth of Lord Foppington,
to excite the mirth of theatres.129 The atmosphere was like that
of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any other form than that of
richly scented snuff was held in abomination. If any clown,
ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the
sneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of the waiters
soon convinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor,
indeed, would he have had far to go. For, in general the coffee
rooms reeked with tobacco like a guardroom: and strangers
sometimes expressed their surprise that so many people should
leave their own firesides to sit in the midst of eternal fog and
stench. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's.
That celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow
Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about
poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There was a
faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and
the ancients. One group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not
to have been in rhyme. To another an envious poetaster
demonstrated that Venice Preserved ought to have been hooted from
the stage. Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be
seen. There were Earls in stars and garters, clergymen in
cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the
Universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats of
frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John
Dryden sate. In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook
by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the
Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy or of
Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch
from his snuff box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a
young enthusaist. There were coffee houses where the first
medical men might be consulted. Doctor John Radcliffe, who, in
the year 1685, rose to the largest practice in London, came
daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, from his house in
Bow Street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to
Garraway's, and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and
apothecaries, at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee
houses where no oath was heard, and where lankhaired men
discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew
coffee houses where darkeyed money changers from Venice and
Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee houses where, as
good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned, over their cups,
another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the King.130
These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the
character of the Londoner of that age. He was, indeed, a
different being from the rustic Englishman. There was not then
the intercourse which now exists between the two classes. Only
very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between
town and country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in
their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of all citizens in easy
circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields and woods
during some weeks of every summer. A cockney, in a rural village,
was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a Kraal of
Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshire or
Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily
distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar.
His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he gazed at
the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters,
and stood under the waterspouts, marked him out as an excellent
subject for the operations of swindlers and barterers. Bullies
jostled him into the kennel. Hackney coachmen splashed him from
head to foot. Thieves explored with perfect security the huge
pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the
splendour of the Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore from the
cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him
the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted
women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed
themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked
his way to Saint James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If
he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit
purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of
second-hand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that would not
go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee house, he became a
mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery of
Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion,
and there, in the homage of his tenants and the conversation of
his boon companions, found consolation for the vexatious and
humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once more a
great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the
assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at
the muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieutenant.
The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements
of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our
ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all
inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted,
those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the
civilisation of our species. Every improvement of the means of
locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as
materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the
various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove
national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the
branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century
the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical
purpose, farther from Reading than they now are from Edinburgh,
and farther from Edinburgh than they now are from Vienna.
The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true, quite
unacquainted with that principle which has, in our own time,
produced an unprecedented revolution in human affairs, which has
enabled navies to advance in face of wind and tide, and brigades
of troops, attended by all their baggage and artillery, to
traverse kingdoms at a pace equal to that of the fleetest race
horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recently observed the
expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many
experiments he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam engine,
which he called a fire water work, and which he pronounced to be
an admirable and most forcible instrument of propulsion.131 But
the Marquess was suspected to be a madman, and known to be a
Papist. His inventions, therefore found no favourable reception.
His fire water work might, perhaps, furnish matter for
conversation at a meeting of the Royal Society, but was not
applied to any practical purpose. There were no railways, except
a few made of timber, on which coals were carried from the mouths
of the Northumbrian pits to the banks of the Tyne.132 There was
very little internal communication by water. A few attempts had
been made to deepen and embank the natural streams, but with
slender success. Hardly a single navigable canal had been even
projected. The English of that day were in the habit of talking
with mingled admiration and despair of the immense trench by
which Lewis the Fourteenth had made a junction between the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They little thought that their
country would, in the course of a few generations, be
intersected, at the cost of private adventurers, by artificial
rivers making up more than four times the length of the Thames,
the Severn, and the Trent together.
It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally
passed from place to place; and those highways appear to have
been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of
wealth and civilisation which the nation had even then attained.
On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the
descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly
possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed heath
and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thorseby, the antiquary,
was in danger of losing his way on the great North road, between
Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between
Doncaster and York.133 Pepys and his wife, travelling in their
own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the
course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and
were in danger of having to pass the night on the plain.134 It
was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was
available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the
right and the left; and only a narrow track of firm ground rose
above the quagmire.135 At such times obstructions and quarrels
were frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up during a
long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It
happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team
of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm, to tug
them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveller had to
encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in
the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has
recorded, in his Diary, such a series of perils and disasters as
might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert
of Sahara. On one occasion he learned that the floods were out
between Ware and London, that passengers had to swim for their
lives, and that a higgler had perished in the attempt to cross.
In consequence of these tidings he turned out of the high road,
and was conducted across some meadows, where it was necessary for
him to ride to the saddle skirts in water.136 In the course of
another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an
inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford
four days, on account of the state of the roads, and then
ventured to proceed only because fourteen members of the House of
Commons, who were going up in a body to Parliament with guides
and numerous attendants, took him into their company.137 On the
roads of Derbyshire, travellers were in constant fear for their
necks, and were frequently compelled to alight and lead their
beasts.138 The great route through Wales to Holyhead was in such
a state that, in 1685, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was five
hours in travelling fourteen miles, from Saint Asaph to Conway.
Between Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk a great part
of the way; and his lady was carried in a litter. His coach was,
with much difficulty, and by the help of many hands, brought
after him entire. In general, carriages were taken to pieces at
Conway, and borne, on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants, to
the Menai Straits.139 In some parts of Kent and Sussex, none but
the strongest horses could, in winter, get through the bog, in
which, at every step, they sank deep. The markets were often
inaccessible during several months. It is said that the fruits of
the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in
another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far
short of the demand. The wheeled carriages were, in this
district, generally pulled by oxen.140 When Prince George of
Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in wet weather,
he was six hours in going nine miles; and it was necessary that a
body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach, in
order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinue
several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party
has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains
that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when
his coach was overturned or stuck fast in the mud.141
One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been
the defective state of the law. Every parish was bound to repair
the highways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced
to give their gratuitous labour six days in the year. If this was
not sufficient, hired labour was employed, and the expense was
met by a parochial rate. That a route connecting two great towns,
which have a large and thriving trade with each other, should be
maintained at the cost of the rural population scattered between
them is obviously unjust; and this injustice was peculiarly
glaring in the case of the great North road, which traversed very
poor and thinly inhabited districts, and joined very rich and
populous districts. Indeed it was not in the power of the
parishes of Huntingdonshire to mend a high-way worn by the
constant traffic between the West Riding of Yorkshire and London.
Soon after the Restoration this grievance attracted the notice of
Parliament; and an act, the first of our many turnpike acts, was
passed imposing a small toll on travellers and goods, for the
purpose of keeping some parts of this important line of
communication in good repair.142 This innovation, however,
excited many murmurs; and the other great avenues to the capital
were long left under the old system. A change was at length
effected, but not without much difficulty. For unjust and absurd
taxation to which men are accustomed is often borne far more
willingly than the most reasonable impost which is new. It was
not till many toll bars had been violently pulled down, till the
troops had in many districts been forced to act against the
people, and till much blood had been shed, that a good system was
introduced.143 By slow degrees reason triumphed over prejudice;
and our island is now crossed in every direction by near thirty
thousand miles of turnpike road.
On the best highways heavy articles were, in the time of Charles
the Second, generally conveyed from place to place by stage
waggons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd of
passengers, who could not afford to travel by coach or on
horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the weight
of their luggage, from going on foot. The expense of transmitting
heavy goods in this way was enormous. From London to Birmingham
the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London to Exeter twelve
pounds a ton.144 This was about fifteen pence a ton for every
mile, more by a third than was afterwards charged on turnpike
roads, and fifteen times what is now demanded by railway
companies. The cost of conveyance amounted to a prohibitory tax
on many useful articles. Coal in particular was never seen except
in the districts where it was produced, or in the districts to
which it could be carried by sea, and was indeed always known in
the south of England by the name of sea coal.
On byroads, and generally throughout the country north of York
and west of Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of
packhorses. These strong and patient beasts, the breed of which
is now extinct, were attended by a class of men who seem to have
borne much resemblance to the Spanish muleteers. A traveller of
humble condition often found it convenient to perform a journey
mounted on a packsaddle between two baskets, under the care of
these hardy guides. The expense of this mode of conveyance was
small. But the caravan moved at a foot's pace; and in winter the
cold was often insupportable.145
The rich commonly travelled in their own carriages, with at least
four horses. Cotton, the facetious poet, attempted to go from
London to the Peak with a single pair, but found at Saint Albans
that the journey would be insupportably tedious, and altered his
Plan.146 A coach and six is in our time never seen, except as
part of some pageant. The frequent mention therefore of such
equipages in old books is likely to mislead us. We attribute to
magnificence what was really the effect of a very disagreeable
necessity. People, in the time of Charles the Second, travelled
with six horses, because with a smaller number there was great
danger of sticking fast in the mire. Nor were even six horses
always sufficient. Vanbrugh, in the succeeding generation,
described with great humour the way in which a country gentleman,
newly chosen a member of Parliament, went up to London. On that
occasion all the exertions of six beasts, two of which had been
taken from the plough, could not save the family coach from being
embedded in a quagmire.
Public carriages had recently been much improved. During the
years which immediately followed the Restoration, a diligence ran
between London and Oxford in two days. The passengers slept at
Beaconsfield. At length, in the spring of 1669, a great and
daring innovation was attempted. It was announced that a vehicle,
described as the Flying Coach, would perform the whole journey
between sunrise and sunset. This spirited undertaking was
solemnly considered and sanctioned by the Heads of the
University, and appears to have excited the same sort of interest
which is excited in our own time by the opening of a new railway.
The Vicechancellor, by a notice affixed in all public places,
prescribed the hour and place of departure. The success of the
experiment was complete. At six in the morning the carriage began
to move from before the ancient front of All Souls College; and
at seven in the evening the adventurous gentlemen who had run the
first risk were safely deposited at their inn in London.147 The
emulation of the sister University was moved; and soon a
diligence was set up which in one day carried passengers from
Cambridge to the capital. At the close of the reign of Charles
the Second flying carriages ran thrice a week from London to the
chief towns. But no stage coach, indeed no stage waggon, appears
to have proceeded further north than York, or further west than
Exeter. The ordinary day's journey of a flying coach was about
fifty miles in the summer; but in winter, when the ways were bad
and the nights long, little more than thirty. The Chester coach,
the York coach, and the Exeter coach generally reached London in
four days during the fine season, but at Christmas not till the
sixth day. The passengers, six in number, were all seated in the
carriage. For accidents were so frequent that it would have been
most perilous to mount the roof. The ordinary fare was about
twopence halfpenny a mile in summer, and somewhat more in
winter.148
This mode of travelling, which by Englishmen of the present day
would be regarded as insufferably slow, seemed to our ancestors
wonderfully and indeed alarmingly rapid. In a work published a
few months before the death of Charles the Second, the flying
coaches are extolled as far superior to any similar vehicles ever
known in the world. Their velocity is the subject of special
commendation, and is triumphantly contrasted with the sluggish
pace of the continental posts. But with boasts like these was
mingled the sound of complaint and invective. The interests of
large classes had been unfavourably affected by the establishment
of the new diligences; and, as usual, many persons were, from
mere stupidity and obstinacy, disposed to clamour against the
innovation, simply because it was an innovation. It was
vehemently argued that this mode of conveyance would be fatal to
the breed of horses and to the noble art of horsemanship; that
the Thames, which had long been an important nursery of seamen,
would cease to be the chief thoroughfare from London up to
Windsor and down to Gravesend; that saddlers and spurriers would
be ruined by hundreds; that numerous inns, at which mounted
travellers had been in the habit of stopping, would be deserted,
and would no longer pay any rent; that the new carriages were too
hot in summer and too cold in winter; that the passengers were
grievously annoyed by invalids and crying children; that the
coach sometimes reached the inn so late that it was impossible to
get supper, and sometimes started so early that it was impossible
to get breakfast. On these grounds it was gravely recommended
that no public coach should be permitted to have more than four
horses, to start oftener than once a week, or to go more than
thirty miles a day. It was hoped that, if this regulation were
adopted, all except the sick and the lame would return to the old
mode of travelling. Petitions embodying such opinions as these
were presented to the King in council from several companies of
the City of London, from several provincial towns, and from the
justices of several counties. We Smile at these things. It is not
impossible that our descendants, when they read the history of
the opposition offered by cupidity and prejudice to the
improvements of the nineteenth century, may smile in their
turn.149
In spite of the attractions of the flying coaches, it was still
usual for men who enjoyed health and vigour, and who were not
encumbered by much baggage, to perform long journeys on
horseback. If the traveller wished to move expeditiously he rode
post. Fresh saddle horses and guides were to be procured at
convenient distances along all the great lines of road. The
charge was threepence a mile for each horse, and fourpence a
stage for the guide. In this manner, when the ways were good, it
was possible to travel, for a considerable time, as rapidly as by
any conveyance known in England, till vehicles were propelled by
steam. There were as yet no post chaises; nor could those who
rode in their own coaches ordinarily procure a change of horses.
The King, however, and the great officers of state were able to
command relays. Thus Charles commonly went in one day from
Whitehall to New-market, a distance of about fifty-five miles
through a level country; and this was thought by his subjects a
proof of great activity. Evelyn performed the same journey in
company with the Lord Treasurer Clifford. The coach was drawn by
six horses, which were changed at Bishop Stortford and again at
Chesterford. The travellers reached Newmarket at night. Such a
mode of conveyance seems to have been considered as a rare luxury
confined to princes and ministers.150
Whatever might be the way in which a journey was performed, the
travellers, unless they were numerous and well armed, ran
considerable risk of being stopped and plundered. The mounted
highwayman, a marauder known to our generation only from books,
was to be found on every main road. The waste tracts which lay on
the great routes near London were especially haunted by
plunderers of this class. Hounslow Heath, on the Great Western
Road, and Finchley Common, on the Great Northern Road, were
perhaps the most celebrated of these spots. The Cambridge
scholars trembled when they approached Epping Forest, even in
broad daylight. Seamen who had just been paid off at Chatham were
often compelled to deliver their purses on Gadshill, celebrated
near a hundred years earlier by the greatest of poets as the
scene of the depredations of Falstaff. The public authorities
seem to have been often at a loss how to deal with the
plunderers. At one time it was announced in the Gazette, that
several persons, who were strongly suspected of being highwaymen,
but against whom there was not sufficient evidence, would be
paraded at Newgate in riding dresses: their horses would also be
shown; and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to
inspect this singular exhibition. On another occasion a pardon
was publicly offered to a robber if he would give up some rough
diamonds, of immense value, which he had taken when he stopped
the Harwich mail. A short time after appeared another
proclamation, warning the innkeepers that the eye of the
government was upon them. Their criminal connivance, it was
affirmed, enabled banditti to infest the roads with impunity.
That these suspicions were not without foundation, is proved by
the dying speeches of some penitent robbers of that age, who
appear to have received from the innkeepers services much
resembling those which Farquhar's Boniface rendered to Gibbet.151
It was necessary to the success and even to the safety of the
highwayman that he should be a bold and skilful rider, and that
his manners and appearance should be such as suited the master of
a fine horse. He therefore held an aristocratical position in the
community of thieves, appeared at fashionable coffee houses and
gaming houses, and betted with men of quality on the race
ground.152 Sometimes, indeed, he was a man of good family and
education. A romantic interest therefore attached, and perhaps
still attaches, to the names of freebooters of this class. The
vulgar eagerly drank in tales of their ferocity and audacity, of
their occasional acts of generosity and good nature, of their
amours, of their miraculous escapes, of their desperate
struggles, and of their manly bearing at the bar and in the cart.
Thus it was related of William Nevison, the great robber of
Yorkshire, that he levied a quarterly tribute on all the northern
drovers, and, in return, not only spared them himself, but
protected them against all other thieves; that he demanded purses
in the most courteous manner; that he gave largely to the poor
what he had taken from the rich; that his life was once spared by
the royal clemency, but that he again tempted his fate, and at
length died, in 1685, on the gallows of York.153 It was related
how Claude Duval, the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took
to the road, became captain of a formidable gang, and had the
honour to be named first in a royal proclamation against
notorious offenders; how at the head of his troop he stopped a
lady's coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds;
how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to
ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him on the heath; how
his vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; how
his dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men;
how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by
wine; how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and with
tears interceded for his life; how the King would have granted a
pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the terror of
highwaymen, who threatened to resign his office unless the law
were carried into full effect; and how, after the execution, the
corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax lights,
black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge, who had
intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb the
obsequies.154 In these anecdotes there is doubtless a large
mixture of fable; but they are not on that account unworthy of
being recorded; for it is both an authentic and an important fact
that such tales, whether false or true, were heard by our
ancestors with eagerness and faith.
All the various dangers by which the traveller was beset were
greatly increased by darkness. He was therefore commonly desirous
of having the shelter of a roof during the night; and such
shelter it was not difficult to obtain. From a very early period
the inns of England had been renowned. Our first great poet had
described the excellent accommodation which they afforded to the
pilgrims of the fourteenth century. Nine and twenty persons, with
their horses, found room in the wide chambers and stables of the
Tabard in Southwark. The food was of the best, and the wines such
as drew the company on to drink largely. Two hundred years later,
under the reign of Elizabeth, William Harrison gave a lively
description of the plenty and comfort of the great hostelries.
The Continent of Europe, he said, could show nothing like them.
There were some in which two or three hundred people, with their
horses, could without difficulty be lodged and fed. The bedding,
the tapestry, above all, the abundance of clean and fine linen
was matter of wonder. Valuable plate was often set on the tables.
Nay, there were signs which had cost thirty or forty pounds. In
the seventeenth century England abounded with excellent inns of
every rank. The traveller sometimes, in a small village, lighted
on a public house such as Walton has described, where the brick
floor was swept clean, where the walls were stuck round with
ballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender, and where a blazing
fire, a cup of good ale, and a dish of trouts fresh from the
neighbouring brook, were to be procured at small charge. At the
larger houses of entertainment were to be found beds hung with
silk, choice cookery, and claret equal to the best which was
drunk in London.155 The innkeepers too, it was said. were not
like other innkeepers. On the Continent the landlord was the
tyrant of those who crossed the threshold. In England he was a
servant. Never was an Englishman more at home than when he took
his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, who might in their own
mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in the habit of
passing their evenings in the parlour of some neighbouring house
of public entertainment. They seem to have thought that comfort
and freedom could in no other place be enjoyed with equal
perfection. This feeling continued during many generations to be
a national peculiarity. The liberty and jollity of inns long
furnished matter to our novelists and dramatists. Johnson
declared that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity;
and Shenstone gently complained that no private roof, however
friendly, gave the wanderer so warm a welcome as that which was
to be found at an inn.
Many conveniences, which were unknown at Hampton Court and
Whitehall in the seventeenth century, are in all modern hotels.
Yet on the whole it is certain that the improvement of our houses
of public entertainment has by no means kept pace with the
improvement of our roads and of our conveyances. Nor is this
strange; for it is evident that, all other circumstances being
supposed equal, the inns will be best where the means of
locomotion are worst. The quicker the rate of travelling, the
less important is it that there should be numerous agreeable
resting places for the traveller. A hundred and sixty years ago a
person who came up to the capital from a remote county generally
required, by the way, twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging for
five or six nights. If he were a great man, he expected the meals
and lodging to be comfortable, and even luxurious. At present we
fly from York or Exeter to London by the light of a single
winter's day. At present, therefore, a traveller seldom
interrupts his journey merely for the sake of rest and
refreshment. The consequence is that hundreds of excellent inns
have fallen into utter decay. In a short time no good houses of
that description will be found, except at places where strangers
are likely to be detained by business or pleasure.
The mode in which correspondence was carried on between distant
places may excite the scorn of the present generation; yet it was
such as might have moved the admiration and envy of the polished
nations of antiquity, or of the contemporaries of Raleigh and
Cecil. A rude and imperfect establishment of posts for the
conveyance of letters had been set up by Charles the First, and
had been swept away by the civil war. Under the Commonwealth the
design was resumed. At the Restoration the proceeds of the Post
Office, after all expenses had been paid, were settled on the
Duke of York. On most lines of road the mails went out and came
in only on the alternate days. In Cornwall, in the fens of
Lincolnshire, and among the hills and lakes of Cumberland,
letters were received only once a week. During a royal progress a
daily post was despatched from the capital to the place where the
court sojourned. There was also daily communication between
London and the Downs; and the same privilege was sometimes
extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath at the seasons when those
places were crowded by the great. The bags were carried on
horseback day and night at the rate of about five miles an
hour.156
The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely from the
charge for the transmission of letters. The Post Office alone was
entitled to furnish post horses; and, from the care with which
this monopoly was guarded, we may infer that it was found
profitable.157 If, indeed, a traveller had waited half an hour
without being supplied he might hire a horse wherever he could.
To facilitate correspondence between one part of London and
another was not originally one of the objects of the Post Office.
But, in the reign of Charles the Second, an enterprising citizen
of London, William Dockwray, set up, at great expense, a penny
post, which delivered letters and parcels six or eight times a
day in the busy and crowded streets near the Exchange, and four
times a day in the outskirts of the capital. This improvement
was, as usual, strenuously resisted. The porters complained that
their interests were attacked, and tore down the placards in
which the scheme was announced to the public. The excitement
caused by Godfrey's death, and by the discovery of Coleman's
papers, was then at the height. A cry was therefore raised that
the penny post was a Popish contrivance. The great Doctor Oates,
it was affirmed, had hinted a suspicion that the Jesuits were at
the bottom of the scheme, and that the bags, if examined, would
be found full of treason.158 The utility of the enterprise was,
however, so great and obvious that all opposition proved
fruitless. As soon as it became clear that the speculation would
be lucrative, the Duke of York complained of it as an infraction
of his monopoly; and the courts of law decided in his favour.159
The revenue of the Post Office was from the first constantly
increasing. In the year of the Restoration a committee of the
House of Commons, after strict enquiry, had estimated the net
receipt at about twenty thousand pounds. At the close of the
reign of Charles the Second, the net receipt was little short of
fifty thousand pounds; and this was then thought a stupendous
sum. The gross receipt was about seventy thousand pounds. The
charge for conveying a single letter was twopence for eighty
miles, and threepence for a longer distance. The postage
increased in proportion to the weight of the packet.160 At
present a single letter is carried to the extremity of Scotland
or of Ireland for a penny; and the monopoly of post horses has
long ceased to exist. Yet the gross annual receipts of the
department amount to more than eighteen hundred thousand pounds,
and the net receipts to more than seven hundred thousand pounds.
It is, therefore, scarcely possible to doubt that the number of
letters now conveyed by mail is seventy times the number which
was so conveyed at the time of the accession of James the
Second.161
No part of the load which the old mails carried out was more
important than the newsletters. In 1685 nothing like the London
daily paper of our time existed, or could exist. Neither the
necessary capital nor the necessary skill was to be found.
Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either
capital or skill. The press was not indeed at that moment under a
general censorship. The licensing act, which had been passed soon
after the Restoration, had expired in 1679. Any person might
therefore print, at his own risk, a history, a sermon, or a poem,
without the previous approbation of any officer; but the Judges
were unanimously of opinion that this liberty did not extend to
Gazettes, and that, by the common law of England, no man, not
authorised by the crown, had a right to publish political
news.162 While the Whig party was still formidable, the
government thought it expedient occasionally to connive at the
violation of this rule. During the great battle of the Exclusion
Bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear, the Protestant
Intelligence, the Current Intelligence, the Domestic
Intelligence, the True News, the London Mercury.163 None of these
was published oftener than twice a week. None exceeded in size a
single small leaf. The quantity of matter which one of them
contained in a year was not more than is often found in two
numbers of the Times. After the defeat of the Whigs it was no
longer necessary for the King to be sparing in the use of that
which all his Judges had pronounced to be his undoubted
prerogative. At the close of his reign no newspaper was suffered
to appear without his. allowance: and his allowance was given
exclusively to the London Gazette. The London Gazette came out
only on Mondays and Thursdays. The contents generally were a
royal proclamation, two or three Tory addresses, notices of two
or three promotions, an account of a skirmish between the
imperial troops and the Janissaries on the Danube, a description
of a highwayman, an announcement of a grand cockfight between two
persons of honour, and an advertisement offering a reward for a
strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size.
Whatever was communicated respecting matters of the highest
moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style.
Sometimes, indeed, when the government was disposed to gratify
the public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a
broadside was put forth giving fuller details than could be found
in the Gazette: but neither the Gazette nor any supplementary
broadside printed by authority ever contained any intelligence
which it did not suit the purposes of the Court to publish. The
most important parliamentary debates, the most important state
trials recorded in our history, were passed over in profound
silence.164 In the capital the coffee houses supplied in some
measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked, as
the Athenians of old flocked to the market place, to hear whether
there was any news. There men might learn how brutally a Whig,
had been treated the day before in Westminster Hall, what
horrible accounts the letters from Edinburgh gave of the
torturing of Covenanters, how grossly the Navy Board had cheated
the crown in the Victualling of the fleet, and what grave charges
the Lord Privy Seal had brought against the Treasury in the
matter of the hearth money. But people who lived at a distance
from the great theatre of political contention could be kept
regularly informed of what was passing there only by means of
newsletters. To prepare such letters became a calling in London,
as it now is among the natives of India. The newswriter rambled
from coffee room to coffee room, collecting reports, squeezed
himself into the Sessions House at the Old Bailey if there was an
interesting trial, nay perhaps obtained admission to the gallery
of Whitehall, and noticed how the King and Duke looked. In this
way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to
enlighten some county town or some bench of rustic magistrates.
Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the largest
provincial cities, and the great body of the gentry and clergy,
learned almost all that they knew of the history of their own
time. We must suppose that at Cambridge there were as many
persons curious to know what was passing in the world as at
almost any place in the kingdom, out of London. Yet at Cambridge,
during a great part of the reign of Charles the Second, the
Doctors of Laws and the Masters of Arts had no regular supply of
news except through the London Gazette. At length the services of
one of the collectors of intelligence in the capital were
employed. That was a memorable day on which the first newsletter
from London was laid on the table of the only coffee room in
Cambridge.165 At the seat of a man of fortune in the country the
newsletter was impatiently expected. Within a week after it had
arrived it had been thumbed by twenty families. It furnished the
neighboring squires with matter for talk over their October, and
the neighboring rectors with topics for sharp sermons against
Whiggery or Popery. Many of these curious journals might
doubtless still be detected by a diligent search in the archives
of old families. Some are to be found in our public libraries;
and one series, which is not the least valuable part of the
literary treasures collected by Sir James Mackintosh, will be
occasionally quoted in the course of this work.166
It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no
provincial newspapers. Indeed, except in the capital and at the
two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom.
The only press in England north of Trent appears to have been at
York.167
It was not only by means of the London Gazette that the
government undertook to furnish political instruction to the
people. That journal contained a scanty supply of news without
comment. Another journal, published under the patronage of the
court, consisted of comment without news. This paper, called the
Observator, was edited by an old Tory pamphleteer named Roger
Lestrange. Lestrange was by no means deficient in readiness and
shrewdness; and his diction, though coarse, and disfigured by a
mean and flippant jargon which then passed for wit in the green
room and the tavern, was not without keenness and vigour. But his
nature, at once ferocious and ignoble, showed itself in every
line that he penned. When the first Observators appeared there
was some excuse for his acrimony. The Whigs were then powerful;
and he had to contend against numerous adversaries, whose
unscrupulous violence might seem to justify unsparing
retaliation. But in 1685 all the opposition had been crushed. A
generous spirit would have disdained to insult a party which
could not reply, and to aggravate the misery of prisoners, of
exiles, of bereaved families: but; from the malice of Lestrange
the grave was no hiding place, and the house of mourning no
sanctuary. In the last month of the reign of Charles the Second,
William Jenkyn, an aged dissenting pastor of great note, who had
been cruelly persecuted for no crime but that of worshipping God
according to the fashion generally followed throughout protestant
Europe, died of hardships and privations at Newgate. The outbreak
of popular sympathy could not be repressed. The corpse was
followed to the grave by a train of a hundred and fifty coaches.
Even courtiers looked sad. Even the unthinking King showed some
signs of concern. Lestrange alone set up a howl of savage
exultation, laughed at the weak compassion of the Trimmers,
proclaimed that the blasphemous old impostor had met with a most
righteous punishment, and vowed to wage war, not only to the
death, but after death, with all the mock saints and martyrs.168
Such was the spirit of the paper which was at this time the
oracle of the Tory party, and especially of the parochial clergy.
Literature which could be carried by the post bag then formed the
greater part of the intellectual nutriment ruminated by the
country divines and country justices. The difficulty and expense
of conveying large packets from place to place was so great, that
an extensive work was longer in making its way from Paternoster
Row to Devonshire or Lancashire than it now is in reaching
Kentucky. How scantily a rural parsonage was then furnished, even
with books the most necessary to a theologian, has already been
remarked. The houses of the gentry were not more plentifully
supplied. Few knights of the shire had libraries so good as may
now perpetually be found in a servants' hall or in the back
parlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his
neighbours for a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's
Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests and the Seven Champions of
Christendom, lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and
fowling pieces. No circulating library, no book society, then
existed even in the capital: but in the capital those students
who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource. The
shops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard,
were crowded every day and all day long with readers; and a known
customer was often permitted to carry a volume home. In the
country there was no such accommodation; and every man was under
the necessity of buying whatever he wished to read.169
As to the lady of the manor and her daughters, their literary
stores generally consisted of a prayer book and receipt book. But
in truth they lost little by living in rural seclusion. For, even
in the highest ranks, and in those situations which afforded the
greatest facilities for mental improvement, the English women of
that generation were decidedly worse educated than they have been
at any other time since the revival of learning. At an early
period they had studied the masterpieces of ancient genius. In
the present day they seldom bestow much attention on the dead
languages; but they are familiar with the tongue of Pascal and
Moliere, with the tongue of Dante and Tasso, with the tongue of
Goethe and Schiller; nor is there any purer or more graceful
English than that which accomplished women now speak and write.
But, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, the
culture of the female mind seems to have been almost entirely
neglected. If a damsel had the least smattering of literature she
was regarded as a prodigy. Ladies highly born, highly bred, and
naturally quick witted, were unable to write a line in their
mother tongue without solecisms and faults of spelling such as a
charity girl would now be ashamed to commit.170
The explanation may easily be found. Extravagant licentiousness,
the natural effect of extravagant austerity, was now the mode;
and licentiousness had produced its ordinary effect, the moral
and intellectual degradation of women. To their personal beauty,
it was the fashion to pay rude and impudent homage. But the
admiration and desire which they inspired were seldom mingled
with respect, with affection, or with any chivalrous sentiment.
The qualities which fit them to be companions, advisers,
confidential friends, rather repelled than attracted the
libertines of Whitehall. In that court a maid of honour, who
dressed in such a manner as to do full justice to a white bosom,
who ogled significantly, who danced voluptuously, who excelled in
pert repartee, who was not ashamed to romp with Lords of the
Bedchamber and Captains of the Guards, to sing sly verses with
sly expression, or to put on a page's dress for a frolic, was
more likely to be followed and admired, more likely to be
honoured with royal attentions, more likely to win a rich and
noble husband than Jane Grey or Lucy Hutchinson would have been.
In such circumstances the standard of female attainments was
necessarily low; and it was more dangerous to be above that
standard than to be beneath it. Extreme ignorance and frivolity
were thought less unbecoming in a lady than the slightest
tincture of pedantry. Of the too celebrated women whose faces we
still admire on the walls of Hampton Court, few indeed were in
the habit of reading anything more valuable than acrostics,
lampoons, and translations of the Clelia and the Grand Cyrus.
The literary acquirements, even of the accomplished gentlemen of
that generation, seem to have been somewhat less solid and
profound than at an earlier or a later period. Greek learning, at
least, did not flourish among us in the days of Charles the
Second, as it had flourished before the civil war, or as it again
flourished long after the Revolution. There were undoubtedly
scholars to whom the whole Greek literature, from Homer to
Photius, was familiar: but such scholars were to be found almost
exclusively among the clergy resident at the Universities, and
even at the Universities were few, and were not fully
appreciated. At Cambridge it was not thought by any means
necessary that a divine should be able to read the Gospels in the
original.171 Nor was the standard at Oxford higher. When, in the
reign of William the Third, Christ Church rose up as one man to
defend the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris, that great
college, then considered as the first seat of philology in the
kingdom, could not muster such a stock of Attic learning as is
now possessed by several youths at every great public school. It
may easily be supposed that a dead language, neglected at the
Universities, was not much studied by men of the world. In a
former age the poetry and eloquence of Greece had been the
delight of Raleigh and Falkland. In a later age the poetry and
eloquence of Greece were the delight of Pitt and Fox, of Windham
and Grenville. But during the latter part of the seventeenth
century there was in England scarcely one eminent statesman who
could read with enjoyment a page of Sophocles or Plato.
Good Latin scholars were numerous. The language of Rome, indeed,
had not altogether lost its imperial prerogatives, and was still,
in many parts of Europe, almost indispensable to a traveller or a
negotiator. To speak it well was therefore a much more common
accomplishment shall in our time; and neither Oxford nor
Cambridge wanted poets who, on a great occasion, could lay at the
foot of the throne happy imitations of the verses in which Virgil
and Ovid had celebrated the greatness of Augustus.
Yet even the Latin was giving way to a younger rival. France
united at that time almost every species of ascendency. Her
military glory was at the height. She had vanquished mighty
coalitions. She had dictated treaties. She had subjugated great
cities and provinces. She had forced the Castilian pride to yield
her the precedence. She had summoned Italian princes to prostrate
themselves at her footstool. Her authority was supreme in all
matters of good breeding, from a duel to a minuet. She determined
how a gentleman's coat must be cut, how long his peruke must be,
whether his heels must be high or low, and whether the lace on
his hat must be broad or narrow. In literature she gave law to
the world. The fame of her great writers filled Europe. No other
country could produce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic poet
equal to Moliere, a trifler so agreeable as La Fontaine, a
rhetorician so skilful as Bossuet. The literary glory of Italy
and of Spain had set; that of Germany had not yet dawned. The
genius, therefore, of the eminent men who adorned Paris shone
forth with a splendour which was set off to full advantage by
contrast. France, indeed, had at that time an empire over
mankind, such as even the Roman Republic never attained. For,
when Rome was politically dominant, she was in arts and letters
the humble pupil of Greece. France had, over the surrounding
countries, at once the ascendency which Rome had over Greece, and
the ascendency which Greece had over Rome. French was fast
becoming the universal language, the language of fashionable
society, the language of diplomacy. At several courts princes and
nobles spoke it more accurately and politely than their mother
tongue. In our island there was less of this servility than on
the Continent. Neither our good nor our bad qualities were those
of imitators. Yet even here homage was paid, awkwardly indeed and
sullenly, to the literary supremacy of our neighbours. The
melodious Tuscan, so familiar to the gallants and ladies of the
court of Elizabeth, sank into contempt. A gentleman who quoted
Horace or Terence was considered in good company as a pompous
pedant. But to garnish his conversation with scraps of French was
the best proof which he could give of his parts and
attainments.172 New canons of criticism, new models of style came
into fashion. The quaint ingenuity which had deformed the verses
of Donne, and had been a blemish on those of Cowley, disappeared
from our poetry. Our prose became less majestic, less artfully
involved, less variously musical than that of an earlier age, but
more lucid, more easy, and better fitted for controversy and
narrative. In these changes it is impossible not to recognise the
influence of French precept and of French example. Great masters
of our language, in their most dignified compositions, affected
to use French words, when English words, quite as expressive and
sonorous, were at hand:173 and from France was imported the
tragedy in rhyme, an exotic which, in our soil, drooped, and
speedily died.
It would have been well if our writers had also copied the
decorum which their great French contemporaries, with few
exceptions, preserved; for the profligacy of the English plays,
satires, songs, and novels of that age is a deep blot on our
national fame. The evil may easily be traced to its source. The
wits and the Puritans had never been on friendly terms. There was
no sympathy between the two classes. They looked on the whole
system of human life from different points and in different
lights. The earnest of each was the jest of the other. The
pleasures of each were the torments of the other. To the stern
precisian even the innocent sport of the fancy seemed a crime. To
light and festive natures the solemnity of the zealous brethren
furnished copious matter of ridicule. From the Reformation to the
civil war, almost every writer, gifted with a fine sense of the
ludicrous, had taken some opportunity of assailing the
straighthaired, snuffling, whining saints, who christened their
children out of the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in spirit at
the sight of Jack in the Green, and who thought it impious to
taste plum porridge on Christmas day. At length a time came when
the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid,
ungainly zealots, after having furnished much good sport during
two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly
smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers.
The wounds inflicted by gay and petulant malice were retaliated
with the gloomy and implacable malice peculiar to bigots who
mistake their own rancour for virtue. The theatres were closed.
The players were flogged. The press was put under the
guardianship of austere licensers. The Muses were banished from
their own favourite haunts, Cambridge and Oxford. Cowly, Crashaw,
and Cleveland were ejected from their fellowships. The young
candidate for academical honours was no longer required to write
Ovidian epistles or Virgilian pastorals, but was strictly
interrogated by a synod of lowering Supralapsarians as to the day
and hour when he experienced the new birth. Such a system was of
course fruitful of hypocrites. Under sober clothing and under
visages composed to the expression of austerity lay hid during
several years the intense desire of license and of revenge. At
length that desire was gratified. The Restoration emancipated
thousands of minds from a yoke which had become insupportable.
The old fight recommenced, but with an animosity altogether new.
It was now not a sportive combat, but a war to the death. The
Roundhead had no better quarter to expect from those whom he had
persecuted than a cruel slavedriver can expect from insurgent
slaves still bearing the marks of his collars and his scourges.
The war between wit and Puritanism soon became a war between wit
and morality. The hostility excited by a grotesque caricature of
virtue did not spare virtue herself. Whatever the canting
Roundhead had regarded with reverence was insulted. Whatever he
had proscribed was favoured. Because he had been scrupulous about
trifles, all scruples were treated with derision. Because he had
covered his failings with the mask of devotion, men were
encouraged to obtrude with Cynic impudence all their most
scandalous vices on the public eye. Because he had punished
illicit love with barbarous severity, virgin purity and conjugal
fidelity were made a jest. To that sanctimonious jargon which was
his Shibboleth, was opposed another jargon not less absurd and
much more odious. As he never opened his mouth except in
scriptural phrase, the new breed of wits and fine gentlemen never
opened their mouths without uttering ribaldry of which a porter
would now be ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse
them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them.
It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, when it
revived with the revival of the old civil and ecclesiastical
polity, should have been profoundly immoral. A few eminent men,
who belonged to an earlier and better age, were exempt from the
general contagion. The verse of Waller still breathed the
sentiments which had animated a more chivalrous generation.
Cowley, distinguished as a loyalist and as a man of letters,
raised his voice courageously against the immorality which
disgraced both letters and loyalty. A mightier poet, tried at
once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditates,
undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all around him, a
song so sublime and so holy that it would not have misbecome the
lips of those ethereal Virtues whom he saw, with that inner eye
which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper
pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold. The vigourous and
fertile genius of Butler, if it did not altogether escape the
prevailing infection, took the disease in a mild form. But these
were men whose minds had been trained in a world which had passed
away. They gave place in no long time to a younger generation of
wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the
common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering
licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The influence of
these writers was doubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it
would have been had they been less depraved. The poison which
they administered was so strong that it was, in no long time,
rejected with nausea. None of them understood the dangerous art
of associating images of unlawful pleasure with all that is
endearing and ennobling. None of them was aware that a certain
decorum is essential even to voluptuousness, that drapery may be
more alluring than exposure, and that the imagination may be far
more powerfully moved by delicate hints which impel it to exert
itself, than by gross descriptions which it takes in passively.
The spirit of the Antipuritan reaction pervades almost the whole
polite literature of the reign of Charles the Second. But the
very quintessence of that spirit will be found in the comic
drama. The playhouses, shut by the meddling fanatic in the day of
his power, were again crowded. To their old attractions new and
more powerful attractions had been added. Scenery, dresses, and
decorations, such as would now be thought mean or absurd, but
such as would have been esteemed incredibly magnificent by those
who, early in the seventeenth century, sate on the filthy benches
of the Hope, or under the thatched roof of the Rose, dazzled the
eyes of the multitude. The fascination of sex was called in to
aid the fascination of art: and the young spectator saw, with
emotions unknown to the contemporaries of Shakspeare and Johnson,
tender and sprightly heroines personated by lovely women. From
the day on which the theatres were reopened they became
seminaries of vice; and the evil propagated itself. The
profligacy of the representations soon drove away sober people.
The frivolous and dissolute who remained required every year
stronger and stronger stimulants. Thus the artists corrupted the
spectators, and the spectators the artists, till the turpitude of
the drama became such as must astonish all who are not aware that
extreme relaxation is the natural effect of extreme restraint,
and that an age of hypocrisy is, in the regular course of things,
followed by all age of impudence.
Nothing is more characteristic of the times than the care with
which the poets contrived to put all their loosest verses into
the mouths of women. The compositions in which the greatest
license was taken were the epilogues. They were almost always
recited by favourite actresses; and nothing charmed the depraved
audience so much as to hear lines grossly indecent repeated by a
beautiful girl, who was supposed to have not yet lost her
innocence 174
Our theatre was indebted in that age for many plots and
characters to Spain, to France, and to the old English masters:
but whatever our dramatists touched they tainted. In their
imitations the houses of Calderon's stately and highspirited
Castilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakspeare's Viola a
procuress, Moliere's Misanthrope a ravisher, Moliere's Agnes an
adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic but that it
became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul and
ignoble minds.
Such was the state of the drama; and the drama was the department
of polite literature in which a poet had the best chance of
obtaining a subsistence by his pen. The sale of books was so
small that a man of the greatest name could hardly expect more
than a pittance for the copyright of the best performance. There
cannot be a stronger instance than the fate of Dryden's last
production, the Fables. That volume was published when he was
universally admitted to be the chief of living English poets. It
contains about twelve thousand lines. The versification is
admirable, the narratives and descriptions full of life. To this
day Palamon and Arcite, Cymon and Iphigenia, Theodore and
Honoria, are the delight both of critics and of schoolboys. The
collection includes Alexander's Feast, the noblest ode in our
language. For the copyright Dryden received two hundred and fifty
pounds, less than in our days has sometimes been paid for two
articles in a review.175 Nor does the bargain seem to have been a
hard one. For the book went off slowly; and the second edition
was not required till the author had been ten years in his grave.
By writing for the theatre it was possible to earn a much larger
sum with much less trouble. Southern made seven hundred pounds by
one play.176 Otway was raised from beggary to temporary affluence
by the success of his Don Carlos.177 Shadwell cleared a hundred
and thirty pounds by a single representation of the Squire of
Alsatia.178 The consequence was that every man who had to live by
his wit wrote plays, whether he had any internal vocation to
write plays or not. It was thus with Dryden. As a satirist he has
rivalled Juvenal. As a didactic poet he perhaps might, with care
and meditation, have rivalled Lucretius. Of lyric poets he is, if
not the most sublime, the most brilliant and spiritstirring. But
nature, profuse to him of many rare gifts, had withheld from him
the dramatic faculty. Nevertheless all the energies of his best
years were wasted on dramatic composition. He had too much
judgment not to be aware that in the power of exhibiting
character by means of dialogue he was deficient. That deficiency
he did his best to conceal, sometimes by surprising and amusing
incidents, sometimes by stately declamation, sometimes by
harmonious numbers, sometimes by ribaldry but too well suited to
the taste of a profane and licentious pit. Yet he never obtained
any theatrical success equal to that which rewarded the exertions
of some men far inferior to him in general powers. He thought
himself fortunate if he cleared a hundred guineas by a play; a
scanty remuneration, yet apparently larger than he could have
earned in any other way by the same quantity of labour.179
The recompense which the wits of that age could obtain from the
public was so small, that they were under the necessity of eking
out their incomes by levying contributions on the great. Every
rich and goodnatured lord was pestered by authors with a
mendicancy so importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may in
our time seem incredible. The patron to whom a work was inscribed
was expected to reward the writer with a purse of gold. The fee
paid for the dedication of a book was often much larger than the
sum which any publisher would give for the copyright. Books were
therefore frequently printed merely that they might be dedicated.
This traffic in praise produced the effect which might have been
expected. Adulation pushed to the verge, sometimes of nonsense,
and sometimes of impiety, was not thought to disgrace a poet.
Independence, veracity, selfrespect, were things not required by
the world from him. In truth, he was in morals something between
a pandar and a beggar.
To the other vices which degraded the literary character was
added, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the
most savage intemperance of party spirit. The wits, as a class,
had been impelled by their old hatred of Puritanism to take the
side of the court, and had been found useful allies. Dryden, in
particular, had done good service to the government. His Absalom
and Achitophel, the greatest satire of modern times had amazed
the town, had made its way with unprecedented rapidity even into
rural districts, and had, wherever it appeared bitterly annoyed
the Exclusionists. and raised the courage of the Tories. But we
must not, in the admiration which we naturally feel for noble
diction and versification, forget the great distinctions of good
and evil. The spirit by which Dryden and several of his compeers
were at this time animated against the Whigs deserves to he
called fiendish. The servile Judges and Sheriffs of those evil
days could not shed blood as fast as the poets cried out for it.
Calls for more victims, hideous jests on hanging, bitter taunts
on those who, having stood by the King in the hour of danger, now
advised him to deal mercifully and generously by his vanquished
enemies, were publicly recited on the stage, and, that nothing
might he wanting to the guilt and the shame, were recited by
women, who, having long been taught to discard all modesty, were
now taught to discard all compassion.180
It is a remarkable fact that, while the lighter literature of
England was thus becoming a nuisance and a national disgrace, the
English genius was effecting in science a revolution which will,
to the end of time, be reckoned among the highest achievements of
the human intellect. Bacon had sown the good seed in a sluggish
soil and an ungenial season. He had not expected an early crop,
and in his last testament had solemnly bequeathed his fame to the
next age. During a whole generation his philosophy had, amidst
tumults wars, and proscriptions, been slowly ripening in a few
well constituted minds. While factions were struggling for
dominion over each other, a small body of sages had turned away
with benevolent disdain from the conflict, and had devoted
themselves to the nobler work of extending the dominion of man
over matter. As soon as tranquillity was restored, these teachers
easily found attentive audience. For the discipline through which
the nation had passed had brought the public mind to a temper
well fitted for the reception of the Verulamian doctrine. The
civil troubles had stimulated the faculties of the educated
classes, and had called forth a restless activity and an
insatiable curiosity, such as had not before been known among us.
Yet the effect of those troubles was that schemes of political
and religious reform were generally regarded with suspicion and
contempt. During twenty years the chief employment of busy and
ingenious men had been to frame constitutions with first
magistrates, without first magistrates, with hereditary senates,
with senates appointed by lot, with annual senates, with
perpetual senates. In these plans nothing was omitted. All the
detail, all the nomenclature, all the ceremonial of the imaginary
government was fully set forth, Polemarchs and Phylarchs, Tribes
and Galaxies, the Lord Archon and the Lord Strategus. Which
ballot boxes were to be green and which red, which balls were to
be of gold and which of silver, which magistrates were to wear
hats and which black velvet caps with peaks, how the mace was to
be carried and when the heralds were to uncover, these, and a
hundred more such trifles, were gravely considered and arranged
by men of no common capacity and learning.181 But the time for
these visions had gone by; and, if any steadfast republican still
continued to amuse himself with them, fear of public derision and
of a criminal information generally induced him to keep his
fancies to himself. It was now unpopular and unsafe to mutter a
word against the fundamental laws of the monarchy: but daring and
ingenious men might indemnify themselves by treating with disdain
what had lately been considered as the fundamental laws of
nature. The torrent which had been dammed up in one channel
rushed violently into another. The revolutionary spirit, ceasing
to operate in politics, began to exert itself with unprecedented
vigour and hardihood in every department of physics. The year
1660, the era of the restoration of the old constitution, is also
the era from which dates the ascendency of the new philosophy. In
that year the Royal Society, destined to be a chief agent in a
long series of glorious and salutary reforms, began to exist.182
In a few months experimental science became all the mode. The
transfusion of blood, the ponderation of air, the fixation of
mercury, succeeded to that place in the public mind which had
been lately occupied by the controversies of the Rota. Dreams of
perfect forms of government made way for dreams of wings with
which men were to fly from the Tower to the Abbey, and of
doublekeeled ships which were never to founder in the fiercest
storm. All classes were hurried along by the prevailing
sentiment. Cavalier and Roundhead, Churchman and Puritan, were
for once allied. Divines, jurists, statesmen, nobles, princes,
swelled the triumph of the Baconian philosophy. Poets sang with
emulous fervour the approach of the golden age. Cowley, in lines
weighty with thought and resplendent with wit, urged the chosen
seed to take possession of the promised land flowing with milk
and honey, that land which their great deliverer and lawgiver had
seen, as from the summit of Pisgah, but had not been permitted to
enter.183 Dryden, with more zeal than knowledge, joined voice to
the general acclamation to enter, and foretold things which
neither he nor anybody else understood. The Royal Society, he
predicted, would soon lead us to the extreme verge of the globe,
and there delight us with a better view of the moon.184 Two able
and aspiring prelates, Ward, Bishop of Salisbury, and Wilkins,
Bishop of Chester, were conspicuous among the leaders of the
movement. Its history was eloquently written by a younger divine,
who was rising to high distinction in his profession, Thomas
Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. Both Chief Justice Hale
and Lord Keeper Guildford stole some hours from the business of
their courts to write on hydrostatics. Indeed it was under the
immediate direction of Guildford that the first barometers ever
exposed to sale in London were constructed.185 Chemistry divided,
for a time, with wine and love, with the stage and the gaming
table, with the intrigues of a courtier and the intrigues of a
demagogue, the attention of the fickle Buckingham. Rupert has the
credit of having invented mezzotinto; from him is named that
curious bubble of glass which has long amused children and
puzzled philosophers. Charles himself had a laboratory at
Whitehall, and was far more active and attentive there than at
the council board. It was almost necessary to the character of a
fine gentleman to have something to say about air pumps and
telescopes; and even fine ladies, now and then, thought it
becoming to affect a taste for science, went in coaches and six
to visit the Gresham curiosities, and broke forth into cries of
delight at finding that a magnet really attracted a needle, and
that a microscope really made a fly loom as large as a
sparrow.186
In this, as in every great stir of the human mind, there was
doubtless something which might well move a smile. It is the
universal law that whatever pursuit, whatever doctrine, becomes
fashionable, shall lose a portion of that dignity which it had
possessed while it was confined to a small but earnest minority,
and was loved for its own sake alone. It is true that the follies
of some persons who, without any real aptitude for science,
professed a passion for it, furnished matter of contemptuous
mirth to a few malignant satirists who belonged to the preceding
generation, and were not disposed to unlearn the lore of their
youth.187 But it is not less true that the great work of
interpreting nature was performed by the English of that age as
it had never before been performed in any age by any nation. The
spirit of Francis Bacon was abroad, a spirit admirably compounded
of audacity and sobriety. There was a strong persuasion that the
whole world was full of secrets of high moment to the happiness
of man, and that man had, by his Maker, been entrusted with the
key which, rightly used, would give access to them. There was at
the same time a conviction that in physics it was impossible to
arrive at the knowledge of general laws except by the careful
observation of particular facts. Deeply impressed with these
great truths, the professors of the new philosophy applied
themselves to their task, and, before a quarter of a century had
expired, they had given ample earnest of what has since been
achieved. Already a reform of agriculture had been commenced. New
vegetables were cultivated. New implements of husbandry were
employed. New manures were applied to the soil.188 Evelyn had,
under the formal sanction of the Royal Society, given instruction
to his countrymen in planting. Temple, in his intervals of
leisure, had tried many experiments in horticulture, and had
proved that many delicate fruits, the natives of more favoured
climates, might, with the help of art, be grown on English
ground. Medicine, which in France was still in abject bondage,
and afforded an inexhaustible subject of just ridicule to
Moliere, had in England become an experimental and progressive
science, and every day made some new advance in defiance of
Hippocrates and Galen. The attention of speculative men had been,
for the first time, directed to the important subject of sanitary
police. The great plague of 1665 induced them to consider with
care the defective architecture, draining, and ventilation of the
capital. The great fire of 1666 afforded an opportunity for
effecting extensive improvements. The whole matter was diligently
examined by the Royal Society; and to the suggestions of that
body must be partly attributed the changes which, though far
short of what the public welfare required, yet made a wide
difference between the new and the old London, and probably put a
final close to the ravages of pestilence in our country.189 At
the same time one of the founders of the Society, Sir William
Petty, created the science of political arithmetic, the humble
but indispensable handmaid of political philosophy. No kingdom of
nature was left unexplored. To that period belong the chemical
discoveries of Boyle, and the earliest botanical researches of
Sloane. It was then that Ray made a new classification of birds
and fishes, and that the attention of Woodward was first drawn
towards fossils and shells. One after another phantoms which had
haunted the world through ages of darkness fled before the light.
Astrology and alchymy became jests. Soon there was scarcely a
county in which some of the Quorum did not smile contemptuously
when an old woman was brought before them for riding on
broomsticks or giving cattle the murrain. But it was in those
noblest and most arduous departments of knowledge in which
induction and mathematical demonstration cooperate for the
discovery of truth, that the English genius won in that age the
most memorable triumphs. John Wallis placed the whole system of
statics on a new foundation. Edmund Halley investigated the
properties of the atmosphere, the ebb and flow of the sea, the
laws of magnetism, and the course of the comets; nor did he
shrink from toil, peril and exile in the cause of science. While
he, on the rock of Saint Helena, mapped the constellations of the
southern hemisphere, our national observatory was rising at
Greenwich: and John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, was
commencing that long series of observations which is never
mentioned without respect and gratitude in any part of the globe.
But the glory of these men, eminent as they were, is cast into
the shade by the transcendent lustre of one immortal name. In
Isaac Newton two kinds of intellectual power, which have little
in common, and which are not often found together in a very high
degree of vigour, but which nevertheless are equally necessary in
the most sublime departments of physics, were united as they have
never been united before or since. There may have been minds as
happily constituted as his for the cultivation of pure
mathematical science: there may have been minds as happily
constituted for the cultivation of science purely experimental;
but in no other mind have the demonstrative faculty and the
inductive faculty coexisted in such supreme excellence and
perfect harmony. Perhaps in the days of Scotists and Thomists
even his intellect might have run to waste, as many intellects
ran to waste which were inferior only to his. Happily the spirit
of the age on which his lot was cast, gave the right direction to
his mind; and his mind reacted with tenfold force on the spirit
of the age. In the year 1685 his fame, though splendid, was only
dawning; but his genius was in the meridian. His great work, that
work which effected a revolution in the most important provinces
of natural philosophy, had been completed, but was not yet
published, and was just about to be submitted to the
consideration of the Royal Society.
It is not very easy to explain why the nation which was so far
before its neighbours in science should in art have been far
behind them. Yet such was the fact. It is true that in
architecture, an art which is half a science, an art in which
none but a geometrician can excel, an art which has no standard
of grace but what is directly or indirectly dependent on utility,
an art of which the creations derive a part, at least, of their
majesty from mere bulk, our country could boast of one truly
great man, Christopher Wren; and the fire which laid London in
ruins had given him an opportunity, unprecedented in modern
history, of displaying his powers. The austere beauty of the
Athenian portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he
was like almost all his contemporaries, incapable of emulating,
and perhaps incapable of appreciating; but no man born on our
side of the Alps, has imitated with so much success the
magnificence of the palacelike churches of Italy. Even the superb
Lewis has left to posterity no work which can bear a comparison
with Saint Paul's. But at the close of the reign of Charles the
Second there was not a single English painter or statuary whose
name is now remembered. This sterility is somewhat mysterious;
for painters and statuaries were by no means a despised or an ill
paid class. Their social position was at least as high as at
present. Their gains, when compared with the wealth of the nation
and with the remuneration of other descriptions of intellectual
labour, were even larger than at present. Indeed the munificent
patronage which was extended to artists drew them to our shores
in multitudes. Lely, who has preserved to us the rich curls, the
full lips, and the languishing eyes of the frail beauties
celebrated by Hamilton, was a Westphalian. He had died in 1680,
having long lived splendidly, having received the honour of
knighthood, and having accumulated a good estate out of the
fruits of his skill. His noble collection of drawings and
pictures was, after his decease, exhibited by the royal
permission in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and was sold by
auction for the almost incredible sum of twenty-six thousand
pounds, a sum which bore a greater proportion to the fortunes of
the rich men of that day than a hundred thousand pounds would
bear to the fortunes of the rich men of our time.190 Lely was
succeeded by his countryman Godfrey Kneller, who was made first a
knight and then a baronet, and who, after keeping up a sumptuous
establishment, and after losing much money by unlucky
speculations, was still able to bequeath a large fortune to his
family. The two Vandeveldes, natives of Holland, had been tempted
by English liberality to settle here, and had produced for the
King and his nobles some of the finest sea pieces in the world.
Another Dutchman, Simon Varelst, painted glorious sunflowers and
tulips for prices such as had never before been known. Verrio, a
Neapolitan, covered ceilings and staircases with Gorgons and
Muses, Nymphs and Satyrs, Virtues and Vices, Gods quaffing
nectar, and laurelled princes riding in triumph. The income which
he derived from his performances enabled him to keep one of the
most expensive tables in England. For his pieces at Windsor alone
he received seven thousand pounds, a sum then sufficient to make
a gentleman of moderate wishes perfectly easy for life, a sum
greatly exceeding all that Dryden, during a literary life of
forty years, obtained from the booksellers.191 Verrio's assistant
and successor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two most
celebrated sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber,
whose pathetic emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adorn Bedlam,
was a Dane. Gibbons, to whose graceful fancy and delicate touch
many of our palaces, colleges, and churches owe their finest
decorations, was a Dutchman. Even the designs for the coin were
made by French artists. Indeed, it was not till the reign of
George the Second that our country could glory in a great
painter; and George the Third was on the throne before she had
reason to be proud of any of her sculptors.
It is time that this description of the England which Charles the
Second governed should draw to a close. Yet one subject of the
highest moment still remains untouched. Nothing has yet been said
of the great body of the people, of those who held the ploughs,
who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of Norwich, and
squared the Portland stone for Saint Paul's. Nor can very much be
said. The most numerous class is precisely the class respecting
which we have the most meagre information. In those times
philanthropists did not yet regard it as a sacred duty, nor had
demagogues yet found it a lucrative trade, to talk and write
about the distress of the labourer. History was too much occupied
with courts and camps to spare a line for the hut of the peasant
or the garret of the mechanic. The press now often sends forth in
a day a greater quantity of discussion and declamation about the
condition of the working man than was published during the
twenty-eight years which elapsed between the Restoration and the
Revolution. But it would be a great error to infer from the
increase of complaint that there has been any increase of misery.
The great criterion of the state of the common people is the
amount of their wages; and as four-fifths of the common people
were, in the seventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is
especially important to ascertain what were then the wages of
agricultural industry. On this subject we have the means of
arriving at conclusions sufficiently exact for our purpose.
Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight,
informs us that a labourer was by no means in the lowest state
who received for a day's work fourpence with food, or eightpence
without food. Four shillings a week therefore were, according to
Petty's calculation, fair agricultural wages.192
That this calculation was not remote from the truth we have
abundant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685 the justices
of Warwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted to them by
an Act of Elizabeth, fixed, at their quarter sessions, a scale of
wages for the county, and notified that every employer who gave
more than the authorised sum, and every working man who received
more, would be liable to punishment. The wages of the common
agricultural labourer, from March to September, were fixed at the
precise amount mentioned by Petty, namely four shillings a week
without food. From September to March the wages were to be only
three and sixpence a week.193
But in that age, as in ours, the earnings of the peasant were
very different in different parts of the kingdom. The wages of
Warwickshire were probably about the average, and those of the
counties near the Scottish border below it: but there were more
favoured districts. In the same year, 1685, a gentleman of
Devonshire, named Richard Dunning, published a small tract, in
which he described the condition of the poor of that county. That
he understood his subject well it is impossible to doubt; for a
few months later his work was reprinted, and was, by the
magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly
recommended to the attention of all parochial officers. According
to him, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food,
about five shillings a week.194
Still better was the condition of the labourer in the
neighbourhood of Bury Saint Edmund's. The magistrates of Suffolk
met there in the spring of 1682 to fix a rate of wages, and
resolved that, where the labourer was not boarded, he should have
five shillings a week in winter, and six in summer.195
In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford had fixed the wages of the
Essex labourer, who was not boarded, at six shillings in winter
and seven in summer. This seems to have been the highest
remuneration given in the kingdom for agricultural labour between
the Restoration and the Revolution; and it is to be observed
that, in the year in which this order was made, the necessaries
of life were immoderately dear. Wheat was at seventy shillings
the quarter, which would even now be considered as almost a
famine price.196
These facts are in perfect accordance with another fact which
seems to deserve consideration. It is evident that, in a country
where no man can be compelled to become a soldier, the ranks of
an army cannot be filled if the government offers much less than
the wages of common rustic labour. At present the pay and beer
money of a private in a regiment of the line amount to seven
shillings and sevenpence a week. This stipend, coupled with the
hope of a pension, does not attract the English youth in
sufficient numbers; and it is found necessary to supply the
deficiency by enlisting largely from among the poorer population
of Munster and Connaught. The pay of the private foot soldier in
1685 was only four shillings and eightpence a week; yet it is
certain that the government in that year found no difficulty in
obtaining many thousands of English recruits at very short
notice. The pay of the private foot soldier in the army of the
Commonwealth had been seven shillings a week, that is to say, as
much as a corporal received under Charles the Second;197 and
seven shillings a week had been found sufficient to fill the
ranks with men decidedly superior to the generality of the
people. On the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude
that, in the reign of Charles the Second, the ordinary wages of
the peasant did not exceed four shillings a week; but that, in
some parts of the kingdom, five shillings, six shillings, and,
during the summer months, even seven shillings were paid. At
present a district where a labouring man earns only seven
shillings a week is thought to be in a state shocking to
humanity. The average is very much higher; and in prosperous
counties, the weekly wages of husbandmen amount to twelve,
fourteen, and even sixteen shillings. The remuneration of workmen
employed in manufactures has always been higher than that of the
tillers of the soil. In the year 1680, a member of the House of
Commons remarked that the high wages paid in this country made it
impossible for our textures to maintain a competition with the
produce of the Indian looms. An English mechanic, he said,
instead of slaving like a native of Bengal for a piece of copper,
exacted a shilling a day.198 Other evidence is extant, which
proves that a shilling a day was the pay to which the English
manufacturer then thought himself entitled, but that he was often
forced to work for less. The common people of that age were not
in the habit of meeting for public discussion, of haranguing, or
of petitioning Parliament. No newspaper pleaded their cause. It
was in rude rhyme that their love and hatred, their exultation
and their distress, found utterance. A great part of their
history is to be learned only from their ballads. One of the most
remarkable of the popular lays chaunted about the streets of
Norwich and Leeds in the time of Charles the Second may still be
read on the original broadside. It is the vehement and bitter cry
of labour against capital. It describes the good old times when
every artisan employed in the woollen manufacture lived as well
as a farmer. But those times were past. Sixpence a day was now
all that could be earned by hard labour at the loom. If the poor
complained that they could not live on such a pittance, they were
told that they were free to take it or leave it. For so miserable
a recompense were the producers of wealth compelled to toil
rising early and lying down late, while the master clothier,
eating, sleeping, and idling, became rich by their exertions. A
shilling a day, the poet declares, is what the weaver would have
if justice were done.199 We may therefore conclude that, in the
generation which preceded the Revolution, a workman employed in
the great staple manufacture of England thought himself fairly
paid if he gained six shillings a week.
It may here be noticed that the practice of setting children
prematurely to work, a practice which the state, the legitimate
protector of those who cannot protect themselves, has, in our
time, wisely and humanely interdicted, prevailed in the
seventeenth century to an extent which, when compared with the
extent of the manufacturing system, seems almost incredible. At
Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little creature
of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of
that time, and among them some who were considered as eminently
benevolent, mention, with exultation, the fact that, in that
single city, boys and girls of very tender age created wealth
exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve
thousand pounds a year.200 The more carefully we examine the
history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent
from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new
social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an
exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which
discerns and the humanity which remedies them.
When we pass from the weavers of cloth to a different class of
artisans, our enquiries will still lead us to nearly the same
conclusions. During several generations, the Commissioners of
Greenwich Hospital have kept a register of the wages paid to
different classes of workmen who have been employed in the
repairs of the building. From this valuable record it appears
that, in the course of a hundred and twenty years, the daily
earnings of the bricklayer have risen from half a crown to four
and tenpence, those of the mason from half a crown to five and
threepence, those of the carpenter from half a crown to five and
fivepence, and those of the plumber from three shillings to five
and sixpence.
It seems clear, therefore, that the wages of labour, estimated in
money, were, in 1685, not more than half of what they now are;
and there were few articles important to the working man of which
the price was not, in 1685, more than half of what it now is.
Beer was undoubtedly much cheaper in that age than at present.
Meat was also cheaper, but was still so dear that hundreds of
thousands of families scarcely knew the taste of it.201 In the
cost of wheat there has been very little change. The average
price of the quarter, during the last twelve years of Charles the
Second, was fifty shillings. Bread, therefore, such as is now
given to the inmates of a workhouse, was then seldom seen, even
on the trencher of a yeoman or of a shopkeeper. The great
majority of the nation lived almost entirely on rye, barley, and
oats.
The produce of tropical countries, the produce of the mines, the
produce of machinery, was positively dearer than at present.
Among the commodities for which the labourer would have had to
pay higher in 1685 than his posterity now pay were sugar, salt,
coals, candles, soap, shoes, stockings, and generally all
articles of clothing and all articles of bedding. It may be
added, that the old coats and blankets would have been, not only
more costly, but less serviceable than the modern fabrics.
It must be remembered that those labourers who were able to
maintain themselves and their families by means of wages were not
the most necessitous members of the community. Beneath them lay a
large class which could not subsist without some aid from the
parish. There can hardly be a more important test of the
condition of the common people than the ratio which this class
bears to the whole society. At present, the men, women, and
children who receive relief appear from the official returns to
be, in bad years, one tenth of the inhabitants of England, and,
in good years, one thirteenth. Gregory King estimated them in his
time at about a fourth; and this estimate, which all our respect
for his authority will scarcely prevent us from calling
extravagant, was pronounced by Davenant eminently judicious.
We are not quite without the means of forming an estimate for
ourselves. The poor rate was undoubtedly the heaviest tax borne
by our ancestors in those days. It was computed, in the reign of
Charles the Second, at near seven hundred thousand pounds a year,
much more than the produce either of the excise or of the
customs, and little less than half the entire revenue of the
crown. The poor rate went on increasing rapidly, and appears to
have risen in a short time to between eight and nine hundred
thousand a year, that is to say, to one sixth of what it now is.
The population was then less than a third of what it now is. The
minimum of wages, estimated in money, was half of what it now is;
and we can therefore hardly suppose that the average allowance
made to a pauper can have been more than half of what it now is.
It seems to follow that the proportion of the English people
which received parochial relief then must have been larger than
the proportion which receives relief now. It is good to speak on
such questions with diffidence: but it has certainly never yet
been proved that pauperism was a less heavy burden or a less
serious social evil during the last quarter of the seventeenth
century than it is in our own time.202
In one respect it must be admitted that the progress of
civilization has diminished the physical comforts of a portion of
the poorest class. It has already been mentioned that, before the
Revolution, many thousands of square miles, now enclosed and
cultivated, were marsh, forest, and heath. Of this wild land much
was, by law, common, and much of what was not common by law was
worth so little that the proprietors suffered it to be common in
fact. In such a tract, squatters and trespassers were tolerated
to an extent now unknown. The peasant who dwelt there could, at
little or no charge, procure occasionally some palatable addition
to his hard fare, and provide himself with fuel for the winter.
He kept a flock of geese on what is now an orchard rich with
apple blossoms. He snared wild fowl on the fell which has long
since been drained and divided into corn-fields and turnip
fields. He cut turf among the furze bushes on the moor which is
now a meadow bright with clover and renowned for butter and
cheese. The progress of agriculture and the increase of
population necessarily deprived him of these privileges. But
against this disadvantage a long list of advantages is to be set
off. Of the blessings which civilisation and philosophy bring
with them a large proportion is common to all ranks, and would,
if withdrawn, be missed as painfully by the labourer as by the
peer. The market-place which the rustic can now reach with his
cart in an hour was, a hundred and sixty years ago, a day's
journey from him. The street which now affords to the artisan,
during the whole night, a secure, a convenient, and a brilliantly
lighted walk was, a hundred and sixty years ago, so dark after
sunset that he would not have been able to see his hand, so ill
paved that he would have run constant risk of breaking his neck,
and so ill watched that he would have been in imminent danger of
being knocked down and plundered of his small earnings. Every
bricklayer who falls from a scaffold, every sweeper of a crossing
who is run over by a carriage, may now have his wounds dressed
and his limbs set with a skill such as, a hundred and sixty years
ago, all the wealth of a great lord like Ormond, or of a merchant
prince like Clayton, could not have purchased. Some frightful
diseases have been extirpated by science; and some have been
banished by police. The term of human life has been lengthened
over the whole kingdom, and especially in the towns. The year
1685 was not accounted sickly; yet in the year 1685 more than one
in twenty-three of the inhabitants of the capital died.203 At
present only one inhabitant of the capital in forty dies
annually. The difference in salubrity between the London of the
nineteenth century and the London of the seventeenth century is
very far greater than the difference between London in an
ordinary year and London in a year of cholera.
Still more important is the benefit which all orders of society,
and especially the lower orders, have derived from the mollifying
influence of civilisation on the national character. The
groundwork of that character has indeed been the same through
many generations, in the sense in which the groundwork of the
character of an individual may be said to be the same when he is
a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when he is a refined and
accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that the public mind
of England has softened while it has ripened, and that we have,
in the course of ages, become, not only a wiser, but also a
kinder people. There is scarcely a page of the history or lighter
literature of the seventeenth century which does not contain some
proof that our ancestors were less humane than their posterity.
The discipline of workshops, of schools, of private families,
though not more efficient than at present, was infinitely
harsher. Masters, well born and bred, were in the habit of
beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way of imparting
knowledge but by beating their pupils. Husbands, of decent
station, were not ashamed to beat their wives. The implacability
of hostile factions was such as we can scarcely conceive. Whigs
were disposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die
without seeing his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled
and insulted Russell as his coach passed from the Tower to the
scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields.204 As little mercy was shown by
the populace to sufferers of a humbler rank. If an offender was
put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped with life from
the shower of brickbats and paving stones.205 If he was tied to
the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, imploring the
hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl.206
Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell on court days
for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there
whipped.207 A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, a woman
burned for coining, excited less sympathy than is now felt for a
galled horse or an overdriven ox. Fights compared with which a
boxing match is a refined and humane spectacle were among the
favourite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes
assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly
weapons, and shouted with delight when one of the combatants lost
a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth, seminaries
of every crime and of every disease. At the assizes the lean and
yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an
atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them
signally on bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society
looked with profound indifference. Nowhere could be found that
sensitive and restless compassion which has, in our time,
extended a powerful protection to the factory child, to the
Hindoo widow, to the negro slave, which pries into the stores and
watercasks of every emigrant ship, which winces at every lash
laid on the back of a drunken soldier, which will not suffer the
thief in the hulks to be ill fed or overworked, and which has
repeatedly endeavoured to save the life even of the murderer. It
is true that compassion ought, like all other feelings, to be
under the government of reason, and has, for want of such
government, produced some ridiculous and some deplorable effects.
But the more we study the annals of the past, the more shall we
rejoice that we live in a merciful age, in an age in which
cruelty is abhorred, and in which pain, even when deserved, is
inflicted reluctantly and from a sense of duty. Every class
doubtless has gained largely by this great moral change: but the
class which has gained most is the poorest, the most dependent,
and the most defenceless.
The general effect of the evidence which has been submitted to
the reader seems hardly to admit of doubt. Yet, in spite of
evidence, many will still image to themselves the England of the
Stuarts as a more pleasant country than the England in which we
live. It may at first sight seem strange that society, while
constantly moving forward with eager speed, should be constantly
looking backward with tender regret. But these two propensities,
inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved into the
same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the state in
which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates us to
surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their
happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in
us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is
constantly improving. But, in truth, there is constant
improvement precisely because there is constant discontent. If we
were perfectly satisfied with the present, we should cease to
contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the future. And
it is natural that, being dissatisfied with the present, we
should form a too favourable estimate of the past.
In truth we are under a deception similar to that which misleads
the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is
dry and bare: but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the
semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward and
find nothing but sand where an hour before they had seen a lake.
They turn their eyes and see a lake where, an hour before, they
were toiling through sand. A similar illusion seems to haunt
nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty and
barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and civilisation.
But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it
recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is
now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when
noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be
intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers
breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot
in a modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was
a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry, when men
died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the
most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when men died faster in
the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana.
We too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn be
envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that the
peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with
twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich may
receive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as little
used to dine without meat as they now are to eat rye bread; that
sanitary police and medical discoveries may have added several
more years to the average length of human life; that numerous
comforts and luxuries which are now unknown, or confined to a
few, may be within the reach of every diligent and thrifty
working man. And yet it may then be the mode to assert that the
increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefited the
few at the expense of the many, and to talk of the reign of Queen
Victoria as the time when England was truly merry England, when
all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the
rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did
not envy the splendour of the rich.
CHAPTER IV.
THE death of King Charles the Second took the nation by surprise.
His frame was naturally strong, and did not appear to have
suffered from excess. He had always been mindful of his health
even in his pleasures; and his habits were such as promise a long
life and a robust old age. Indolent as he was on all occasions
which required tension of the mind, he was active and persevering
in bodily exercise. He had, when young, been renowned as a tennis
player,208 and was, even in the decline of life, an indefatigable
walker. His ordinary pace was such that those who were admitted
to the honour of his society found it difficult to keep up with
him. He rose early, and generally passed three or four hours a
day in the open air. He might be seen, before the dew was off the
grass in St. James's Park, striding among the trees, playing with
his spaniels, and flinging corn to his ducks; and these
exhibitions endeared him to the common people, who always love to
See the great unbend.209
At length, towards the close of the year 1684, he was prevented,
by a slight attack of what was supposed to be gout, from rambling
as usual. He now spent his mornings in his laboratory, where he
amused himself with experiments on the properties of mercury. His
temper seemed to have suffered from confinement. He had no
apparent cause for disquiet. His kingdom was tranquil: he was not
in pressing want of money: his power was greater than it had ever
been: the party which had long thwarted him had been beaten down;
but the cheerfulness which had supported him against adverse
fortune had vanished in this season of prosperity. A trifle now
sufficed to depress those elastic spirits which had borne up
against defeat, exile, and penury. His irritation frequently
showed itself by looks and words such as could hardly have been
expected from a man so eminently distinguished by good humour and
good breeding. It was not supposed however that his constitution
was seriously impaired.210
His palace had seldom presented a gayer or a more scandalous
appearance than on the evening of Sunday the first of February
1685.211 Some grave persons who had gone thither, after the
fashion of that age, to pay their duty to their sovereign, and
who had expected that, on such a day, his court would wear a
decent aspect, were struck with astonishment and horror. The
great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of the
magnificence of the Tudors, was crowded with revellers and
gamblers. The king sate there chatting and toying with three
women, whose charms were the boast, and whose vices were the
disgrace, of three nations. Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland,
was there, no longer young, but still retaining some traces of
that superb and voluptuous loveliness which twenty years before
overcame the hearts of all men. There too was the Duchess of
Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted up
with the vivacity of France. Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of
Mazarin, and niece of the great Cardinal, completed the group.
She had been early removed from her native Italy to the court
where her uncle was supreme. His power and her own attractions
had drawn a crowd of illustrious suitors round her. Charles
himself, during his exile, had sought her hand in vain. No gift
of nature or of fortune seemed to be wanting to her. Her face was
beautiful with the rich beauty of the South, her understanding
quick, her manners graceful, her rank exalted, her possessions
immense; but her ungovernable passions had turned all these
blessings into curses. She had found the misery of an ill
assorted marriage intolerable, had fled from her husband, had
abandoned her vast wealth, and, after having astonished Rome and
Piedmont by her adventures, had fixed her abode in England. Her
house was the favourite resort of men of wit and pleasure, who,
for the sake of her smiles and her table, endured her frequent
fits of insolence and ill humour. Rochester and Godolphin
sometimes forgot the cares of state in her company. Barillon and
Saint Evremond found in her drawing room consolation for their
long banishment from Paris. The learning of Vossius, the wit of
Waller, were daily employed to flatter and amuse her. But her
diseased mind required stronger stimulants, and sought them in
gallantry, in basset, and in usquebaugh.212 While Charles.
flirted with his three sultanas, Hortensia's French page, a
handsome boy, whose vocal performances were the delight of
Whitehall, and were rewarded by numerous presents of rich
clothes, ponies, and guineas, warbled some amorous verses.213 A
party of twenty courtiers was seated at cards round a large table
on which gold was heaped in mountains.214 Even then the King had
complained that he did not feel quite well. He had no appetite
for his supper: his rest that night was broken; but on the
following morning he rose, as usual, early.
To that morning the contending factions in his council had,
during some days, looked forward with anxiety. The struggle
between Halifax and Rochester seemed to be approaching a decisive
crisis. Halifax, not content with having already driven his rival
from the Board of Treasury, had undertaken to prove him guilty of
such dishonesty or neglect in the conduct of the finances as
ought to be punished by dismission from the public service. It
was even whispered that the Lord President would probably be sent
to the Tower. The King had promised to enquire into the matter.
The second of February had been fixed for the investigation; and
several officers of the revenue had been ordered to attend with
their books on that day.215 But a great turn of fortune was at
hand.
Scarcely had Charles risen from his bed when his attendants
perceived that his utterance was indistinct, and that his
thoughts seemed to be wandering. Several men of rank had, as
usual, assembled to see their sovereign shaved and dressed. He
made an effort to converse with them in his usual gay style; but
his ghastly look surprised and alarmed them. Soon his face grew
black; his eyes turned in his head; he uttered a cry, staggered,
and fell into the arms of one of his lords. A physician who had
charge of the royal retorts and crucibles happened to be present.
He had no lances; but he opened a vein with a penknife. The blood
flowed freely; but the King was still insensible.
He was laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the Duchess
of Portsmouth hung over him with the familiarity of a wife. But
the alarm had been given. The Queen and the Duchess of York were
hastening to the room. The favourite concubine was forced to
retire to her own apartments. Those apartments had been thrice
pulled down and thrice rebuilt by her lover to gratify her
caprice. The very furniture of the chimney was massy silver.
Several fine paintings, which properly belonged to the Queen, had
been transferred to the dwelling of the mistress. The sideboards
were piled with richly wrought plate. In the niches stood
cabinets, the masterpieces of Japanese art. On the hangings,
fresh from the looms of Paris, were depicted, in tints which no
English tapestry could rival, birds of gorgeous plumage,
landscapes, hunting matches, the lordly terrace of Saint
Germains, the statues and fountains of Versailles.216 In the
midst of this splendour, purchased by guilt and shame, the
unhappy woman gave herself up to an agony of grief, which, to do
her justice, was not wholly selfish.
And now the gates of Whitehall, which ordinarily stood open to
all comers, were closed. But persons whose faces were known were
still permitted to enter. The antechambers and galleries were
soon filled to overflowing; and even the sick room was crowded
with peers, privy councillors, and foreign ministers. All the
medical men of note in London were summoned. So high did
political animosities run that the presence of some Whig
physicians was regarded as an extraordinary circumstance.217 One
Roman Catholic, whose skill was then widely renowned, Doctor
Thomas Short, was in attendance. Several of the prescriptions
have been preserved. One of them is signed by fourteen Doctors.
The patient was bled largely. Hot iron was applied to his head. A
loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced
into his mouth. He recovered his senses; but he was evidently in
a situation of extreme danger.
The Queen was for a time assiduous in her attendance. The Duke of
York scarcely left his brother's bedside. The Primate and four
other bishops were then in London. They remained at Whitehall all
day, and took it by turns to sit up at night in the King's room.
The news of his illness filled the capital with sorrow and
dismay. For his easy temper and affable manners had won the
affection of a large part of the nation; and those who most
disliked him preferred his unprincipled levity to the stern and
earnest bigotry of his brother.
On the morning of Thursday the fifth of February, the London
Gazette announced that His Majesty was going on well, and was
thought by the physicians to be out of danger. The bells of all
the churches rang merrily; and preparations for bonfires were
made in the streets. But in the evening it was known that a
relapse had taken place, and that the medical attendants had
given up all hope. The public mind was greatly disturbed; but
there was no disposition to tumult. The Duke of York, who had
already taken on himself to give orders, ascertained that the
City was perfectly quiet, and that he might without difficulty be
proclaimed as soon as his brother should expire.
The King was in great pain, and complained that he felt as if a
fire was burning within him. Yet he bore up against his
sufferings with a fortitude which did not seem to belong to his
soft and luxurious nature. The sight of his misery affected his
wife so much that she fainted, and was carried senseless to her
chamber. The prelates who were in waiting had from the first
exhorted him to prepare for his end. They now thought it their
duty to address him in a still more urgent manner. William
Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, an honest and pious, though
narrowminded, man, used great freedom. "It is time,' he said, "to
speak out; for, Sir, you are about to appear before a Judge who
is no respecter of persons." The King answered not a word.
Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, then tried his powers of
persuasion. He was a man of parts and learning, of quick
sensibility and stainless virtue. His elaborate works have long
been forgotten; but his morning and evening hymns are still
repeated daily in thousands of dwellings. Though, like most of
his order, zealous for monarchy, he was no sycophant. Before he
became a Bishop, he had maintained the honour of his gown by
refusing, when the court was at Winchester, to let Eleanor Gwynn
lodge in the house which he occupied there as a prebendary.218
The King had sense enough to respect so manly a spirit. Of all
the prelates he liked Ken the best. It was to no purpose,
however, that the good Bishop now put forth all his eloquence.
His solemn and pathetic exhortation awed and melted the
bystanders to such a degree that some among them believed him to
be filled with the same spirit which, in the old time, had, by
the mouths of Nathan and Elias, called sinful princes to
repentance. Charles however was unmoved. He made no objection
indeed when the service for the visitation of the sick was read.
In reply to the pressing questions of the divines, he said that
he was sorry for what he had done amiss; and he suffered the
absolution to be pronounced over him according to the forms of
the Church of England: but, when he was urged to declare that he
died in the communion of that Church, he seemed not to hear what
was said; and nothing could induce him to take the Eucharist from
the hands of the Bishops. A table with bread and wine was brought
to his bedside, but in vain. Sometimes he said that there was no
hurry, and sometimes that he was too weak.
Many attributed this apathy to contempt for divine things, and
many to the stupor which often precedes death. But there were in
the palace a few persons who knew better. Charles had never been
a sincere member of the Established Church. His mind had long
oscillated between Hobbism and Popery. When his health was good
and his spirits high he was a scoffer. In his few serious moments
he was a Roman Catholic. The Duke of York was aware of this, but
was entirely occupied with the care of his own interests. He had
ordered the outports to be closed. He had posted detachments of
the Guards in different parts of the city. He had also procured
the feeble signature of the dying King to an instrument by which
some duties, granted only till the demise of the Crown, were let
to farm for a term of three years. These things occupied the
attention of James to such a degree that, though, on ordinary
occasions, he was indiscreetly and unseasonably eager to bring
over proselytes to his Church, he never reflected that his
brother was in danger of dying without the last sacraments. This
neglect was the more extraordinary because the Duchess of York
had, at the request of the Queen, suggested, on the morning on
which the King was taken ill, the propriety of procuring
spiritual assistance. For such assistance Charles was at last
indebted to an agency very different from that of his pious wife
and sister-in-law. A life of frivolty and vice had not
extinguished in the Duchess of Portsmouth all sentiments of
religion, or all that kindness which is the glory of her sex. The
French ambassador Barillon, who had come to the palace to enquire
after the King, paid her a visit. He found her in an agony of
sorrow. She took him into a secret room, and poured out her whole
heart to him. "I have," she said, "a thing of great moment to
tell you. If it were known, my head would be in danger. The King
is really and truly a Catholic; but he will die without being
reconciled to the Church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant
clergymen. I cannot enter it without giving scandal. The Duke is
thinking only of himself. Speak to him. Remind him that there is
a soul at stake. He is master now. He can clear the room. Go this
instant, or it will be too late."
Barillon hastened to the bedchamber, took the Duke aside, and
delivered the message of the mistress. The conscience of James
smote him. He started as if roused from sleep, and declared that
nothing should prevent him from discharging the sacred duty which
had been too long delayed. Several schemes were discussed and
rejected. At last the Duke commanded the crowd to stand aloof,
went to the bed, stooped down, and whispered something which none
of the spectators could hear, but which they supposed to be some
question about affairs of state. Charles answered in an audible
voice, "Yes, yes, with all my heart." None of the bystanders,
except the French Ambassador, guessed that the King was declaring
his wish to be admitted into the bosom of the Church of Rome.
"Shall I bring a priest?" said the Duke. "Do, brother," replied
the Sick man. "For God's sake do, and lose no time. But no; you
will get into trouble." "If it costs me my life," said the Duke,
"I will fetch a priest."
To find a priest, however, for such a purpose, at a moment's
notice, was not easy. For, as the law then stood, the person who
admitted a proselyte into the Roman Catholic Church was guilty of
a capital crime. The Count of Castel Melhor, a Portuguese
nobleman, who, driven by political troubles from his native land,
had been hospitably received at the English court, undertook to
procure a confessor. He had recourse to his countrymen who
belonged to the Queen's household; but he found that none of her
chaplains knew English or French enough to shrive the King. The
Duke and Barillon were about to send to the Venetian Minister for
a clergyman when they heard that a Benedictine monk, named John
Huddleston, happened to be at Whitehall. This man had, with great
risk to himself, saved the King's life after the battle of
Worcester, and had, on that account, been, ever since the
Restoration, a privileged person. In the sharpest proclamations
which had been put forth against Popish priests, when false
witnesses had inflamed the nation to fury, Huddleston had been
excepted by name.219 He readily consented to put his life a
second time in peril for his prince; but there was still a
difficulty. The honest monk was so illiterate that he did not
know what he ought to say on an occasion of such importance. He
however obtained some hints, through the intervention of Castel
Melhor, from a Portuguese ecclesiastic, and, thus instructed, was
brought up the back stairs by Chiffinch, a confidential servant,
who, if the satires of that age are to be credited, had often
introduced visitors of a very different description by the same
entrance. The Duke then, in the King's name, commanded all who
were present to quit the room, except Lewis Duras, Earl of
Feversham, and John Granville, Earl of Bath. Both these Lords
professed the Protestant religion; but James conceived that he
could count on their fidelity. Feversham, a Frenchman of noble
birth, and nephew of the great Turenne, held high rank in the
English army, and was Chamberlain to the Queen. Bath was Groom of
the Stole.
The Duke's orders were obeyed; and even the physicians withdrew.
The back door was then opened; and Father Huddleston entered. A
cloak had been thrown over his sacred vestments; and his shaven
crown was concealed by a flowing wig. "Sir," said the Duke, "this
good man once saved your life. He now comes to save your soul."
Charles faintly answered, "He is welcome." Huddleston went
through his part better than had been expected. He knelt by the
bed, listened to the confession, pronounced the absolution, and
administered extreme unction. He asked if the King wished to
receive the Lord's supper. "Surely," said Charles, "if I am not
unworthy." The host was brought in. Charles feebly strove to rise
and kneel before it. The priest made him lie still, and assured
him that God would accept the humiliation of the soul, and would
not require the humiliation of the body. The King found so much
difficulty in swallowing the bread that it was necessary to open
the door and procure a glass of water. This rite ended, the monk
held up a crucifix before the penitent, charged him to fix his
last thoughts on the sufferings of the Redeemer, and withdrew.
The whole ceremony had occupied about three quarters of an hour;
and, during that time, the courtiers who filled the outer room
had communicated their suspicions to each other by whispers and
significant glances. The door was at length thrown open, and the
crowd again filled the chamber of death.
It was now late in the evening. The King seemed much relieved by
what had passed. His natural children were brought to his
bedside, the Dukes of Grafton, Southampton, and Northumberland,
sons of the Duchess of Cleveland, the Duke of Saint Albans, son
of Eleanor Gwynn, and the Duke of Richmond, son of the Duchess of
Portsmouth. Charles blessed them all, but spoke with peculiar
tenderness to Richmond. One face which should have been there was
wanting. The eldest and best loved child was an exile and a
wanderer. His name was not once mentioned by his father.
During the night Charles earnestly recommended the Duchess of
Portsmouth and her boy to the care of James; "And do not," he
good-naturedly added, "let poor Nelly starve." The Queen sent
excuses for her absence by Halifax. She said that she was too
much disordered to resume her post by the couch, and implored
pardon for any offence which she might unwittingly have given.
"She ask my pardon, poor woman!" cried Charles; "I ask hers with
all my heart."
The morning light began to peep through the windows of Whitehall;
and Charles desired the attendants to pull aside the curtains,
that he might have one more look at the day. He remarked that it
was time to wind up a clock which stood near his bed. These
little circumstances were long remembered because they proved
beyond dispute that, when he declared himself a Roman Catholic,
he was in full possession of his faculties. He apologised to
those who had stood round him all night for the trouble which he
had caused. He had been, he said. a most unconscionable time
dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it. This was the last
glimpse of the exquisite urbanity, so often found potent to charm
away the resentment of a justly incensed nation. Soon after dawn
the speech of the dying man failed. Before ten his senses were
gone. Great numbers had repaired to the churches at the hour of
morning service. When the prayer for the King was read, loud
groans and sobs showed how deeply his people felt for him. At
noon on Friday, the sixth of February, he passed away without a
struggle.220
At that time the common people throughout Europe, and nowhere
more than in England, were in the habit of attributing the death
of princes, especially when the prince was popular and the death
unexpected, to the foulest and darkest kind of assassination.
Thus James the First had been accused of poisoning Prince Henry.
Thus Charles the First had been accused of poisoning James the
First. Thus when, in the time of the Commonwealth, the Princess
Elizabeth died at Carisbrook, it was loudly asserted that
Cromwell had stooped to the senseless and dastardly wickedness of
mixing noxious drugs with the food of a young girl whom he had no
conceivable motive to injure.221 A few years later, the rapid
decomposition of Cromwell's own corpse was ascribed by many to a
deadly potion administered in his medicine. The death of Charles
the Second could scarcely fail to occasion similar rumours. The
public ear had been repeatedly abused by stories of Popish plots
against his life. There was, therefore, in many minds, a strong
predisposition to suspicion; and there were some unlucky
circumstances which, to minds so predisposed, might seem to
indicate that a crime had been perpetrated. The fourteen Doctors
who deliberated on the King's case contradicted each other and
themselves. Some of them thought that his fit was epileptic, and
that he should be suffered to have his doze out. The majority
pronounced him apoplectic, and tortured him during some hours
like an Indian at a stake. Then it was determined to call his
complaint a fever, and to administer doses of bark. One
physician, however, protested against this course, and assured
the Queen that his brethren would kill the King among them.
Nothing better than dissension and vacillation could be expected
from such a multitude of advisers. But many of the vulgar not
unnaturally concluded, from the perplexity of the great masters
of the healing art, that the malady had some extraordinary
origin. There is reason to believe that a horrible suspicion did
actually cross the mind of Short, who, though skilful in his
profession, seems to have been a nervous and fanciful man, and
whose perceptions were probably confused by dread of the odious
imputations to which he, as a Roman Catholic, was peculiarly
exposed. We cannot, therefore, wonder that wild stories without
number were repeated and believed by the common people. His
Majesty's tongue had swelled to the size of a neat's tongue. A
cake of deleterious powder had been found in his brain. There
were blue spots on his breast, There were black spots on his
shoulder. Something had been, put in his snuff-box. Something had
been put into his broth. Something had been put into his
favourite dish of eggs and ambergrease. The Duchess of Portsmouth
had poisoned him in a cup of chocolate. The Queen had poisoned
him in a jar of dried pears. Such tales ought to be preserved;
for they furnish us with a measure of the intelligence and virtue
of the generation which eagerly devoured them. That no rumour of
the same kind has ever, in the present age, found credit among
us, even when lives on which great interest depended have been
terminated by unforeseen attacks of disease, is to be attributed
partly to the progress of medical and chemical science, but
partly also, it may be hoped, to the progress which the nation
has made in good sense, justice, and humanity.222
When all was over, James retired from the bedside to his closet,
where, during a quarter of an hour, he remained alone. Meanwhile
the Privy Councillors who were in the palace assembled. The new
King came forth, and took his place at the head of the board. He
commenced his administration, according to usage, by a speech to
the Council. He expressed his regret for the loss which he had
just sustained, and he promised to imitate the singular lenity
which had distinguished the late reign. He was aware, he said,
that he had been accused of a fondness for arbitrary power. But
that was not the only falsehood which had been told of him. He
was resolved to maintain the established government both in
Church and State. The Church of England he knew to be eminently
loyal. It should therefore always be his care to support and
defend her. The laws of England, he also knew, were sufficient to
make him as great a King as he could wish to be. He would not
relinquish his own rights; but he would respect the rights of
others. He had formerly risked his life in defense of his
country; and he would still go as far as any man in support of
her just liberties.
This speech was not, like modern speeches on similar occasions,
carefully prepared by the advisers of the sovereign. It was the
extemporaneous expression of the new King's feelings at a moment
of great excitement. The members of the Council broke forth into
clamours of delight and gratitude. The Lord President, Rochester,
in the name of his brethren, expressed a hope that His Majesty's
most welcome declaration would be made public. The Solicitor
General, Heneage Finch, offered to act as clerk. He was a zealous
churchman, and, as such, was naturally desirous that there should
be some permanent record of the gracious promises which had just
been uttered. "Those promises," he said, "have made so deep an
impression on me that I can repeat them word for word." He soon
produced his report. James read it, approved of it, and ordered
it to be published. At a later period he said that he had taken
this step without due consideration, that his unpremeditated
expressions touching the Church of England were too strong, and
that Finch had, with a dexterity which at the time escaped
notice, made them still stronger.223
The King had been exhausted by long watching and by many violent
emotions. He now retired to rest. The Privy Councillors, having
respectfully accompanied him to his bedchamber, returned to their
seats, and issued orders for the ceremony of proclamation. The
Guards were under arms; the heralds appeared in their gorgeous
coats; and the pageant proceeded without any obstruction. Casks
of wine were broken up in the streets, and all who passed were
invited to drink to the health of the new sovereign. But, though
an occasional shout was raised, the people were not in a joyous
mood. Tears were seen in many eyes; and it was remarked that
there was scarcely a housemaid in London who had not contrived to
procure some fragment of black crepe in honour of King
Charles.224
The funeral called forth much censure. It would, indeed, hardly
have been accounted worthy of a noble and opulent subject. The
Tories gently blamed the new King's parsimony: the Whigs sneered
at his want of natural affection; and the fiery Covenanters of
Scotland exultingly proclaimed that the curse denounced of old
against wicked princes had been signally fulfilled, and that the
departed tyrant had been buried with the burial of an ass.225 Yet
James commenced his administration with a large measure of public
good will. His speech to the Council appeared in print, and the
impression which it produced was highly favourable to him. This,
then, was the prince whom a faction had driven into exile and had
tried to rob of his birthright, on the ground that he was a
deadly enemy to the religion and laws of England. He had
triumphed: he was on the throne; and his first act was to declare
that he would defend the Church, and would strictly respect the
rights of his people. The estimate which all parties had formed
of his character, added weight to every word that fell from him.
The Whigs called him haughty, implacable, obstinate, regardless
of public opinion. The Tories, while they extolled his princely
virtues, had often lamented his neglect of the arts which
conciliate popularity. Satire itself had never represented him as
a man likely to court public favour by professing what he did not
feel, and by promising what he had no intention of performing. On
the Sunday which followed his accession, his speech was quoted in
many pulpits. "We have now for our Church," cried one loyal
preacher, "the word of a King, and of a King who was never worse
than his word." This pointed sentence was fast circulated through
town and country, and was soon the watchword of the whole Tory
party.226
The great offices of state had become vacant by the demise of the
crown and it was necessary for James to determine how they should
be filled. Few of the members of the late cabinet had any reason
to expect his favour. Sunderland, who was Secretary of State, and
Godolphin, who was First Lord of the Treasury, had supported the
Exclusion Bill. Halifax, who held the Privy Seal, had opposed
that bill with unrivalled powers of argument and eloquence. But
Halifax was the mortal enemy of despotism and of Popery. He saw
with dread the progress of the French arms on the Continent and
the influence of French gold in the counsels of England. Had his
advice been followed, the laws would have been strictly observed:
clemency would have been extended to the vanquished Whigs: the
Parliament would have been convoked in due season: an attempt
would have been made to reconcile our domestic factions; and the
principles of the Triple Alliance would again have guided our
foreign policy. He had therefore incurred the bitter animosity of
James. The Lord Keeper Guildford could hardly be said to belong
to either of the parties into which the court was divided. He
could by no means be called a friend of liberty; and yet he had
so great a reverence for the letter of the law that he was not a
serviceable tool of arbitrary power. He was accordingly
designated by the vehement Tories as a Trimmer, and was to James
an object of aversion with which contempt was largely mingled.
Ormond, who was Lord Steward of the Household and Viceroy of
Ireland, then resided at Dublin. His claims on the royal
gratitude were superior to those of any other subject. He had
fought bravely for Charles the First: he had shared the exile of
Charles the Second; and, since the Restoration, he had, in spite
of many provocations, kept his loyalty unstained. Though he had
been disgraced during the predominance of the Cabal, he had never
gone into factious opposition, and had, in the days of the Popish
Plot and the Exclusion Bill, been foremost among the supporters
of the throne. He was now old, and had been recently tried by the
most cruel of all calamities. He had followed to the grave a son
who should have been his own chief mourner, the gallant Ossory.
The eminent services, the venerable age, and the domestic
misfortunes of Ormond made him an object of general interest to
the nation. The Cavaliers regarded him as, both by right of
seniority and by right of merit, their head; and the Whigs knew
that, faithful as he had always been to the cause of monarchy, he
was no friend either to Popery or to arbitrary power. But, high
as he stood in the public estimation, he had little favor to
expect from his new master. James, indeed, while still a subject,
had urged his brother to make a complete change in the Irish
administration. Charles had assented; and it had been arranged
that, in a few months, there should be a new Lord Lieutenant.227
Rochester was the only member of the cabinet who stood high in
the favour of the King. The general expectation was that he would
be immediately placed at the head of affairs, and that all the
other great officers of the state would be changed. This
expectation proved to be well founded in part only. Rochester was
declared Lord Treasurer, and thus became prime minister. Neither
a Lord High Admiral nor a Board of Admiralty was appointed. The
new King, who loved the details of naval business, and would have
made a respectable clerk in a dockyard at Chatham, determined to
be his own minister of marine. Under him the management of that
important department was confided to Samuel Pepys, whose library
and diary have kept his name fresh to our time. No servant of the
late sovereign was publicly disgraced. Sunderland exerted so much
art and address, employed so many intercessors, and was in
possession of so many secrets, that he was suffered to retain his
seals. Godolphin's obsequiousness, industry, experience and
taciturnity, could ill be spared. As he was no longer wanted at
the Treasury, he was made Chamberlain to the Queen. With these
three Lords the King took counsel on all important questions. As
to Halifax, Ormond, and Guildford, he determined not yet to
dismiss them, but merely to humble and annoy them.
Halifax was told that he must give up the Privy seal and accept
the Presidency of the Council. He submitted with extreme
reluctance. For, though the President of the Council had always
taken precedence of the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Privy Seal was,
in that age a much more important officer than the Lord
President. Rochester had not forgotten the jest which had been
made a few months before on his own removal from the Treasury,
and enjoyed in his turn the pleasure of kicking his rival up
stairs. The Privy Seal was delivered to Rochester's elder
brother, Henry Earl of Clarendon.
To Barillon James expressed the strongest dislike of Halifax. "I
know him well, I never can trust him. He shall have no share in
the management of public business. As to the place which I have
given him, it will just serve to show how little influence he
has." But to Halifax it was thought convenient to hold a very
different language. "All the past is forgotten," said the King,
"except the service which you did me in the debate on the
Exclusion Bill." This speech has often been cited to prove that
James was not so vindictive as he had been called by his enemies.
It seems rather to prove that he by no means deserved the praises
which have been bestowed on his sincerity by his friends.228
Ormond was politely informed that his services were no longer
needed in Ireland, and was invited to repair to Whitehall, and to
perform the functions of Lord Steward. He dutifully submitted,
but did not affect to deny that the new arrangement wounded his
feelings deeply. On the eve of his departure he gave a
magnificent banquet at Kilmainham Hospital, then just completed,
to the officers of the garrison of Dublin. After dinner he rose,
filled a goblet to the brim with wine, and, holding it up, asked
whether he had spilt one drop. "No, gentlemen; whatever the
courtiers may say, I am not yet sunk into dotage. My hand does
not fail me yet: and my hand is not steadier than my heart. To
the health of King James!" Such was the last farewell of Ormond
to Ireland. He left the administration in the hands of Lords
Justices, and repaired to London, where he was received with
unusual marks of public respect. Many persons of rank went forth
to meet him on the road. A long train of eguipages followed him
into Saint James's Square, where his mansion stood; and the
Square was thronged by a multitude which greeted him with loud
acclamations.229
The Great Seal was left in Guildford's custody; but a marked
indignity was at the same time offered to him. It was determined
that another lawyer of more vigour and audacity should be called
to assist in the administration. The person selected was Sir
George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. The
depravity of this man has passed into a proverb. Both the great
English parties have attacked his memory with emulous violence:
for the Whigs considered him as their most barbarous enemy; and
the Tories found it convenient to throw on him the blame of all
the crimes which had sullied their triumph. A diligent and candid
enquiry will show that some frightful stories which have been
told concerning him are false or exaggerated. Yet the
dispassionate historian will be able to make very little
deduction from the vast mass of infamy with which the memory of
the wicked judge has been loaded.
He was a man of quick and vigorous parts, but constitutionally
prone to insolence and to the angry passions. When just emerging
from boyhood he had risen into practice at the Old Bailey bar, a
bar where advocates have always used a license of tongue unknown
in Westminster Hall. Here, during many years his chief business
was to examine and crossexamine the most hardened miscreants of a
great capital. Daily conflicts with prostitutes and thieves
called out and exercised his powers so effectually that he became
the most consummate bully ever known in his profession.
Tenderness for others and respect for himself were feelings alike
unknown to him. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric
in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion of
maledictions and vituperative epithets which composed his
vocabulary could hardly have been rivalled in the fishmarket or
the beargarden. His countenance and his voice must always have
been unamiable. But these natural advantages,-for such he seems
to have thought them,-he had improved to such a degree that
there were few who, in his paroxysms of rage, could see or hear
him without emotion. Impudence and ferocity sate upon his brow.
The glare of his eyes had a fascination for the unhappy victim on
whom they were fixed. Yet his brow and his eye were less terrible
than the savage lines of his mouth. His yell of fury, as was said
by one who had often heard it, sounded like the thunder of the
judgment day. These qualifications he carried, while still a
young man, from the bar to the bench. He early became Common
Serjeant, and then Recorder of London. As a judge at the City
sessions he exhibited the same propensities which afterwards, in
a higher post, gained for him an unenviable immortality. Already
might be remarked in him the most odious vice which is incident
to human nature, a delight in misery merely as misery. There was
a fiendish exultation in the way in which he pronounced sentence
on offenders. Their weeping and imploring seemed to titillate him
voluptuously; and he loved to scare them into fits by dilating
with luxuriant amplification on all the details of what they were
to suffer. Thus, when he had an opportunity of ordering an
unlucky adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, "Hangman,"
he would exclaim, "I charge you to pay particular attention to
this lady! Scourge her soundly man! Scourge her till the blood
runs down! It is Christmas, a cold time for Madam to strip in!
See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly!"230 He was hardly
less facetious when he passed judgment on poor Lodowick
Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied himself a prophet.
"Impudent rogue!" roared Jeffreys, "thou shalt have an easy,
easy, easy punishment!" One part of this easy punishment was the
pillory, in which the wretched fanatic was almost killed with
brickbats.231
By this time the heart of Jeffreys had been hardened to that
temper which tyrants require in their worst implements. He had
hitherto looked for professional advancement to the corporation
of London. He had therefore professed himself a Roundhead, and
had always appeared to be in a higher state of exhilaration when
he explained to Popish priests that they were to be cut down
alive, and were to see their own bowels burned, than when he
passed ordinary sentences of death. But, as soon as he had got
all that the city could give, he made haste to sell his forehead
of brass and his tongue of venom to the Court. Chiffinch, who was
accustomed to act as broker in infamous contracts of more than
one kind, lent his aid. He had conducted many amorous and many
political intrigues; but he assuredly never rendered a more
scandalous service to his masters than when he introduced
Jeffreys to Whitehall. The renegade soon found a patron in the
obdurate and revengeful James, but was always regarded with scorn
and disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as they were, had no
affinity with insolence and cruelty. "That man," said the King,
"has no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than
ten carted street-walkers."232 Work was to be done, however,
which could be trusted to no man who reverenced law or was
sensible of shame; and thus Jeffreys, at an age at which a
barrister thinks himself fortunate if he is employed to conduct
an important cause, was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the
qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was
merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high kind.
But he had one of those happily constituted intellects which,
across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial
facts, go straight to the true point. Of his intellect, however,
he seldom had the full use. Even in civil causes his malevolent
and despotic temper perpetually disordered his judgment. To enter
his court was to enter the den of a wild beast, which none could
tame, and which was as likely to be roused to rage by caresses as
by attacks. He frequently poured forth on plaintiffs and
defendants, barristers and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen,
torrents of frantic abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses. His
looks and tones had inspired terror when he was merely a young
advocate struggling into practice. Now that he was at the head of
the most formidable tribunal in the realm, there were few indeed
who did not tremble before him. Even when he was sober, his
violence was sufficiently frightful. But in general his reason
was overclouded and his evil passions stimulated by the fumes of
intoxication. His evenings were ordinarily given to revelry.
People who saw him only over his bottle would have supposed him
to be a man gross indeed, sottish, and addicted to low company
and low merriment, but social and goodhumoured. He was constantly
surrounded on such occasions by buffoons selected, for the most
part, from among the vilest pettifoggers who practiced before
him. These men bantered and abused each other for his
entertainment. He joined in their ribald talk, sang catches with
them, and, when his head grew hot, hugged and kissed them in an
ecstasy of drunken fondness. But though wine at first seemed to
soften his heart, the effect a few hours later was very
different. He often came to the judgment seat, having kept the
court waiting long, and yet having but half slept off his
debauch, his cheeks on fire, his eyes staring like those of a
maniac. When he was in this state, his boon companions of the
preceding night, if they were wise, kept out of his way: for the
recollection of the familiarity to which he had admitted them
inflamed his malignity; and he was sure to take every opportunity
of overwhelming them with execration and invective. Not the least
odious of his many odious peculiarities was the pleasure which he
took in publicly browbeating and mortifying those whom, in his
fits of maudlin tenderness, he had encouraged to presume on his
favour.
The services which the government had expected from him were
performed, not merely without flinching, but eagerly and
triumphantly. His first exploit was the judicial murder of
Algernon Sidney. What followed was in perfect harmony with this
beginning. Respectable Tories lamented the disgrace which the
barbarity and indecency of so great a functionary brought upon
the administration of justice. But the excesses which filled such
men with horror were titles to the esteem of James. Jeffreys,
therefore, very soon after the death of Charles, obtained a seat
in the cabinet and a peerage. This last honour was a signal mark
of royal approbation. For, since the judicial system of the realm
had been remodelled in the thirteenth century, no Chief Justice
had been a Lord of Parliament.233
Guildford now found himself superseded in all his political
functions, and restricted to his business as a judge in equity.
At Council he was treated by Jeffreys with marked incivility. The
whole legal patronage was in the hands of the Chief Justice; and
it was well known by the bar that the surest way to propitiate
the Chief Justice was to treat the Lord Keeper with disrespect.
James had not been many hours King when a dispute arose between
the two heads of the law. The customs had been settled on Charles
for life only, and could not therefore be legally exacted by the
new sovereign. Some weeks must elapse before a House of Commons
could be chosen. If, in the meantime, the duties were suspended,
the revenue would suffer; the regular course of trade would be
interrupted; the consumer would derive no benefit, and the only
gainers would be those fortunate speculators whose cargoes might
happen to arrive during the interval between the demise of the
crown and the meeting of the Parliament. The Treasury was
besieged by merchants whose warehouses were filled with goods on
which duty had been paid, and who were in grievous apprehension
of being undersold and ruined. Impartial men must admit that this
was one of those cases in which a government may be justified in
deviating from the strictly constitutional course. But when it is
necessary to deviate from the strictly constitutional course, the
deviation clearly ought to be no greater than the necessity
requires. Guildford felt this, and gave advice which did him
honour. He proposed that the duties should be levied, but should
be kept in the Exchequer apart from other sums till the
Parliament should meet. In this way the King, while violating the
letter of the laws, would show that he wished to conform to their
spirit, Jeffreys gave very different counsel. He advised James to
put forth an edict declaring it to be His Majesty's will and
pleasure that the customs should continue to be paid. This advice
was well suited to the King's temper. The judicious proposition
of the Lord Keeper was rejected as worthy only of a Whig, or of
what was still worse, a Trimmer. A proclamation, such as the
Chief Justice had suggested, appeared. Some people had expected
that a violent outbreak of public indignation would be the
consequence; but they were deceived. The spirit of opposition had
not yet revived; and the court might safely venture to take steps
which, five years before, would have produced a rebellion. In the
City of London, lately so turbulent, scarcely a murmur was
heard.234
The proclamation, which announced that the customs would still be
levied, announced also that a Parliament would shortly meet. It
was not without many misgivings that James had determined to call
the Estates of his realm together. The moment was, indeed. most
auspicious for a general election. Never since the accession of
the House of Stuart had the constituent bodies been so favourably
disposed towards the Court. But the new sovereign's mind was
haunted by an apprehension not to be mentioned even at this
distance of time, without shame and indignation. He was afraid
that by summoning his Parliament he might incur the displeasure
of the King of France.
To the King of France it mattered little which of the two English
factions triumphed at the elections: for all the Parliaments
which had met since the Restoration, whatever might have been
their temper as to domestic politics, had been jealous of the
growing power of the House of Bourbon. On this subject there was
little difference between the Whigs and the sturdy country
gentlemen who formed the main strength of the Tory party. Lewis
had therefore spared neither bribes nor menaces to prevent
Charles from convoking the Houses; and James, who had from the
first been in the secret of his brother's foreign politics, had,
in becoming King of England, become also a hireling and vassal of
France.
Rochester, Godolphin, and Sunderland, who now formed the interior
cabinet, were perfectly aware that their late master had been in
the habit of receiving money from the court of Versailles. They
were consulted by James as to the expediency of convoking the
legislature. They acknowledged the importance of keeping Lewis in
good humour: but it seemed to them that the calling of a
Parliament was not a matter of choice. Patient as the nation
appeared to be, there were limits to its patience. The principle,
that the money of the subject could not be lawfully taken by the
King without the assent of the Commons, was firmly rooted in the
public mind; and though, on all extraordinary emergency even
Whigs might be willing to pay, during a few weeks, duties not
imposed by statute, it was certain that even Tories would become
refractory if such irregular taxation should continue longer than
the special circumstances which alone justified it. The Houses
then must meet; and since it was so, the sooner they were
summoned the better. Even the short delay which would be
occasioned by a reference to Versailles might produce irreparable
mischief. Discontent and suspicion would spread fast through
society. Halifax would complain that the fundamental principles
of the constitution were violated. The Lord Keeper, like a
cowardly pedantic special pleader as he was, would take the same
side. What might have been done with a good grace would at last
be done with a bad grace. Those very ministers whom His Majesty
most wished to lower in the public estimation would gain
popularity at his expense. The ill temper of the nation might
seriously affect the result of the elections. These arguments
were unanswerable. The King therefore notified to the country his
intention of holding a Parliament. But he was painfully anxious
to exculpate himself from the guilt of having acted undutifully
and disrespectfully towards France. He led Barillon into a
private room, and there apologised for having dared to take so
important a step without the previous sanction of Lewis. "Assure
your master," said James, "of my gratitude and attachment. I know
that without his protection I can do nothing. I know what
troubles my brother brought on himself by not adhering steadily
to France. I will take good care not to let the Houses meddle
with foreign affairs. If I see in them any disposition to make
mischief, I will send them about their business. Explain this to
my good brother. I hope that he will not take it amiss that I
have acted without consulting him. He has a right to be
consulted; and it is my wish to consult him about everything. But
in this case the delay even of a week might have produced serious
consequences."
These ignominious excuses were, on the following morning,
repeated by Rochester. Barillon received them civilly. Rochester,
grown bolder, proceeded to ask for money. "It will be well laid
out," he said: "your master cannot employ his revenues better.
Represent to him strongly how important it is that the King of
England should be dependent, not on his own people, but on the
friendship of France alone."235
Barillon hastened to communicate to Lewis the wishes of the
English government; but Lewis had already anticipated them. His
first act, after he was apprised of the death of Charles, was to
collect bills of exchange on England to the amount of five
hundred thousand livres, a sum equivalent to about thirty-seven
thousand five hundred pounds sterling Such bills were not then to
be easily procured in Paris at day's notice. In a few hours,
however, the purchase was effected, and a courier started for
London.236 As soon as Barillon received the remittance, he flew
to Whitehall, and communicated the welcome news. James was not
ashamed to shed, or pretend to shed, tears of delight and
gratitude. "Nobody but your King," he said, "does such kind, such
noble things. I never can be grateful enough. Assure him that my
attachment will last to the end of my days." Rochester,
Sunderland, and Godolphin came, one after another, to embrace the
ambassador, and to whisper to him that he had given new life to
their royal master.237
But though James and his three advisers were pleased with the
promptitude which Lewis had shown, they were by no means
satisfied with the amount of the donation. As they were afraid,
however, that they might give offence by importunate mendicancy,
they merely hinted their wishes. They declared that they had no
intention of haggling with so generous a benefactor as the French
King, and that they were willing to trust entirely to his
munificence. They, at the same time, attempted to propitiate him
by a large sacrifice of national honour. It was well known that
one chief end of his politics was to add the Belgian provinces to
his dominions. England was bound by a treaty which had been
concluded with Spain when Danby was Lord Treasurer, to resist any
attempt which France might make on those provinces. The three
ministers informed Barillon that their master considered that
treaty as no longer obligatory. It had been made, they said, by
Charles: it might, perhaps, have been binding on him; but his
brother did not think himself bound by it. The most Christian
King might, therefore, without any fear of opposition from
England, proceed to annex Brabant and Hainault to his empire.238
It was at the same time resolved that an extraordinary embassy
should be sent to assure Lewis of the gratitude and affection of
James. For this mission was selected a man who did not as yet
occupy a very eminent position, but whose renown, strangely made
up of infamy and glory, filled at a later period the whole
civilized world.
Soon after the Restoration, in the gay and dissolute times which
have been celebrated by the lively pen of Hamilton, James, young
and ardent in the pursuit of pleasure, had been attracted to
Arabella Churchill, one of the maids of honour who waited on his
first wife. The young lady was plain: but the taste of James was
not nice: and she became his avowed mistress. She was the
daughter of a poor Cavalier knight who haunted Whitehall, and
made himself ridiculous by publishing a dull and affected folio,
long forgotten, in praise of monarchy and monarchs. The
necessities of the Churchills were pressing: their loyalty was
ardent: and their only feeling about Arabella's seduction seems
to have been joyful surprise that so homely a girl should have
attained such high preferment.
Her interest was indeed of great use to her relations: but none
of them was so fortunate as her eldest brother John, a fine
youth, who carried a pair of colours in the foot guards. He rose
fast in the court and in the army, and was early distinguished as
a man of fashion and of pleasure. His stature was commanding, his
face handsome, his address singularly winning, yet of such
dignity that the most impertinent fops never ventured to take any
liberty with him; his temper, even in the most vexatious and
irritating circumstances, always under perfect command. His
education had been so much neglected that he could not spell the
most common words of his own language: but his acute and vigorous
understanding amply supplied the place of book learning. He was
not talkative: but when he was forced to speak in public, his
natural eloquence moved the envy of practiced rhetoricians.239
His courage was singularly cool and imperturbable. During many
years of anxiety and peril, he never, in any emergency, lost even
for a moment, the perfect use of his admirable judgment.
In his twenty-third year he was sent with his regiment to join
the French forces, then engaged in operations against Holland.
His serene intrepidity distinguished him among thousands of brave
soldiers. His professional skill commanded the respect of veteran
officers. He was publicly thanked at the head of the army, and
received many marks of esteem and confidence from Turenne, who
was then at the height of military glory.
Unhappily the splendid qualities of John Churchill were mingled
with alloy of the most sordid kind. Some propensities, which in
youth are singularly ungraceful, began very early to show
themselves in him. He was thrifty in his very vices, and levied
ample contributions on ladies enriched by the spoils of more
liberal lovers. He was, during a short time, the object of the
violent but fickle fondness of the Duchess of Cleveland. On one
occasion he was caught with her by the King, and was forced to
leap out of the window. She rewarded this hazardous feat of
gallantry with a present of five thousand pounds. With this sum
the prudent young hero instantly bought an annuity of five
hundred a year, well secured on landed property.240 Already his
private drawer contained a hoard of broad pieces which, fifty
years later, when he was a Duke, a Prince of the Empire, and the
richest subject in Europe, remained untouched.241
After the close of the war he was attached to the household of
the Duke of York, accompanied his patron to the Low Countries and
to Edinburgh, and was rewarded for his services with a Scotch
peerage and with the command of the only regiment of dragoons
which was then on the English establishment.242 His wife had a
post in the family of James's younger daughter, the Princess of
Denmark.
Lord Churchill was now sent as ambassador extraordinary to
Versailles. He had it in charge to express the warm gratitude of
the English government for the money which had been so generously
bestowed. It had been originally intended that he should at the
same time ask Lewis for a much larger sum; but, on full
consideration, it was apprehended that such indelicate greediness
might disgust the benefactor whose spontaneous liberality had
been so signally displayed. Churchill was therefore directed to
confine himself to thanks for what was past, and to say nothing
about the future.243
But James and his ministers, even while protesting that they did
not mean to be importunate, contrived to hint, very intelligibly,
what they wished and expected. In the French ambassador they had
a dexterous, a zealous, and perhaps, not a disinterested
intercessor. Lewis made some difficulties, probably with the
design of enhancing the value of his gifts. In a very few weeks,
however, Barillon received from Versailles fifteen hundred
thousand livres more. This sum, equivalent to about a hundred and
twelve thousand pounds sterling, he was instructed to dole out
cautiously. He was authorised to furnish the English government
with thirty thousand pounds, for the purpose of corrupting
members of the New House of Commons. The rest he was directed to
keep in reserve for some extraordinary emergency, such as a
dissolution or an insurrection.244
The turpitude of these transactions is universally acknowledged:
but their real nature seems to be often misunderstood: for though
the foreign policy of the last two Kings of the House of Stuart
has never, since the correspondence of Barillon was exposed to
the public eye, found an apologist among us, there is still a
party which labours to excuse their domestic policy. Yet it is
certain that between their domestic policy and their foreign
policy there was a necessary and indissoluble connection. If they
had upheld, during a single year, the honour of the country
abroad, they would have been compelled to change the whole system
of their administration at home. To praise them for refusing to
govern in conformity with the sense of Parliament, and yet to
blame them for submitting to the dictation of Lewis, is
inconsistent. For they had only one choice, to be dependent on
Lewis, or to be dependent on Parliament.
James, to do him justice, would gladly have found out a third
way: but there was none. He became the slave of France: but it
would be incorrect to represent him as a contented slave. He had
spirit enough to be at times angry with himself for submitting to
such thraldom, and impatient to break loose from it; and this
disposition was studiously encouraged by the agents of many
foreign powers.
His accession had excited hopes and fears in every continental
court: and the commencement of his administration was watched by
strangers with interest scarcely less deep than that which was
felt by his own subjects. One government alone wished that the
troubles which had, during three generations, distracted England,
might be eternal. All other governments, whether republican or
monarchical, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, wished to see
those troubles happily terminated.
The nature of the long contest between the Stuarts and their
Parliaments was indeed very imperfectly apprehended by foreign
statesmen: but no statesman could fail to perceive the effect
which that contest had produced on the balance of power in
Europe. In ordinary circumstances, the sympathies of the courts
of Vienna and Madrid would doubtless have been with a prince
struggling against subjects, and especially with a Roman Catholic
prince struggling against heretical subjects: but all such
sympathies were now overpowered by a stronger feeling. The fear
and hatred inspired by the greatness, the injustice, and the
arrogance of the French King were at the height. His neighbours
might well doubt whether it were more dangerous to be at war or
at peace with him. For in peace he continued to plunder and to
outrage them; and they had tried the chances of war against him
in vain. In this perplexity they looked with intense anxiety
towards England. Would she act on the principles of the Triple
Alliance or on the principles of the treaty of Dover? On that
issue depended the fate of all her neighbours. With her help
Lewis might yet be withstood: but no help could be expected from
her till she was at unity with herself. Before the strife between
the throne and the Parliament began, she had been a power of the
first rank: on the day on which that strife terminated she became
a power of the first rank again: but while the dispute remained
undecided, she was condemned to inaction and to vassalage. She
had been great under the Plantagenets and Tudors: she was again
great under the princes who reigned after the Revolution: but,
under the Kings of the House of Stuart, she was a blank in the
map of Europe. She had lost one class of energies, and had not
yet acquired another. That species of force, which, in the
fourteenth century had enabled her to humble France and Spain,
had ceased to exist. That species of force, which, in the
eighteenth century, humbled France and Spain once more, had not
yet been called into action. The government was no longer a
limited monarchy after the fashion of the middle ages. It had not
yet become a limited monarchy after the modern fashion. With the
vices of two different systems it had the strength of neither.
The elements of our polity, instead of combining in harmony,
counteracted and neutralised each other All was transition,
conflict, and disorder. The chief business of the sovereign was
to infringe the privileges of the legislature. The chief business
of the legislature was to encroach on the prerogatives of the
sovereign. The King readily accepted foreign aid, which relieved
him from the misery of being dependent on a mutinous Parliament.
The Parliament refused to the King the means of supporting the
national honor abroad, from an apprehension, too well founded,
that those means might be employed in order to establish
despotism at home. The effect of these jealousies was that our
country, with all her vast resources, was of as little weight in
Christendom as the duchy of Savoy or the duchy of Lorraine, and
certainly of far less weight than the small province of Holland.
France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of
things.245 All other powers were deeply interested in bringing it
to a close. The general wish of Europe was that James would
govern in conformity with law and with public opinion. From the
Escurial itself came letters, expressing an earnest hope that the
new King of England would be on good terms with his Parliament
and his people.246 From the Vatican itself came cautions against
immoderate zeal for the Roman Catholic faith. Benedict
Odescalchi, who filled the papal chair under the name of Innocent
the Eleventh, felt, in his character of temporal sovereign, all
those apprehensions with which other princes watched the progress
of the French power. He had also grounds of uneasiness which were
peculiar to himself. It was a happy circumstance for the
Protestant religion that, at the moment when the last Roman
Catholic King of England mounted the throne, the Roman Catholic
Church was torn by dissension, and threatened with a new schism.
A quarrel similar to that which had raged in the eleventh century
between the Emperors and the Supreme Pontiffs had arisen between
Lewis and Innocent. Lewis, zealous even to bigotry for the
doctrines of the Church of Rome, but tenacious of his regal
authority, accused the Pope of encroaching on the secular rights
of the French Crown, and was in turn accused by the Pope of
encroaching on the spiritual power of the keys. The King, haughty
as he was, encountered a spirit even more determined than his
own. Innocent was, in all private relations, the meekest and
gentlest of men: but when he spoke officially from the chair of
St. Peter, he spoke in the tones of Gregory the Seventh and of
Sixtus the Fifth. The dispute became serious. Agents of the King
were excommunicated. Adherents of the Pope were banished. The
King made the champions of his authority Bishops. The Pope
refused them institution. They took possession of the Episcopal
palaces and revenues: but they were incompetent to perform the
Episcopal functions. Before the struggle terminated, there were
in France thirty prelates who could not confirm or ordain.247
Had any prince then living, except Lewis, been engaged in such a
dispute with the Vatican, he would have had all Protestant
governments on his side. But the fear and resentment which the
ambition and insolence of the French King had inspired were such
that whoever had the courage manfully to oppose him was sure of
public sympathy. Even Lutherans and Calvinists, who had always
detested the Pope, could not refrain from wishing him success
against a tyrant who aimed at universal monarchy. It was thus
that, in the present century, many who regarded Pius the Seventh
as Antichrist were well pleased to see Antichrist confront the
gigantic power of Napoleon.
The resentment which Innocent felt towards France disposed him to
take a mild and liberal view of the affairs of England. The
return of the English people to the fold of which he was the
shepherd would undoubtedly have rejoiced his soul. But he was too
wise a man to believe that a nation so bold and stubborn, could
be brought back to the Church of Rome by the violent and
unconstitutional exercise of royal authority. It was not
difficult to foresee that, if James attempted to promote the
interests of his religion by illegal and unpopular means, the
attempt would fail; the hatred with which the heretical islanders
regarded the true faith would become fiercer and stronger than
ever; and an indissoluble association would be created in their
minds between Protestantism and civil freedom, between Popery and
arbitrary power. In the meantime the King would be an object of
aversion and suspicion to his people. England would still be, as
she had been under James the First, under Charles the First, and
under Charles the Second, a power of the third rank; and France
would domineer unchecked beyond the Alps and the Rhine. On the
other hand, it was probable that James, by acting with prudence
and moderation, by strictly observing the laws and by exerting
himself to win the confidence of his Parliament, might be able to
obtain, for the professors of his religion, a large measure of
relief. Penal statutes would go first. Statutes imposing civil
incapacities would soon follow. In the meantime, the English King
and the English nation united might head the European coalition,
and might oppose an insuperable barrier to the cupidity of Lewis.
Innocent was confirmed in his judgment by the principal
Englishmen who resided at his court. Of these the most
illustrious was Philip Howard, sprung from the noblest houses of
Britain, grandson, on one side, of an Earl of Arundel, on the
other, of a Duke of Lennox. Philip had long been a member of the
sacred college: he was commonly designated as the Cardinal of
England; and he was the chief counsellor of the Holy See in
matters relating to his country. He had been driven into exile by
the outcry of Protestant bigots; and a member of his family, the
unfortunate Stafford, had fallen a victim to their rage. But
neither the Cardinal's own wrongs, nor those of his house, had so
heated his mind as to make him a rash adviser. Every letter,
therefore, which went from the Vatican to Whitehall, recommended
patience, moderation, and respect for the prejudices of the
English people.248
In the mind of James there was a great conflict. We should do him
injustice if we supposed that a state of vassalage was agreeable
to his temper. He loved authority and business. He had a high
sense of his own personal dignity. Nay, he was not altogether
destitute of a sentiment which bore some affinity to patriotism.
It galled his soul to think that the kingdom which he ruled was
of far less account in the world than many states which possessed
smaller natural advantages; and he listened eagerly to foreign
ministers when they urged him to assert the dignity of his rank,
to place himself at the head of a great confederacy, to become
the protector of injured nations, and to tame the pride of that
power which held the Continent in awe. Such exhortations made his
heart swell with emotions unknown to his careless and effeminate
brother. But those emotions were soon subdued by a stronger
feeling. A vigorous foreign policy necessarily implied a
conciliatory domestic policy. It was impossible at once to
confront the might of France and to trample on the liberties of
England. The executive government could undertake nothing great
without the support of the Commons, and could obtain their
support only by acting in conformity with their opinion. Thus
James found that the two things which he most desired could not
be enjoyed together. His second wish was to be feared and
respected abroad. But his first wish was to be absolute master at
home. Between the incompatible objects on which his heart was set
he, for a time, went irresolutely to and fro. The conflict in his
own breast gave to his public acts a strange appearance of
indecision and insincerity. Those who, without the clue,
attempted to explore the maze of his politics were unable to
understand how the same man could be, in the same week, so
haughty and so mean. Even Lewis was perplexed by the vagaries of
an ally who passed, in a few hours, from homage to defiance, and
from defiance to homage. Yet, now that the whole conduct of James
is before us, this inconsistency seems to admit of a simple
explanation.
At the moment of his accession he was in doubt whether the
kingdom would peaceably submit to his authority. The
Exclusionists, lately so powerful, might rise in arms against
him. He might be in great need of French money and French troops.
He was therefore, during some days, content to be a sycophant and
a mendicant. He humbly apologised for daring to call his
Parliament together without the consent of the French government.
He begged hard for a French subsidy. He wept with joy over the
French bills of exchange. He sent to Versailles a special embassy
charged with assurances of his gratitude, attachment, and
submission. But scarcely had the embassy departed when his
feelings underwent a change. He had been everywhere proclaimed
without one riot, without one seditions outcry. From all corners
of the island he received intelligence that his subjects were
tranquil and obedient. His spirit rose. The degrading relation in
which he stood to a foreign power seemed intolerable. He became
proud, punctilious, boastful, quarrelsome. He held such high
language about the dignity of his crown and the balance of power
that his whole court fully expected a complete revolution in the
foreign politics of the realm. He commanded Churchill to send
home a minute report of the ceremonial of Versailles, in order
that the honours with which the English embassy was received
there might be repaid, and not more than repaid, to the
representative of France at Whitehall. The news of this change
was received with delight at Madrid, Vienna, and the Hague.249
Lewis was at first merely diverted. "My good ally talks big," he
said; "but he is as fond of my pistoles as ever his brother was."
Soon, however, the altered demeanour of James, and the hopes with
which that demeanour inspired both the branches of the House of
Austria, began to call for more serious notice. A remarkable
letter is still extant, in which the French King intimated a
strong suspicion that he had been duped, and that the very money
which he had sent to Westminster would be employed against
him.250
By this time England had recovered from the sadness and anxiety
caused by the death of the goodnatured Charles. The Tories were
loud in professions of attachment to their new master. The hatred
of the Whigs was kept down by fear. That great mass which is not
steadily Whig or Tory, but which inclines alternately to Whiggism
and to Toryism, was still on the Tory side. The reaction which
had followed the dissolution of the 0xford parliament had not yet
spent its force.
The King early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to the
proof. While he was a subject, he had been in the habit of
hearing mass with closed doors in a small oratory which had been
fitted up for his wife. He now ordered the doors to be thrown
open, in order that all who came to pay their duty to him might
see the ceremony. When the host was elevated there was a strange
confusion in the antechamber. The Roman Catholics fell on their
knees: the Protestants hurried out of the room. Soon a new pulpit
was erected in the palace; and, during Lent, a series of sermons
was preached there by Popish divines, to the great discomposure
of zealous churchmen.251
A more serious innovation followed. Passion week came; and the
King determined to hear mass with the same pomp with which his
predecessors had been surrounded when they repaired to the
temples of the established religion. He announced his intention
to the three members of the interior cabinet, and requested them
to attend him. Sunderland, to whom all religions were the same,
readily consented. Godolphin, as Chamberlain of the Queen, had
already been in the habit of giving her his hand when she
repaired to her oratory, and felt no scruple about bowing himself
officially in the house of Rimmon. But Rochester was greatly
disturbed. His influence in the country arose chiefly from the
opinion entertained by the clergy and by the Tory gentry, that he
was a zealous and uncompromising friend of the Church. His
orthodoxy had been considered as fully atoning for faults which
would otherwise have made him the most unpopular man in the
kingdom, for boundless arrogance, for extreme violence of temper,
and for manners almost brutal.252 He feared that, by complying
with the royal wishes, he should greatly lower himself in the
estimation of his party. After some altercation he obtained
permission to pass the holidays out of town. All the other great
civil dignitaries were ordered to be at their posts on Easter
Sunday. The rites of the Church of Rome were once more, after an
interval of a hundred and twenty-seven years, performed at
Westminster with regal splendour. The Guards were drawn out. The
Knights of the Garter wore their collars. The Duke of Somerset,
second in rank among the temporal nobles of the realm, carried
the sword of state. A long train of great lords accompanied the
King to his seat. But it was remarked that Ormond and Halifax
remained in the antechamber. A few years before they had
gallantly defended the cause of James against some of those who
now pressed past them. Ormond had borne no share in the slaughter
of Roman Catholics. Halifax had courageously pronounced Stafford
not guilty. As the timeservers who had pretended to shudder at
the thought of a Popish king, and who had shed without pity the
innocent blood of a Popish peer, now elbowed each other to get
near a Popish altar, the accomplished Trimmer might, with some
justice, indulge his solitary pride in that unpopular
nickname.253
Within a week after this ceremony James made a far greater
sacrifice of his own religious prejudices than he had yet called
on any of his Protestant subjects to make. He was crowned on the
twenty-third of April, the feast of the patron saint of the
realm. The Abbey and the Hall were splendidly decorated. The
presence of the Queen and of the peeresses gave to the solemnity
a charm which had been wanting to the magnificent inauguration of
the late King. Yet those who remembered that inauguration
pronounced that there was a great falling off. The ancient usage
was that, before a coronation, the sovereign, with all his
heralds, judges, councillors, lords, and great dignitaries,
should ride in state from the Tower of Westminster. Of these
cavalcades the last and the most glorious was that which passed
through the capital while the feelings excited by the Restoration
were still in full vigour. Arches of triumph overhung the road.
All Cornhill, Cheapside, Saint Paul's Church Yard, Fleet Street,
and the Strand, were lined with scaffolding. The whole city had
thus been admitted to gaze on royalty in the most splendid and
solemn form that royalty could wear. James ordered an estimate to
be made of the cost of such a procession, and found that it would
amount to about half as much as he proposed to expend in covering
his wife with trinkets. He accordingly determined to be profuse
where he ought to have been frugal, and niggardly where he might
pardonably have been profuse. More than a hundred thousand pounds
were laid out in dressing the Queen, and the procession from the
Tower was omitted. The folly of this course is obvious. If
pageantry be of any use in politics, it is of use as a means of
striking the imagination of the multitude. It is surely the
height of absurdity to shut out the populace from a show of which
the main object is to make an impression on the populace. James
would have shown a more judicious munificence and a more
judicious parsimony, if he had traversed London from east to west
with the accustomed pomp, and had ordered the robes of his wife
to be somewhat less thickly set with pearls and diamonds. His
example was, however, long followed by his successors; and sums,
which, well employed, would have afforded exquisite gratification
to a large part of the nation, were squandered on an exhibition
to which only three or four thousand privileged persons were
admitted. At length the old practice was partially revived. On
the day of the coronation of Queen Victoria there was a
procession in which many deficiencies might be noted, but which
was seen with interest and delight by half a million of her
subjects, and which undoubtedly gave far greater pleasure, and
called forth far greater enthusiasm, than the more costly display
which was witnessed by a select circle within the Abbey.
James had ordered Sancroft to abridge the ritual. The reason
publicly assigned was that the day was too short for all that was
to be done. But whoever examines the changes which were made will
see that the real object was to remove some things highly
offensive to the religious feelings of a zealous Roman Catholic.
The Communion Service was not read. The ceremony of presenting
the sovereign with a richly bound copy of the English Bible, and
of exhorting him to prize above all earthly treasures a volume
which he had been taught to regard as adulterated with false
doctrine, was omitted. What remained, however, after all this
curtailment, might well have raised scruples in the mind of a man
who sincerely believed the Church of England to be a heretical
society, within the pale of which salvation was not to be found.
The King made an oblation on the altar. He appeared to join in
the petitions of the Litany which was chaunted by the Bishops. He
received from those false prophets the unction typical of a
divine influence, and knelt with the semblance of devotion, while
they called down upon him that Holy Spirit of which they were, in
his estimation, the malignant and obdurate foes. Such are the
inconsistencies of human nature that this man, who, from a
fanatical zeal for his religion, threw away three kingdoms, yet
chose to commit what was little short of an act of apostasy,
rather than forego the childish pleasure of being invested with
the gewgaws symbolical of kingly power.254
Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, preached. He was one of those
writers who still affected the obsolete style of Archbishop
Williams and Bishop Andrews. The sermon was made up of quaint
conceits, such as seventy years earlier might have been admired,
but such as moved the scorn of a generation accustomed to the
purer eloquence of Sprat, of South, and of Tillotson. King
Solomon was King James. Adonijah was Monmouth. Joab was a Rye
House conspirator; Shimei, a Whig libeller; Abiathar, an honest
but misguided old Cavalier. One phrase in the Book of Chronicles
was construed to mean that the King was above the Parliament; and
another was cited to prove that he alone ought to command the
militia. Towards the close of the discourse the orator very
timidly alluded to the new and embarrassing position in which the
Church stood with reference to the sovereign, and reminded his
hearers that the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, though not himself
a Christian, had held in honour those Christians who remained
true to their religion, and had treated with scorn those who
sought to earn his favour by apostasy. The service in the Abbey
was followed by a stately banquet in the Hall, the banquet by
brilliant fireworks, and the fireworks by much bad poetry.255
This may be fixed upon as the moment at which the enthusiasm of
the Tory party reached the zenith. Ever since the accession of
the new King, addresses had been pouring in which expressed
profound veneration for his person and office, and bitter
detestation of the vanquished Whigs. The magistrates of Middlesex
thanked God for having confounded the designs of those regicides
and exclusionists who, not content with having murdered one
blessed monarch, were bent on destroying the foundations of
monarchy. The city of Gloucester execrated the bloodthirsty
villains who had tried to deprive His Majesty of his just
inheritance. The burgesses of Wigan assured their sovereign that
they would defend him against all plotting Achitophels and
rebellions Absaloms. The grand jury of Suffolk expressed a hope
that the Parliament would proscribe all the exclusionists. Many
corporations pledged themselves never to return to the House of
Commons any person who had voted for taking away the birthright
of James. Even the capital was profoundly obsequious. The lawyers
and the traders vied with each other in servility. Inns of Court
and Inns of Chancery sent up fervent professions of attachment
and submission. All the great commercial societies, the East
India Company, the African Company, the Turkey Company, the
Muscovy Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Maryland
Merchants, the Jamaica Merchants, the Merchant Adventurers,
declared that they most cheerfully complied with the royal edict
which required them still to pay custom. Bristol, the second city
of the island, echoed the voice of London. But nowhere was the
spirit of loyalty stronger than in the two Universities. Oxford
declared that she would never swerve from those religious
principles which bound her to obey the King without any
restrictions or limitations. Cambridge condemned, in severe
terms, the violence and treachery of those turbulent men who had
maliciously endeavoured to turn the stream of succession out of
the ancient channel.256
Such addresses as these filled, during a considerable time, every
number of the London Gazette. But it was not only by addressing
that the Tories showed their zeal. The writs for the new
Parliament had gone forth, and the country was agitated by the
tumult of a general election. No election had ever taken place
under circumstances so favourable to the Court. Hundreds of
thousands whom the Popish plot had scared into Whiggism had been
scared back by the Rye House plot into Toryism. In the counties
the government could depend on an overwhelming majority of the
gentlemen of three hundred a year and upwards, and on the clergy
almost to a man. Those boroughs which had once been the citadels
of Whiggism had recently been deprived of their charters by legal
sentence, or had prevented the sentence by voluntary surrender.
They had now been reconstituted in such a manner that they were
certain to return members devoted to the crown. Where the
townsmen could not be trusted, the freedom had been bestowed on
the neighbouring squires. In some of the small western
corporations, the constituent bodies were in great part composed
of Captains and Lieutenants of the Guards. The returning officers
were almost everywhere in the interest of the court. In every
shire the Lord Lieutenant and his deputies formed a powerful,
active, and vigilant committee, for the purpose of cajoling and
intimidating the freeholders. The people were solemnly warned
from thousands of pulpits not to vote for any Whig candidate, as
they should answer it to Him who had ordained the powers that be,
and who had pronounced rebellion a sin not less deadly than
witchcraft. All these advantages the predominant party not only
used to the utmost, but abused in so shameless a manner that
grave and reflecting men, who had been true to the monarchy in
peril, and who bore no love to republicans and schismatics, stood
aghast, and augured from such beginnings the approach of evil
times.257
Yet the Whigs, though suffering the just punishment of their
errors, though defeated, disheartened, and disorganized, did not
yield without an effort. They were still numerous among the
traders and artisans of the towns, and among the yeomanry and
peasantry of the open country. In some districts, in Dorsetshire
for example, and in Somersetshire, they were the great majority
of the population. In the remodelled boroughs they could do
nothing: but, in every county where they had a chance, they
struggled desperately. In Bedfordshire, which had lately been
represented by the virtuous and unfortunate Russell, they were
victorious on the show of hands, but were beaten at the poll.258
In Essex they polled thirteen hundred votes to eighteen
hundred.259 At the election for Northamptonshire the common
people were so violent in their hostility to the court candidate
that a body of troops was drawn out in the marketplace of the
county town, and was ordered to load with ball.260 The history of
the contest for Buckinghamshire is still more remarkable. The
whig candidate, Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip Lord
Wharton, was a man distinguished alike by dexterity and by
audacity, and destined to play a conspicuous, though not always a
respectable, part in the politics of several reigns. He had been
one of those members of the House of Commons who had carried up
the Exclusion Bill to the bar of the Lords. The court was
therefore bent on throwing him out by fair or foul means. The
Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys himself came down into
Buckinghamshire, for the purpose of assisting a gentleman named
Hacket, who stood on the high Tory interest. A stratagem was
devised which, it was thought, could not fail of success. It was
given out that the polling would take place at Ailesbury; and
Wharton, whose skill in all the arts of electioneering was
unrivalled, made his arrangements on that supposition. At a
moment's warning the Sheriff adjourned the poll to Newport
Pagnell. Wharton and his friends hurried thither, and found that
Hacket, who was in the secret, had already secured every inn and
lodging. The Whig freeholders were compelled to tie their horses
to the hedges, and to sleep under the open sky in the meadows
which surround the little town. It was with the greatest
difficulty that refreshments could be procured at such short
notice for so large a number of men and beasts, though Wharton,
who was utterly regardless of money when his ambition and party
spirit were roused, disbursed fifteen hundred pounds in one day,
an immense outlay for those times. Injustice seems, however, to
have animated the courage of the stouthearted yeomen of Bucks,
the sons of the constituents of John Hampden. Not only was
Wharton at the head of the poll; but he was able to spare his
second votes to a man of moderate opinions, and to throw out the
Chief Justice's candidate.261
In Cheshire the contest lasted six days. The Whigs polled about
seventeen hundred votes, the Tories about two thousand. The
common people were vehement on the Whig side, raised the cry of
"Down with the Bishops," insulted the clergy in the streets of
Chester, knocked down one gentleman of the Tory party, broke the
windows and beat the constables. The militia was called out to
quell the riot, and was kept assembled, in order to protect the
festivities of the conquerors. When the poll closed, a salute of
five great guns from the castle proclaimed the triumph of the
Church and the Crown to the surrounding country. The bells rang.
The newly elected members went in state to the City Cross,
accompanied by a band of music, and by a long train of knights
and squires. The procession, as it marched, sang "Joy to Great
Caesar," a loyal ode, which had lately been written by Durfey,
and which, though like all Durfey's writings, utterly
contemptible, was, at that time, almost as popular as
Lillibullero became a few years later.262 Round the Cross the
trainbands were drawn up in order: a bonfire was lighted: the
Exclusion Bill was burned: and the health of King James was drunk
with loud acclamations. The following day was Sunday. In the
morning the militia lined the streets leading to the Cathedral.
The two knights of the shire were escorted with great pomp to
their choir by the magistracy of the city, heard the Dean preach
a sermon, probably on the duty of passive obedience, and were
afterwards feasted by the Mayor.263
In Northumberland the triumph of Sir John Fenwick, a courtier
whose name afterwards obtained a melancholy celebrity, was
attended by circumstances which excited interest in London, and
which were thought not unworthy of being mentioned in the
despatches of foreign ministers. Newcastle was lighted up with
great piles of coal. The steeples sent forth a joyous peal. A
copy of the Exclusion Bill, and a black box, resembling that
which, according to the popular fable, contained the contract
between Charles the Second and Lucy Walters, were publicly
committed to the flames, with loud acclamations.264
The general result of the elections exceeded the most sanguine
expectations of the court. James found with delight that it would
be unnecessary for him to expend a farthing in buying votes. He
Said that, with the exception of about forty members, the House
of Commons was just such as he should himself have named.265 And
this House of Commons it was in his power, as the law then stood,
to keep to the end of his reign.
Secure of parliamentary support, be might now indulge in the
luxury of revenge. His nature was not placable; and, while still
a subject, he had suffered some injuries and indignities which
might move even a placable nature to fierce and lasting
resentment. One set of men in particular had, with a baseness and
cruelty beyond all example and all description, attacked his
honour and his life, the witnesses of the plot. He may well be
excused for hating them; since, even at this day, the mention of
their names excites the disgust and horror of all sects and
parties.
Some of these wretches were already beyond the reach of human
justice. Bedloe had died in his wickedness, without one sign of
remorse or shame.266 Dugdale had followed, driven mad, men said,
by the Furies of an evil conscience, and with loud shrieks
imploring those who stood round his bed to take away Lord
Stafford.267 Carstairs, too, was gone. His end had been all
horror and despair; and, with his last breath, he had told his
attendants to throw him into a ditch like a dog, for that he was
not fit to sleep in a Christian burial ground.268 But Oates and
Dangerfield were still within the reach of the stern prince whom
they had wronged. James, a short time before his accession, had
instituted a civil suit against Oates for defamatory words; and a
jury had given damages to the enormous amount of a hundred
thousand pounds.269 The defendant had been taken in execution,
and was lying in prison as a debtor, without hope of release. Two
bills of indictment against him for perjury had been found by the
grand jury of Middlesex, a few weeks before the death of Charles.
Soon after the close of the elections the trial came on.
Among the upper and middle classes Oates had few friends left.
The most respectable Whigs were now convinced that, even if his
narrative had some foundation in fact, he had erected on that
foundation a vast superstructure of romance. A considerable
number of low fanatics, however, still regarded him as a public
benefactor. These people well knew that, if he were convicted,
his sentence would be one of extreme severity, and were therefore
indefatigable in their endeavours to manage an escape. Though he
was as yet in confinement only for debt, he was put into irons by
the authorities of the King's Bench prison; and even so he was
with difficulty kept in safe custody. The mastiff that guarded
his door was poisoned; and, on the very night preceding the
trial, a ladder of ropes was introduced into the cell.
On the day in which Titus was brought to the bar, Westminster
Hall was crowded with spectators, among whom were many Roman
Catholics, eager to see the misery and humiliation of their
persecutor.270 A few years earlier his short neck, his legs
uneven, the vulgar said, as those of a badger, his forehead low
as that of a baboon, his purple cheeks, and his monstrous length
of chin, had been familiar to all who frequented the courts of
law. He had then been the idol of the nation. Wherever he had
appeared, men had uncovered their heads to him. The lives and
estates of the magnates of the realm had been at his mercy. Times
had now changed; and many, who had formerly regarded him as the
deliverer of his country, shuddered at the sight of those hideous
features on which villany seemed to be written by the hand of
God.271
It was proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that this man had
by false testimony deliberately murdered several guiltless
persons. He called in vain on the most eminent members of the
Parliaments which had rewarded and extolled him to give evidence
in his favour. Some of those whom he had summoned absented
themselves. None of them said anything tending to his
vindication. One of them, the Earl of Huntingdon, bitterly
reproached him with having deceived the Houses and drawn on them
the guilt of shedding innocent blood. The Judges browbeat and
reviled the prisoner with an intemperance which, even in the most
atrocious cases, ill becomes the judicial character. He betrayed,
however, no sign of fear or of shame, and faced the storm of
invective which burst upon him from bar, bench, and witness box,
with the insolence of despair. He was convicted on both
indictments. His offence, though, in a moral light, murder of the
most aggravated kind, was, in the eye of the law, merely a
misdemeanour. The tribunal, however, was desirous to make his
punishment more severe than that of felons or traitors, and not
merely to put him to death, but to put him to death by frightful
torments. He was sentenced to be stripped of his clerical habit,
to be pilloried in Palace Yard, to be led round Westminster Hall
with an inscription declaring his infamy over his head, to be
pilloried again in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped
from Aldgate to Newgate, and, after an interval of two days, to
be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. If, against all probability,
he should happen to survive this horrible infliction, he was to
be kept close prisoner during life. Five times every year he was
to be brought forth from his dungeon and exposed on the pillory
in different parts of the capital.272 This rigorous sentence was
rigorously executed. On the day on which Oates was pilloried in
Palace Yard he was mercilessly pelted and ran some risk of being
pulled in pieces.273 But in the City his partisans mustered in
great force, raised a riot, and upset the pillory.274 They were,
however, unable to rescue their favourite. It was supposed that
he would try to escape the horrible doom which awaited him by
swallowing poison. All that he ate and drank was therefore
carefully inspected. On the following morning he was brought
forth to undergo his first flogging. At an early hour an
innumerable multitude filled all the streets from Aldgate to the
Old Bailey. The hangman laid on the lash with such unusual
severity as showed that he had received special instructions. The
blood ran down in rivulets. For a time the criminal showed a
strange constancy: but at last his stubborn fortitude gave way.
His bellowings were frightful to hear. He swooned several times;
but the scourge still continued to descend. When he was unbound,
it seemed that he had borne as much as the human frame can bear
without dissolution. James was entreated to remit the second
flogging. His answer was short and clear: "He shall go through
with it, if he has breath in his body." An attempt was made to
obtain the Queen's intercession; but she indignantly refused to
say a word in favour of such a wretch. After an interval of only
forty-eight hours, Oates was again brought out of his dungeon. He
was unable to stand, and it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn
on a sledge. He seemed quite insensible; and the Tories reported
that he had stupified himself with strong drink. A person who
counted the stripes on the second day said that they were
seventeen hundred. The bad man escaped with life, but so narrowly
that his ignorant and bigoted admirers thought his recovery
miraculous, and appealed to it as a proof of his innocence. The
doors of the prison closed upon him. During many months he
remained ironed in the darkest hole of Newgate. It was said that
in his cell he gave himself up to melancholy, and sate whole days
uttering deep groans, his arms folded, and his hat pulled over
his eyes. It was not in England alone that these events excited
strong interest. Millions of Roman Catholics, who knew nothing of
our institutions or of our factions. had heard that a persecution
of singular barbarity had raged in our island against the
professors of the true faith, that many pious men had suffered
martyrdom, and that Titus Oates had been the chief murderer.
There was, therefore, great joy in distant countries when it was
known that the divine justice had overtaken him. Engravings of
him, looking out from the pillory, and writhing at the cart's
tail, were circulated all over Europe; and epigrammatists, in
many languages, made merry with the doctoral title which he
pretended to have received from the University of Salamanca, and
remarked that, since his forehead could not be made to blush, it
was but reasonable that his back should do so.275
Horrible as were the sufferings of Oates, they did not equal his
crimes. The old law of England, which had been suffered to become
obsolete, treated the false witness, who had caused death by
means of perjury, as a murderer.276 This was wise and righteous;
for such a witness is, in truth, the worst of murderers. To the
guilt of shedding innocent blood he has added the guilt of
violating the most solemn engagement into which man can enter
with his fellow men, and of making institutions, to which it is
desirable that the public should look with respect and
confidence, instruments of frightful wrong and objects of general
distrust. The pain produced by ordinary murder bears no
proportion to the pain produced by murder of which the courts of
justice are made the agents. The mere extinction of life is a
very small part of what makes an execution horrible. The
prolonged mental agony of the sufferer, the shame and misery of
all connected with him, the stain abiding even to the third and
fourth generation, are things far more dreadful than death
itself. In general it may be safely affirmed that the father of a
large family would rather be bereaved of all his children by
accident or by disease than lose one of them by the hands of the
hangman. Murder by false testimony is therefore the most
aggravated species of murder; and Oates had been guilty of many
such murders. Nevertheless the punishment which was inflicted
upon him cannot be justified. In sentencing him to be stripped of
his ecclesiastical habit and imprisoned for life, the judges
exceeded their legal power. They were undoubtedly competent to
inflict whipping; nor had the law assigned a limit to the number
of stripes. But the spirit of the law clearly was that no
misdemeanour should be punished more severely than the most
atrocious felonies. The worst felon could only be hanged. The
judges, as they believed, sentenced Oates to be scourged to
death. That the law was defective is not a sufficient excuse: for
defective laws should be altered by the legislature, and not
strained by the tribunals; and least of all should the law be
strained for the purpose of inflicting torture and destroying
life. That Oates was a bad man is not a sufficient excuse; for
the guilty are almost always the first to suffer those hardships
which are afterwards used as precedents against the innocent.
Thus it was in the present case. Merciless flogging soon became
an ordinary punishment for political misdemeanours of no very
aggravated kind. Men were sentenced, for words spoken against the
government, to pains so excruciating that they, with unfeigned
earnestness, begged to be brought to trial on capital charges,
and sent to the gallows. Happily the progress of this great evil
was speedily stopped by the Revolution, and by that article of
the Bill of Rights which condemns all cruel and unusual
punishments.
The villany of Dangerfield had not, like that of Oates, destroyed
many innocent victims; for Dangerfield had not taken up the trade
of a witness till the plot had been blown upon and till juries
had become incredulous.277 He was brought to trial, not for
perjury, but for the less heinous offense of libel. He had,
during the agitation caused by the Exclusion Bill, put forth a
narrative containing some false and odious imputations on the
late and on the present King. For this publication he was now,
after the lapse of five years, suddenly taken up, brought before
the Privy Council, committed, tried, convicted, and sentenced to
be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and from Newgate to Tyburn.
The wretched man behaved with great effrontery during the trial;
but, when he heard his doom, he went into agonies of despair,
gave himself up for dead, and chose a text for his funeral
sermon. His forebodings were just. He was not, indeed, scourged
quite so severely as Oates had been; but he had not Oates's iron
strength of body and mind. After the execution Dangerfield was
put into a hackney coach and was taken back to prison. As he
passed the corner of Hatton Garden, a Tory gentleman of Gray's
Inn, named Francis, stopped the carriage, and cried out with
brutal levity, "Well, friend, have you had your heat this
morning?" The bleeding prisoner, maddened by this insult,
answered with a curse. Francis instantly struck him in the face
with a cane which injured the eye. Dangerfield was carried dying
into Newgate. This dastardly outrage roused the indignation of
the bystanders. They seized Francis, and were with difficulty
restrained from tearing him to pieces. The appearance of
Dangerfield's body, which had been frightfully lacerated by the
whip, inclined many to believe that his death was chiefly, if not
wholly, caused by the stripes which he had received. The
government and the Chief Justice thought it convenient to lay the
whole blame on Francis, who; though he seems to have been at
worst guilty only of aggravated manslaughter, was tried and
executed for murder. His dying speech is one of the most curious
monuments of that age. The savage spirit which had brought him to
the gallows remained with him to the last. Boasts of his loyalty
and abuse of the Whigs were mingled with the parting ejaculations
in which he commended his soul to the divine mercy. An idle
rumour had been circulated that his wife was in love with
Dangerfield, who was eminently handsome and renowned for
gallantry. The fatal blow, it was said, had been prompted by
jealousy. The dying husband, with an earnestness, half
ridiculous, half pathetic, vindicated the lady's character. She
was, he said, a virtuous woman: she came of a loyal stock, and,
if she had been inclined to break her marriage vow, would at
least have selected a Tory and a churchman for her paramour.278
About the same time a culprit, who bore very little resemblance
to Oates or Dangerfield, appeared on the floor of the Court of
King's Bench. No eminent chief of a party has ever passed through
many years of civil and religious dissension with more innocence
than Richard Baxter. He belonged to the mildest and most
temperate section of the Puritan body. He was a young man when
the civil war broke out. He thought that the right was on the
side of the Houses; and he had no scruple about acting as
chaplain to a regiment in the parliamentary army: but his clear
and somewhat sceptical understanding, and his strong sense of
justice, preserved him from all excesses. He exerted himself to
check the fanatical violence of the soldiery. He condemned the
proceedings of the High Court of Justice. In the days of the
Commonwealth he had the boldness to express, on many occasions,
and once even in Cromwell's presence, love and reverence for the
ancient institutions of the country. While the royal family was
in exile, Baxter's life was chiefly passed at Kidderminster in
the assiduous discharge of parochial duties. He heartily
concurred in the Restoration, and was sincerely desirous to bring
about an union between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. For, with
a liberty rare in his time, he considered questions of
ecclesiastical polity as of small account when compared with the
great principles of Christianity, and had never, even when
prelacy was most odious to the ruling powers, joined in the
outcry against Bishops. The attempt to reconcile the contending
factions failed. Baxter cast in his lot with his proscribed
friends, refused the mitre of Hereford, quitted the parsonage of
Kidderminster, and gave himself up almost wholly to study. His
theological writings, though too moderate to be pleasing to the
bigots of any party, had an immense reputation. Zealous Churchmen
called him a Roundhead; and many Nonconformists accused him of
Erastianism and Arminianism. But the integrity of his heart, the
purity of his life, the vigour of his faculties, and the extent
of his attainments were acknowledged by the best and wisest men
of every persuasion. His political opinions, in spite of the
oppression which he and his brethren had suffered, were moderate.
He was friendly to that small party which was hated by both Whigs
and Tories. He could not, he said, join in cursing the Trimmers,
when he remembered who it was that had blessed the
peacemakers.279
In a Commentary on the New Testament he had complained, with some
bitterness, of the persecution which the Dissenters suffered.
That men who, for not using the Prayer Book, had been driven from
their homes, stripped of their property, and locked up in
dungeons, should dare to utter a murmur, was then thought a high
crime against the State and the Church. Roger Lestrange, the
champion of the government and the oracle of the clergy, sounded
the note of war in the Observator. An information was filed.
Baxter begged that he might be allowed some time to prepare for
his defence. It was on the day on which Oates was pilloried in
Palace Yard that the illustrious chief of the Puritans, oppressed
by age and infirmities, came to Westminster Hall to make this
request. Jeffreys burst into a storm of rage. "Not a minute," he
cried, "to save his life. I can deal with saints as well as with
sinners. There stands Oates on one side of the pillory; and, if
Baxter stood on the other, the two greatest rogues in the kingdom
would stand together."
When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved
and honoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood Doctor
William Bates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist
divines. Two Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop,
appeared for the defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his
address to the jury, when the Chief Justice broke forth:
"Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a mark on you. You are
the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue, a schismatical
knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy. He would
have nothing but longwinded cant without book;" and then his
Lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing
through his nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's
style of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people,
thy dear people." Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his
late Majesty had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And
what ailed the old blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did
not take it?" His fury now rose almost to madness. He called
Baxter a dog, and swore that it would be no more than justice to
whip such a villain through the whole City.
Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader. "You are
in all these dirty causes, Mr. Wallop," said the Judge.
"Gentlemen of the long robe ought to be ashamed to assist such
factious knaves." The advocate made another attempt to obtain a
hearing, but to no purpose. "If you do not know your duty," said
Jeffreys, "I will teach it you."
Wallop sate down; and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word.
But the Chief Justice drowned all expostulation in a torrent of
ribaldry and invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. "My
Lord," said the old man, "I have been much blamed by Dissenters
for speaking respectfully of Bishops." "Baxter for Bishops!"
cried the Judge, "that's a merry conceit indeed. I know what you
mean by Bishops, rascals like yourself, Kidderminster Bishops,
factious snivelling Presbyterians!" Again Baxter essayed to
speak, and again Jeffreys bellowed "Richard, Richard, dost thou
think we will let thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old
knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every
book as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By the grace
of God, I'll look after thee. I see a great many of your
brotherhood waiting to know what will befall their mighty Don.
And there," he continued, fixing his savage eye on Bates, "there
is a Doctor of the party at your elbow. But, by the grace of God
Almighty, I will crush you all."
Baxter held his peace. But one of the junior counsel for the
defence made a last effort, and undertook to show that the words
of which complaint was made would not bear the construction put
on them by the information. With this view he began to read the
context. In a moment he was roared down. "You sha'n't turn the
court into a conventicle." The noise of weeping was heard from
some of those who surrounded Baxter. "Snivelling calves!" said
the Judge.
Witnesses to character were in attendance, and among them were
several clergymen of the Established Church. But the Chief
Justice would hear nothing. "Does your Lordship think," said
Baxter, "that any jury will convict a man on such a trial as
this?" "I warrant you, Mr. Baxter," said Jeffreys: "don't trouble
yourself about that." Jeffreys was right. The Sheriffs were the
tools of the government. The jurymen, selected by the Sheriffs
from among the fiercest zealots of the Tory party, conferred for
a moment, and returned a verdict of Guilty. "My Lord," said
Baxter, as he left the court, "there was once a Chief Justice who
would have treated me very differently." He alluded to his
learned and virtuous friend Sir Matthew Hale. "There is not an
honest man in England," answered Jeffreys, "but looks on thee as
a knave."280
The sentence was, for those times. a lenient one. What passed in
conference among the judges cannot be certainly known. It was
believed among the Nonconformists, and is highly probable, that
the Chief Justice was overruled by his three brethren. He
proposed, it is said, that Baxter should be whipped through
London at the cart's tail. The majority thought that an eminent
divine, who, a quarter of a century before, had been offered a
mitre, and who was now in his seventieth year, would be
sufficiently punished for a few sharp words by fine and
imprisonment.281
The manner in which Baxter was treated by a judge, who was a
member of the cabinet and a favourite of the Sovereign,
indicated, in a manner not to be mistaken, the feeling with which
the government at this time regarded the Protestant
Nonconformists. But already that feeling had been indicated by
still stronger and more terrible signs. The Parliament of
Scotland had met. James had purposely hastened the session of
this body, and had postponed the session of the English Houses,
in the hope that the example set at Edinburgh would produce a
good effect at Westminster. For the legislature of his northern
kingdom was as obsequious as those provincial Estates which Lewis
the Fourteenth still suffered to play at some of their ancient
functions in Britanny and Burgundy. None but an Episcopalian
could sit in the Scottish Parliament, or could even vote for a
member, and in Scotland an Episcopalian was always a Tory or a
timeserver. From an assembly thus constituted, little opposition
to the royal wishes was to he apprehended; and even the assembly
thus constituted could pass no law which had not been previously
approved by a committee of courtiers.
All that the government asked was readily granted. In a financial
point of view, indeed, the liberality of the Scottish Estates was
of little consequence. They gave, however, what their scanty
means permitted. They annexed in perpetuity to the crown the
duties which had been granted to the late King, and which in his
time had been estimated at forty thousand pounds sterling a year.
They also settled on James for life an additional annual income
of two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds Scots, equivalent to
eighteen thousand pounds sterling. The whole Sum which they were
able to bestow was about sixty thousand a year, little more than
what was poured into the English Exchequer every fortnight.282
Having little money to give, the Estates supplied the defect by
loyal professions and barbarous statutes. The King, in a letter
which was read to them at the opening of their session, called on
them in vehement language to provide new penal laws against the
refractory Presbyterians, and expressed his regret that business
made it impossible for him to propose such laws in person from
the throne. His commands were obeyed. A statute framed by his
ministers was promptly passed, a statute which stands forth even
among the statutes of that unhappy country at that unhappy
period, preeminent in atrocity. It was enacted, in few but
emphatic words, that whoever should preach in a conventicle under
a roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as hearer, a
conventicle in the open air, should be punished with death and
confiscation of property.283
This law, passed at the King's instance by an assembly devoted to
his will, deserves especial notice. For he has been frequently
represented by ignorant writers as a prince rash, indeed, and
injudicious in his choice of means, but intent on one of the
noblest ends which a ruler can pursue, the establishment of
entire religious liberty. Nor can it be denied that some portions
of his life, when detached from the rest and superficially
considered, seem to warrant this favourable view of his
character.
While a subject he had been, during many years, a persecuted man;
and persecution had produced its usual effect on him. His mind,
dull and narrow as it was, had profited under that sharp
discipline. While he was excluded from the Court, from the
Admiralty, and from the Council, and was in danger of being also
excluded from the throne, only because he could not help
believing in transubstantiation and in the authority of the see
of Rome, he made such rapid progress in the doctrines of
toleration that he left Milton and Locke behind. What, he often
said, could be more unjust, than to visit speculations with
penalties which ought to be reserved for acts? What more
impolitic than to reject the services of good soldiers, seamen,
lawyers, diplomatists, financiers, because they hold unsound
opinions about the number of the sacraments or the pluripresence
of saints? He learned by rote those commonplaces which all sects
repeat so fluently when they are enduring oppression, and forget
so easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsed
his lesson so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this
subject gave him credit for much more sense and much readier
elocution than he really possessed. His professions imposed on
some charitable persons, and perhaps imposed on himself. But his
zeal for the rights of conscience ended with the predominance of
the Whig party. When fortune changed, when he was no longer
afraid that others would persecute him, when he had it in his
power to persecute others, his real propensities began to show
themselves. He hated the Puritan sects with a manifold hatred,
theological and political, hereditary and personal. He regarded
them as the foes of Heaven, as the foes of all legitimate
authority in Church and State, as his great-grandmother's foes
and his grandfather's, his father's and his mother's, his
brother's and his own. He, who had complained so fondly of the
laws against Papists, now declared himself unable to conceive how
men could have the impudence to propose the repeal of the laws
against Puritans.284 He, whose favourite theme had been the
injustice of requiring civil functionaries to take religious
tests, established in Scotland, when he resided there as Viceroy,
the most rigorous religious test that has ever been known in the
empire.285 He, who had expressed just indignation when the
priests of his own faith were hanged and quartered, amused
himself with hearing Covenanters shriek and seeing them writhe
while their knees were beaten flat in the boots.286 In this mood
he became King; and he immediately demanded and obtained from the
obsequious Estates of Scotland as the surest pledge of their
loyalty, the most sanguinary law that has ever in our island been
enacted against Protestant Nonconformists.
With this law the whole spirit of his administration was in
perfect harmony. The fiery persecution, which had raged when he
ruled Scotland as vicegerent, waxed hotter than ever from the day
on which he became sovereign. Those shires in which the
Covenanters were most numerous were given up to the license of
the army. With the army was mingled a militia, composed of the
most violent and profligate of those who called themselves
Episcopalians. Preeminent among the bands which oppressed and
wasted these unhappy districts were the dragoons commanded by
John Graham of Claverhouse. The story ran that these wicked men
used in their revels to play at the torments of hell, and to call
each other by the names of devils and damned souls.287 The chief
of this Tophet, a soldier of distinguished courage and
professional skill, but rapacious and profane, of violent temper
and of obdurate heart, has left a name which, wherever the
Scottish race is settled on the face of the globe, is mentioned
with a peculiar energy of hatred. To recapitulate all the crimes,
by which this man, and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the
Western Lowlands into madness, would be an endless task. A few
instances must suffice; and all those instances shall be taken
from the history of a single fortnight, that very fortnight in
which the Scottish Parliament, at the urgent request of James,
enacted a new law of unprecedented severity against Dissenters.
John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular
piety, commonly called the Christian carrier. Many years later,
when Scotland enjoyed rest, prosperity, and religious freedom,
old men who remembered the evil days described him as one versed
in divine things, blameless in life, and so peaceable that the
tyrants could find no offence in him except that he absented
himself from the public worship of the Episcopalians. On the
first of May he was cutting turf, when he was seized by
Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined, convicted of
nonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that, even
among the soldiers, it was not easy to find an executioner. For
the wife of the poor man was present; she led one little child by
the hand: it was easy to see that she was about to give birth to
another; and even those wild and hardhearted men, who nicknamed
one another Beelzebub and Apollyon, shrank from the great
wickedness of butchering her husband before her face. The
prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by the near prospect of
eternity, prayed loud and fervently as one inspired, till
Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by
credible witnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well,
sir, well; the day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer
replied, "To man I can answer for what I have done; and as for
God, I will take him into mine own hand." Yet it was rumoured
that even on his seared conscience and adamantine heart the dying
ejaculations of his victim made an impression which was never
effaced.288
On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce,
were tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting of
fifteen soldiers. The indictment is still extant. The prisoners
were charged, not with any act of rebellion, but with holding the
same pernicious doctrines which had impelled others to rebel, and
with wanting only opportunity to act upon those doctrines. The
proceeding was summary. In a few hours the two culprits were
convicted, hanged, and flung together into a hole under the
gallows.289
The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one great
crime. Some rigid Calvinists had from the doctrine of reprobation
drawn the consequence that to pray for any person who had been
predestined to perdition was an act of mutiny against the eternal
decrees of the Supreme Being. Three poor labouring men, deeply
imbued with this unamiable divinity, were stopped by an officer
in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. They were asked whether they
would pray for King James the Seventh. They refused to do so
except under the condition that he was one of the elect. A file
of musketeers was drawn out. The prisoners knelt down; they were
blindfolded; and within an hour after they had been arrested,
their blood was lapped up by the dogs.290
While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible was
perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenanters,
overcome by sickness, had found shelter in the house of a
respectable widow, and had died there. The corpse was discovered
by the Laird of Westerhall, a petty tyrant who had, in the days
of the Covenant, professed inordinate zeal for the Presbyterian
Church, who had, since the Restoration, purchased the favour of
the government by apostasy, and who felt towards the party which
he had deserted the implacable hatred of an apostate. This man
pulled down the house of the poor woman, carried away her
furniture, and, leaving her and her younger children to wander in
the fields, dragged her son Andrew, who was still a lad, before
Claverhouse, who happened to be marching through that part of the
country. Claverhouse was just then strangely lenient. Some
thought that he had not been quite himself since the death of the
Christian carrier, ten days before. But Westerhall was eager to
signalise his loyalty, and extorted a sullen consent. The guns
were loaded, and the youth was told to pull his bonnet over his
face. He refused, and stood confronting his murderers with the
Bible in his hand. "I can look you in the face," he said; "I have
done nothing of which I need be ashamed. But how will you look in
that day when you shall be judged by what is written in this
book?" He fell dead, and was buried in the moor.291
On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlin and Margaret
Wilson, the former an aged widow, the latter a maiden of
eighteen, suffered death for their religion in Wigtonshire. They
were offered their lives if they would consent to abjure the
cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and to attend the Episcopal
worship. They refused; and they were sentenced to be drowned.
They were carried to a spot which the Solway overflows twice a
day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the sand between high
and low water mark. The elder sufferer was placed near to the
advancing flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify
the younger into submission. The sight was dreadful. But the
courage of the survivor was sustained by an enthusiasm as lofty
as any that is recorded in martyrology. She saw the sea draw
nearer and nearer, but gave no sign of alarm. She prayed and sang
verses of psalms till the waves choked her voice. After she had
tasted the bitterness of death, she was, by a cruel mercy unbound
and restored to life. When she came to herself, pitying friends
and neighbours implored her to yield. "Dear Margaret, only say,
God save the King!" The poor girl, true to her stern theology,
gasped out, "May God save him, if it be God's will!" Her friends
crowded round the presiding officer. "She has said it; indeed,
sir, she has said it." "Will she take the abjuration?" he
demanded. "Never!" she exclaimed. "I am Christ's: let me go!" And
the waters closed over her for the last time.292
Thus was Scotland governed by that prince whom ignorant men have
represented as a friend of religious liberty, whose misfortune it
was to be too wise and too good for the age in which he lived.
Nay, even those laws which authorised him to govern thus were in
his judgment reprehensibly lenient. While his officers were
committing the murders which have just been related, he was
urging the Scottish Parliament to pass a new Act compared with
which all former Acts might be called merciful.
In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by
ancient and noble laws which even the Tories would not patiently
have seen him infringe. Here he could not hurry Dissenters before
military tribunals, or enjoy at Council the luxury of seeing them
swoon in the boots. Here he could not drown young girls for
refusing to take the abjuration, or shoot poor countrymen for
doubting whether he was one of the elect. Yet even in England he
continued to persecute the Puritans as far as his power extended,
till events which will hereafter be related induced him to form
the design of uniting Puritans and Papists in a coalition for the
humiliation and spoliation of the established Church.
One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this early
period of his reign, regarded with some tenderness, the Society
of Friends. His partiality for that singular fraternity cannot be
attributed to religious sympathy; for, of all who acknowledge the
divine mission of Jesus, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker differ
most widely. It may seem paradoxical to say that this very
circumstance constituted a tie between the Roman Catholic and the
Quaker; yet such was really the case. For they deviated in
opposite directions so far from what the great body of the nation
regarded as right, that even liberal men generally considered
them both as lying beyond the pale of the largest toleration.
Thus the two extreme sects, precisely because they were extreme
sects, had a common interest distinct from the interest of the
intermediate sects. The Quakers were also guiltless of all
offence against James and his House. They had not been in
existence as a community till the war between his father and the
Long Parliament was drawing towards a close. They had been
cruelly persecuted by some of the revolutionary governments. They
had, since the Restoration, in spite of much ill usage, submitted
themselves meekly to the royal authority. For they had, though
reasoning on premises which the Anglican divines regarded as
heterodox, arrived, like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion,
that no excess of tyranny on the part of a prince can justify
active resistance on the part of a subject. No libel on the
government had ever been traced to a Quaker.293 In no conspiracy
against the government had a Quaker been implicated. The society
had not joined in the clamour for the Exclusion Bill, and had
solemnly condemned the Rye House plot as a hellish design and a
work of the devil.294 Indeed, the friends then took very little
part in civil contentions; for they were not, as now, congregated
in large towns, but were generally engaged in agriculture, a
pursuit from which they have been gradually driven by the
vexations consequent on their strange scruple about paying tithe.
They were, therefore, far removed from the scene of political
strife. They also, even in domestic privacy, avoided on principle
all political conversation. For such conversation was, in their
opinion, unfavourable to their spirituality of mind, and tended
to disturb the austere composure of their deportment. The yearly
meetings of that age repeatedly admonished the brethren not to
hold discourse touching affairs of state.295 Even within the
memory of persons now living those grave elders who retained the
habits of an earlier generation systematically discouraged such
worldly talk.296 It was natural that James should make a wide
distinction between these harmless people and those fierce and
reckless sects which considered resistance to tyranny as a
Christian duty which had, in Germany, France, and Holland, made
war on legitimate princes, and which had, during four
generations, borne peculiar enmity to the House of Stuart.
It happened, moreover, that it was possible to grant large relief
to the Roman Catholic and to the Quaker without mitigating the
sufferings of the Puritan sects. A law was in force which imposed
severe penalties on every person who refused to take the oath of
supremacy when required to do so. This law did not affect
Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists; for they were all ready
to call God to witness that they renounced all spiritual
connection with foreign prelates and potentates. But the Roman
Catholic would not swear that the Pope had no jurisdiction in
England, and the Quaker would not swear to anything. On the other
hand, neither the Roman Catholic nor the Quaker was touched by
the Five Mile Act, which, of all the laws in the Statute Book,
was perhaps the most annoying to the Puritan Nonconformists.297
The Quakers had a powerful and zealous advocate at court. Though,
as a class, they mixed little with the world, and shunned
politics as a pursuit dangerous to their spiritual interests, one
of them, widely distinguished from the rest by station and
fortune, lived in the highest circles, and had constant access to
the royal ear. This was the celebrated William Penn. His father
had held great naval commands, had been a Commissioner of the
Admiralty, had sate in Parliament, had received the honour of
knighthood, and had been encouraged to expect a peerage. The son
had been liberally educated, and had been designed for the
profession of arms, but had, while still young, injured his
prospects and disgusted his friends by joining what was then
generally considered as a gang of crazy heretics. He had been
sent sometimes to the Tower, and sometimes to Newgate. He had
been tried at the Old Bailey for preaching in defiance of the
law. After a time, however, he had been reconciled to his family,
and had succeeded in obtaining such powerful protection that,
while all the gaols of England were filled with his brethren, he
was permitted, during many years, to profess his opinions without
molestation. Towards the close of the late reign he had obtained,
in satisfaction of an old debt due to him from the crown, the
grant of an immense region in North America. In this tract, then
peopled only by Indian hunters, he had invited his persecuted
friends to settle. His colony was still in its infancy when James
mounted the throne.
Between James and Penn there had long been a familiar
acquaintance. The Quaker now became a courtier, and almost a
favourite. He was every day summoned from the gallery into the
closet, and sometimes had long audiences while peers were kept
waiting in the antechambers. It was noised abroad that he had
more real power to help and hurt than many nobles who filled high
offices. He was soon surrounded by flatterers and suppliants. His
house at Kensington was sometimes thronged, at his hour of
rising, by more than two hundred suitors.298 He paid dear,
however, for this seeming prosperity. Even his own sect looked
coldly on him, and requited his services with obloquy. He was
loudly accused of being a Papist, nay, a Jesuit. Some affirmed
that he had been educated at St. Omers, and others that he had
been ordained at Rome. These calumnies, indeed, could find credit
only with the undiscerning multitude; but with these calumnies
were mingled accusations much better founded.
To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task which requires
some courage; for he is rather a mythical than a historical
person. Rival nations and hostile sects have agreed in canonising
him. England is proud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond
the Atlantic regards him with a reverence similar to that which
the Athenians felt for Theseus, and the Romans for Quirinus. The
respectable society of which he was a member honours him as an
apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he is generally
regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Meanwhile
admirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The
French philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they
regarded as his superstitious fancies in consideration of his
contempt for priests, and of his cosmopolitan benevolence,
impartially extended to all races and to all creeds. His name has
thus become, throughout all civilised countries, a synonyme for
probity and philanthropy.
Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was
without doubt a man of eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of
religious duty and a fervent desire to promote the happiness of
mankind. On one or two points of high importance, he had notions
more correct than were, in his day, common even among men of
enlarged minds: and as the proprietor and legislator of a
province which, being almost uninhabited when it came into his
possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments, he had
the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories into
practice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to
existing institutions. He will always be mentioned with honour as
a founder of a colony, who did not, in his dealings with a savage
people, abuse the strength derived from civilisation, and as a
lawgiver who, in an age of persecution, made religious liberty
the cornerstone of a polity. But his writings and his life
furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man of strong sense. He
had no skill in reading the characters of others. His confidence
in persons less virtuous than himself led him into great errors
and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great principle sometimes
impelled him to violate other great principles which he ought to
have held sacred. Nor was his rectitude altogether proof against
the temptations to which it was exposed in that splendid and
polite, but deeply corrupted society, with which he now mingled.
The whole court was in a ferment with intrigues of gallantry and
intrigues of ambition. The traffic in honours, places, and
pardons was incessant. It was natural that a man who was daily
seen at the palace, and who was known to have free access to
majesty, should be frequently importuned to use his influence for
purposes which a rigid morality must condemn. The integrity of
Penn had stood firm against obloquy and persecution. But now,
attacked by royal smiles, by female blandishments, by the
insinuating eloquence and delicate flattery of veteran
diplomatists and courtiers, his resolution began to give way.
Titles and phrases against which he had often borne his testimony
dropped occasionally from his lips and his pen. It would be well
if he had been guilty of nothing worse than such compliances with
the fashions of the world. Unhappily it cannot be concealed that
he bore a chief part in some transactions condemned, not merely
by the rigid code of the society to which he belonged, but by the
general sense of all honest men. He afterwards solemnly protested
that his hands were pure from illicit gain, and that he had never
received any gratuity from those whom he had obliged, though he
might easily, while his influence at court lasted, have made a
hundred and twenty thousand pounds.299 To this assertion full
credit is due. But bribes may be offered to vanity as well as to
cupidity; and it is impossible to deny that Penn was cajoled into
bearing a part in some unjustifiable transactions of which others
enjoyed the profits.
The first use which he made of his credit was highly commendable.
He strongly represented the sufferings of his brethren to the new
King, who saw with pleasure that it was possible to grant
indulgence to these quiet sectaries and to the Roman Catholics,
without showing similar favour to other classes which were then
under persecution. A list was framed of prisoners against whom
proceedings had been instituted for not taking the oaths, or for
not going to church, and of whose loyalty certificates had been
produced to the government. These persons were discharged, and
orders were given that no similar proceeding should be instituted
till the royal pleasure should be further signified. In this way
about fifteen hundred Quakers, and a still greater number of
Roman Catholics, regained their liberty.300
And now the time had arrived when the English Parliament was to
meet. The members of the House of Commons who had repaired to the
capital were so numerous that there was much doubt whether their
chamber, as it was then fitted up, would afford sufficient
accommodation for them. They employed the days which immediately
preceded the opening of the session in talking over public
affairs with each other and with the agents of the government. A
great meeting of the loyal party was held at the Fountain Tavern
in the Strand; and Roger Lestrange, who had recently been
knighted by the King, and returned to Parliament by the city of
Winchester, took a leading part in their consultations.301
It soon appeared that a large portion of the Commons had views
which did not altogether agree with those of the Court. The Tory
country gentlemen were, with scarcely one exception, desirous to
maintain the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus Act; and some among
them talked of voting the revenue only for a term of years. But
they were perfectly ready to enact severe laws against the Whigs,
and would gladly have seen all the supporters of the Exclusion
Bill made incapable of holding office. The King, on the other
hand, desired to obtain from the Parliament a revenue for life,
the admission of Roman Catholics to office, and the repeal of the
Habeas Corpus Act. On these three objects his heart was set; and
he was by no means disposed to accept as a substitute for them a
penal law against Exclusionists. Such a law, indeed, would have
been positively unpleasing to him; for one class of Exclusionists
stood high in his favour, that class of which Sunderland was the
representative, that class which had joined the Whigs in the days
of the plot, merely because the Whigs were predominant, and which
had changed with the change of fortune. James justly regarded
these renegades as the most serviceable tools that he could
employ. It was not from the stouthearted Cavaliers, who had been
true to him in his adversity, that he could expect abject and
unscrupulous obedience in his prosperity. The men who, impelled,
not by zeal for liberty or for religion, but merely by selfish
cupidity and selfish fear, had assisted to oppress him when he
was weak, were the very men who, impelled by the same cupidity
and the same fear, would assist him to oppress his people now
that he was strong.302 Though vindictive, he was not
indiscriminately vindictive. Not a single instance can be
mentioned in which he showed a generous compassion to those who
had opposed him honestly and on public grounds. But he frequently
spared and promoted those whom some vile motive had induced to
injure him. For that meanness which marked them out as fit
implements of tyranny was so precious in his estimation that he
regarded it with some indulgence even when it was exhibited at
his own expense.
The King's wishes were communicated through several channels to
the Tory members of the Lower House. The majority was easily
persuaded to forego all thoughts of a penal law against the
Exclusionists, and to consent that His Majesty should have the
revenue for life. But about the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus
Act the emissaries of the Court could obtain no satisfactory
assurances.303
On the nineteenth of May the session was opened. The benches of
the Commons presented a singular spectacle. That great party,
which, in the last three Parliaments, had been predominant, had
now dwindled to a pitiable minority, and was indeed little more
than a fifteenth part of the House. Of the five hundred and
thirteen knights and burgesses only a hundred and thirty-five had
ever sate in that place before. It is evident that a body of men
so raw and inexperienced must have been, in some important
qualities, far below the average of our representative
assemblies.304
The management of the House was confided by James to two peers of
the kingdom of Scotland. One of them, Charles Middleton, Earl of
Middleton, after holding high office at Edinburgh, had, shortly
before the death of the late King, been sworn of the English
Privy Council, and appointed one of the Secretaries of State.
With him was joined Richard Graham, Viscount Preston, who had
long held the post of Envoy at Versailles.
The first business of the Commons was to elect a Speaker. Who
should be the man, was a question which had been much debated in
the cabinet. Guildford had recommended Sir Thomas Meres, who,
like himself, ranked among the Trimmers. Jeffreys, who missed no
opportunity of crossing the Lord Keeper, had pressed the claims
of Sir John Trevor. Trevor had been bred half a pettifogger and
half a gambler, had brought to political life sentiments and
principles worthy of both his callings, had become a parasite of
the Chief Justice, and could, on occasion, imitate, not
unsuccessfully, the vituperative style of his patron. The minion
of Jeffreys was, as might have been expected, preferred by James,
was proposed by Middleton, and was chosen without opposition.305
Thus far all went smoothly. But an adversary of no common prowess
was watching his time. This was Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy
Castle, member for the city of Exeter. Seymour's birth put him on
a level with the noblest subjects in Europe. He was the right
heir male of the body of that Duke of Somerset who had been
brother-in-law of King Henry the Eighth, and Protector of the
realm of England. In the limitation of the dukedom of Somerset,
the elder Son of the Protector had been postponed to the younger
son. From the younger son the Dukes of Somerset were descended.
From the elder son was descended the family which dwelt at Berry
Pomeroy. Seymour's fortune was large, and his influence in the
West of England extensive. Nor was the importance derived from
descent and wealth the only importance which belonged to him. He
was one of the most skilful debaters and men of business in the
kingdom. He had sate many years in the House of Commons, had
studied all its rules and usages, and thoroughly understood its
peculiar temper. He had been elected speaker in the late reign
under circumstances which made that distinction peculiarly
honourable. During several generations none but lawyers had been
called to the chair; and he was the first country gentleman whose
abilities and acquirements had enabled him to break that long
prescription. He had subsequently held high political office, and
had sate in the Cabinet. But his haughty and unaccommodating
temper had given so much disgust that he had been forced to
retire. He was a Tory and a Churchman: he had strenuously opposed
the Exclusion Bill: he had been persecuted by the Whigs in the
day of their prosperity; and he could therefore safely venture to
hold language for which any person suspected of republicanism
would have been sent to the Tower. He had long been at the head
of a strong parliamentary connection, which was called the
Western Alliance, and which included many gentlemen of
Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Cornwall.306
In every House of Commons, a member who unites eloquence,
knowledge, and habits of business, to opulence and illustrious
descent, must be highly considered. But in a House of Commons
from which many of the most eminent orators and parliamentary
tacticians of the age were excluded, and which was crowded with
people who had never heard a debate, the influence of such a man
was peculiarly formidable. Weight of moral character was indeed
wanting to Edward Seymour. He was licentious, profane, corrupt,
too proud to behave with common politeness, yet not too proud to
pocket illicit gain. But he was so useful an ally, and so
mischievous an enemy that he was frequently courted even by those
who most detested him.307
He was now in bad humour with the government. His interest had
been weakened in some places by the remodelling of the western
boroughs: his pride had been wounded by the elevation of Trevor
to the chair; and he took an early opportunity of revenging
himself.
On the twenty-second of May the Commons were summoned to the bar
of the Lords; and the King, seated on his throne, made a speech
to both Houses. He declared himself resolved to maintain the
established government in Church and State. But he weakened the
effect of this declaration by addressing an extraordinary
admonition to the Commons. He was apprehensive, he said, that
they might be inclined to dole out money to him from time to
time, in the hope that they should thus force him to call them
frequently together. But he must warn them that he was not to be
so dealt with, and that, if they wished him to meet them often
they must use him well. As it was evident that without money the
government could not be carried on, these expressions plainly
implied that, if they did not give him as much money as he
wished, he would take it. Strange to say, this harangue was
received with loud cheers by the Tory gentlemen at the bar. Such
acclamations were then usual. It has now been, during many years,
the grave and decorous usage of Parliaments to hear, in
respectful silence, all expressions, acceptable or unacceptable,
which are uttered from the throne.308
It was then the custom that, after the King had concisely
explained his reasons for calling Parliament together, the
minister who held the Great Seal should, at more length, explain
to the Houses the state of public affairs. Guildford, in
imitation of his predecessors, Clarendon, Bridgeman, Shaftesbury,
and Nottingham, had prepared an elaborate oration, but found, to
his great mortification, that his services were not wanted.309
As soon as the Commons had returned to their own chamber, it was
proposed that they should resolve themselves into a Committee,
for the purpose of settling a revenue on the King.
Then Seymour stood up. How he stood, looking like what he was,
the chief of a dissolute and high spirited gentry, with the
artificial ringlets clustering in fashionable profusion round his
shoulders, and a mingled expression of voluptuousness and disdain
in his eye and on his lip, the likenesses of him which still
remain enable us to imagine. It was not, the haughty Cavalier
said, his wish that the Parliament should withhold from the crown
the means of carrying on the government. But was there indeed a
Parliament? Were there not on the benches many men who had, as
all the world knew, no right to sit there, many men whose
elections were tainted by corruption, many men forced by
intimidation on reluctant voters, and many men returned by
corporations which had no legal existence? Had not constituent
bodies been remodelled, in defiance of royal charters and of
immemorial prescription? Had not returning officers been
everywhere the unscrupulous agents of the Court? Seeing that the
very principle of representation had been thus systematically
attacked, he knew not how to call the throng of gentlemen which
he saw around him by the honourable name of a House of Commons.
Yet never was there a time when it more concerned the public weal
that the character of Parliament should stand high. Great dangers
impended over the ecclesiastical and civil constitution of the
realm. It was matter of vulgar notoriety, it was matter which
required no proof, that the Test Act, the rampart of religion,
and the Habeas Corpus Act, the rampart of liberty, were marked
out for destruction. "Before we proceed to legislate on questions
so momentous, let us at least ascertain whether we really are a
legislature. Let our first proceeding be to enquire into the
manner in which the elections have been conducted. And let us
look to it that the enquiry be impartial. For, if the nation
shall find that no redress is to be obtained by peaceful methods,
we may perhaps ere long suffer the justice which we refuse to
do." He concluded by moving that, before any supply was granted,
the House would take into consideration petitions against
returns, and that no member whose right to sit was disputed
should be allowed to vote.
Not a cheer was heard. Not a member ventured to second the
motion. Indeed, Seymour had said much that no other man could
have said with impunity. The proposition fell to the ground, and
was not even entered on the journals. But a mighty effect had
been produced. Barillon informed his master that many who had not
dared to applaud that remarkable speech had cordially approved of
it, that it was the universal subject of conversation throughout
London, and that the impression made on the public mind seemed
likely to be durable.310
The Commons went into committee without delay, and voted to the
King, for life, the whole revenue enjoyed by his brother.311
The zealous churchmen who formed the majority of the House seem
to have been of opinion that the promptitude with which they had
met the wish of James, touching the revenue, entitled them to
expect some concession on his part. They said that much had been
done to gratify him, and that they must now do something to
gratify the nation. The House, therefore, resolved itself into a
Grand Committee of Religion, in order to consider the best means
of providing for the security of the ecclesiastical
establishment. In that Committee two resolutions were unanimously
adopted. The first expressed fervent attachment to the Church of
England. The second called on the King to put in execution the
penal laws against all persons who were not members of that
Church.312
The Whigs would doubtless have wished to see the Protestant
dissenters tolerated, and the Roman Catholics alone persecuted.
But the Whigs were a small and a disheartened minority. They
therefore kept themselves as much as possible out of sight,
dropped their party name, abstained from obtruding their peculiar
opinions on a hostile audience, and steadily supported every
proposition tending to disturb the harmony which as yet subsisted
between the Parliament and the Court.
When the proceedings of the Committee of Religion were known at
Whitehall, the King's anger was great. Nor can we justly blame
him for resenting the conduct of the Tories If they were disposed
to require the rigorous execution of the penal code, they clearly
ought to have supported the Exclusion Bill. For to place a Papist
on the throne, and then to insist on his persecuting to the death
the teachers of that faith in which alone, on his principles,
salvation could be found, was monstrous. In mitigating by a
lenient administration the severity of the bloody laws of
Elizabeth, the King violated no constitutional principle. He only
exerted a power which has always belonged to the crown. Nay, he
only did what was afterwards done by a succession of sovereigns
zealous for Protestantism, by William, by Anne, and by the
princes of the House of Brunswick. Had he suffered Roman Catholic
priests, whose lives he could save without infringing any law, to
be hanged, drawn, and quartered for discharging what he
considered as their first duty, he would have drawn on himself
the hatred and contempt even of those to whose prejudices he had
made so shameful a concession, and, had he contented himself with
granting to the members of his own Church a practical toleration
by a large exercise of his unquestioned prerogative of mercy,
posterity would have unanimously applauded him.
The Commons probably felt on reflection that they had acted
absurdly. They were also disturbed by learning that the King, to
whom they looked up with superstitious reverence, was greatly
provoked. They made haste, therefore, to atone for their offence.
In the House, they unanimously reversed the decision which, in
the Committee, they had unanimously adopted. and passed a
resolution importing that they relied with entire confidence on
His Majesty's gracious promise to protect that religion which was
dearer to them than life itself.313
Three days later the King informed the House that his brother had
left some debts, and that the stores of the navy and ordnance
were nearly exhausted. It was promptly resolved that new taxes
should be imposed. The person on whom devolved the task of
devising ways and means was Sir Dudley North, younger brother of
the Lord Keeper. Dudley North was one of the ablest men of his
time. He had early in life been sent to the Levant, and had there
been long engaged in mercantile pursuits. Most men would, in such
a situation, have allowed their faculties to rust. For at Smyrna
and Constantinople there were few books and few intelligent
companions. But the young factor had one of those vigorous
understandings which are independent of external aids. In his
solitude he meditated deeply on the philosophy of trade, and
thought out by degrees a complete and admirable theory,
substantially the same with that which, a century later, was
expounded by Adam Smith. After an exile of many years, Dudley
North returned to England with a large fortune, and commenced
business as a Turkey merchant in the City of London. His profound
knowledge, both speculative and practical, of commercial matters,
and the perspicuity and liveliness with which he explained his
views, speedily introduced him to the notice of statesmen. The
government found in him at once an enlightened adviser and an
unscrupulous slave. For with his rare mental endowments were
joined lax principles and an unfeeling heart. When the Tory
reaction was in full progress, he had consented to be made
Sheriff for the express purpose of assisting the vengeance of the
court. His juries had never failed to find verdicts of Guilty;
and, on a day of judicial butchery, carts, loaded with the legs
and arms of quartered Whigs, were, to the great discomposure of
his lady, driven to his fine house in Basinghall Street for
orders. His services had been rewarded with the honour of
knighthood, with an Alderman's gown, and with the office of
Commissioner of the Customs. He had been brought into Parliament
for Banbury, and though a new member, was the person on whom the
Lord Treasurer chiefly relied for the conduct of financial
business in the Lower House.314
Though the Commons were unanimous in their resolution to grant a
further supply to the crown, they were by no means agreed as to
the sources from which that supply should be drawn. It was
speedily determined that part of the sum which was required
should be raised by laying an additional impost, for a term of
eight years, on wine and vinegar: but something more than this
was needed. Several absurd schemes were suggested. Many country
gentlemen were disposed to put a heavy tax on all new buildings
in the capital. Such a tax, it was hoped, would check the growth
of a city which had long been regarded with jealousy and aversion
by the rural aristocracy. Dudley North's plan was that additional
duties should be imposed, for a term of eight years, on sugar and
tobacco. A great clamour was raised Colonial merchants, grocers,
sugar bakers and tobacconists, petitioned the House and besieged
the public offices. The people of Bristol, who were deeply
interested in the trade with Virginia and Jamaica, sent up a
deputation which was heard at the bar of the Commons. Rochester
was for a moment staggered; but North's ready wit and perfect
knowledge of trade prevailed, both in the Treasury and in the
Parliament, against all opposition. The old members were amazed
at seeing a man who had not been a fortnight in the House, and
whose life had been chiefly passed in foreign countries, assume
with confidence, and discharge with ability, all the functions of
a Chancellor of the Exchequer.315
His plan was adopted; and thus the Crown was in possession of a
clear income of about nineteen hundred thousand pounds, derived
from England alone. Such an income was then more than sufficient
for the support of the government in time of peace.316
The Lords had, in the meantime, discussed several important
questions. The Tory party had always been strong among the peers.
It included the whole bench of Bishops, and had been reinforced
during the four years which had elapsed since the last
dissolution, by several fresh creations. Of the new nobles, the
most conspicuous were the Lord Treasurer Rochester, the Lord
Keeper Guildford. the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, the Lord
Godolphin, and the Lord Churchill, who, after his return from
Versailles, had been made a Baron of England.
The peers early took into consideration the case of four members
of their body who had been impeached in the late reign, but had
never been brought to trial, and had, after a long confinement,
been admitted to bail by the Court of King's Bench. Three of the
noblemen who were thus under recognisances were Roman Catholics.
The fourth was a Protestant of great note and influence, the Earl
of Danby. Since he had fallen from power and had been accused of
treason by the Commons, four Parliaments had been dissolved; but
he had been neither acquitted nor condemned. In 1679 the Lords
had considered, with reference to his situation, the question
whether an impeachment was or was not terminated by a
dissolution. They had resolved, after long debate and full
examination of precedents, that the impeachment was still
pending. That resolution they now rescinded. A few Whig nobles
protested against this step, but to little purpose. The Commons
silently acquiesced in the decision of the Upper House. Danby
again took his seat among his peers, and became an active and
powerful member of the Tory party.317
The constitutional question on which the Lords thus, in the short
space of six years, pronounced two diametrically opposite
decisions, slept during more than a century, and was at length
revived by the dissolution which took place during the long trial
of Warren Hastings. It was then necessary to determine whether
the rule laid down in 1679, or the opposite rule laid down in
1685, was to be accounted the law of the land. The point was long
debated in both houses; and the best legal and parliamentary
abilities which an age preeminently fertile both in legal and in
parliamentary ability could supply were employed in the
discussion. The lawyers were not unequally divided. Thurlow,
Kenyon, Scott, and Erskine maintained that the dissolution had
put an end to the impeachment. The contrary doctrine was held by
Mansfield, Camden, Loughborough, and Grant. But among those
statesmen who grounded their arguments, not on precedents and
technical analogies, but on deep and broad constitutional
principles, there was little difference of opinion. Pitt and
Grenville, as well as Burke and Fox, held that the impeachment
was still pending Both Houses by great majorities set aside the
decision of 1685, and pronounced the decision of 1679 to be in
conformity with the law of Parliament.
Of the national crimes which had been committed during the panic
excited by the fictions of Oates, the most signal had been the
judicial murder of Stafford. The sentence of that unhappy
nobleman was now regarded by all impartial persons as unjust. The
principal witness for the prosecution had been convicted of a
series of foul perjuries. It was the duty of the legislature, in
such circumstances, to do justice to the memory of a guiltless
sufferer, and to efface an unmerited stain from a name long
illustrious in our annals. A bill for reversing the attainder of
Stafford was passed by the Upper House, in spite of the murmurs
of a few peers who were unwilling to admit that they had shed
innocent blood. The Commons read the bill twice without a
division, and ordered it to be committed. But, on the day
appointed for the committee, arrived news that a formidable
rebellion had broken out in the West of England. It was
consequently necessary to postpone much important business. The
amends due to the memory of Stafford were deferred, as was
supposed, only for a short time. But the misgovernment of James
in a few months completely turned the tide of public feeling.
During several generations the Roman Catholics were in no
condition to demand reparation for injustice, and accounted
themselves happy if they were permitted to live unmolested in
obscurity and silence. At length, in the reign of King George the
Fourth, more than a hundred and forty years after the day on
which the blood of Stafford was shed on Tower Hill, the tardy
expiation was accomplished. A law annulling the attainder and
restoring the injured family to its ancient dignities was
presented to Parliament by the ministers of the crown, was
eagerly welcomed by public men of all parties, and was passed
without one dissentient voice.318
It is now necessary that I should trace the origin and progress
of that rebellion by which the deliberations of the Houses were
suddenly interrupted.
CHAPTER V.
TOWARDS the close of the reign of Charles the Second, some Whigs
who had been deeply implicated in the plot so fatal to their
party, and who knew themselves to be marked out for destruction,
had sought an asylum in the Low Countries.
These refugees were in general men of fiery temper and weak
judgment. They were also under the influence of that peculiar
illusion which seems to belong to their situation. A politician
driven into banishment by a hostile faction generally sees the
society which he has quitted through a false medium. Every object
is distorted and discoloured by his regrets, his longings, and
his resentments. Every little discontent appears to him to
portend a revolution. Every riot is a rebellion. He cannot be
convinced that his country does not pine for him as much as he
pines for his country. He imagines that all his old associates,
who still dwell at their homes and enjoy their estates, are
tormented by the same feelings which make life a burden to
himself. The longer his expatriation, the greater does this
hallucination become. The lapse of time, which cools the ardour
of the friends whom he has left behind, inflames his. Every month
his impatience to revisit his native land increases; and every
month his native land remembers and misses him less. This
delusion becomes almost a madness when many exiles who suffer in
the same cause herd together in a foreign country. Their chief
employment is to talk of what they once were, and of what they
may yet be, to goad each other into animosity against the common
enemy, to feed each other with extravagant hopes of victory and
revenge. Thus they become ripe for enterprises which would at
once be pronounced hopeless by any man whose passions had not
deprived him of the power of calculating chances.
In this mood were many of the outlaws who had assembled on the
Continent. The correspondence which they kept up with England
was, for the most part, such as tended to excite their feelings
and to mislead their judgment. Their information concerning the
temper of the public mind was chiefly derived from the worst
members of the Whig party, from men who were plotters and
libellers by profession, who were pursued by the officers of
justice, who were forced to skulk in disguise through back
streets, and who sometimes lay hid for weeks together in
cocklofts and cellars. The statesmen who had formerly been the
ornaments of the Country Party, the statesmen who afterwards
guided the councils of the Convention, would have given advice
very different from that which was given by such men as John
Wildman and Henry Danvers.
Wildman had served forty years before in the parliamentary army,
but had been more distinguished there as an agitator than as a
soldier, and had early quitted the profession of arms for
pursuits better suited to his temper. His hatred of monarchy had
induced him to engage in a long series of conspiracies, first
against the Protector, and then against the Stuarts. But with
Wildman's fanaticism was joined a tender care for his own safety.
He had a wonderful skill in grazing the edge of treason. No man
understood better how to instigate others to desperate
enterprises by words which, when repeated to a jury, might seem
innocent, or, at worst, ambiguous. Such was his cunning that,
though always plotting, though always known to be plotting, and
though long malignantly watched by a vindictive government, he
eluded every danger, and died in his bed, after having seen two
generations of his accomplices die on the gallows.319 Danvers was
a man of the same class, hotheaded, but fainthearted, constantly
urged to the brink of danger by enthusiasm, and constantly
stopped on that brink by cowardice. He had considerable influence
among a portion of the Baptists, had written largely in defence
of their peculiar opinions, and had drawn down on himself the
severe censure of the most respectable Puritans by attempting to
palliate the crimes of Matthias and John of Leyden. It is
probable that, had he possessed a little courage, he would have
trodden in the footsteps of the wretches whom he defended. He
was, at this time, concealing himself from the officers of
justice; for warrants were out against him on account of a
grossly calumnious paper of which the government had discovered
him to be the author.320
It is easy to imagine what kind of intelligence and counsel men,
such as have been described, were likely to send to the outlaws
in the Netherlands. Of the general character of those outlaws an
estimate may be formed from a few samples.
One of the most conspicuous among them was John Ayloffe, a lawyer
connected by affinity with the Hydes, and through the Hydes, with
James. Ayloffe had early made himself remarkable by offering a
whimsical insult to the government. At a time when the ascendancy
of the court of Versailles had excited general uneasiness, he had
contrived to put a wooden shoe, the established type, among the
English, of French tyranny, into the chair of the House of
Commons. He had subsequently been concerned in the Whig plot; but
there is no reason to believe that he was a party to the design
of assassinating the royal brothers. He was a man of parts and
courage; but his moral character did not stand high. The Puritan
divines whispered that he was a careless Gallio or something
worse, and that, whatever zeal he might profess for civil
liberty, the Saints would do well to avoid all connection with
him.321
Nathaniel Wade was, like Ayloffe, a lawyer. He had long resided
at Bristol, and had been celebrated in his own neighbourhood as a
vehement republican. At one time he had formed a project of
emigrating to New Jersey, where he expected to find institutions
better suited to his taste than those of England. His activity in
electioneering had introduced him to the notice of some Whig
nobles. They had employed him professionally, and had, at length,
admitted him to their most secret counsels. He had been deeply
concerned in the scheme of insurrection, and had undertaken to
head a rising in his own city. He had also been privy to the more
odious plot against the lives of Charles and James. But he always
declared that, though privy to it, he had abhorred it, and had
attempted to dissuade his associates from carrying their design
into effect. For a man bred to civil pursuits, Wade seems to have
had, in an unusual degree, that sort of ability and that sort of
nerve which make a good soldier. Unhappily his principles and his
courage proved to be not of sufficient force to support him when
the fight was over, and when in a prison, he had to choose
between death and infamy.322
Another fugitive was Richard Goodenough, who had formerly been
Under Sheriff of London. On this man his party had long relied
for services of no honourable kind, and especially for the
selection of jurymen not likely to be troubled with scruples in
political cases. He had been deeply concerned in those dark and
atrocious parts of the Whig plot which had been carefully
concealed from the most respectable Whigs. Nor is it possible to
plead, in extenuation of his guilt, that he was misled by
inordinate zeal for the public good. For it will be seen that
after having disgraced a noble cause by his crimes, he betrayed
it in order to escape from his well merited punishment.323
Very different was the character of Richard Rumbold. He had held
a commission in Cromwell's own regiment, had guarded the scaffold
before the Banqueting House on the day of the great execution,
had fought at Dunbar and Worcester, and had always shown in the
highest degree the qualities which distinguished the invincible
army in which he served, courage of the truest temper, fiery
enthusiasm, both political and religious, and with that
enthusiasm, all the power of selfgovernment which is
characteristic of men trained in well disciplined camps to
command and to obey. When the Republican troops were disbanded,
Rumbold became a maltster, and carried on his trade near
Hoddesdon, in that building from which the Rye House plot derives
its name. It had been suggested, though not absolutely
determined, in the conferences of the most violent and
unscrupulous of the malecontents, that armed men should be
stationed in the Rye House to attack the Guards who were to
escort Charles and James from Newmarket to London. In these
conferences Rumbold had borne a part from which he would have
shrunk with horror, if his clear understanding had not been
overclouded, and his manly heart corrupted, by party spirit.324
A more important exile was Ford Grey, Lord Grey of Wark. He had
been a zealous Exclusionist, had concurred in the design of
insurrection, and had been committed to the Tower, but had
succeeded in making his keepers drunk, and in effecting his
escape to the Continent. His parliamentary abilities were great,
and his manners pleasing: but his life had been sullied by a
great domestic crime. His wife was a daughter of the noble house
of Berkeley. Her sister, the Lady Henrietta Berkeley, was allowed
to associate and correspond with him as with a brother by blood.
A fatal attachment sprang up. The high spirit and strong passions
of Lady Henrietta broke through all restraints of virtue and
decorum. A scandalous elopement disclosed to the whole kingdom
the shame of two illustrious families. Grey and some of the
agents who had served him in his amour were brought to trial on a
charge of conspiracy. A scene unparalleled in our legal history
was exhibited in the Court of King's Bench. The seducer appeared
with dauntless front, accompanied by his paramour. Nor did the
great Whig lords flinch from their friend's side even in that
extremity. Those whom he had wronged stood over against him, and
were moved to transports of rage by the sight of him. The old
Earl of Berkeley poured forth reproaches and curses on the
wretched Henrietta. The Countess gave evidence broken by many
sobs, and at length fell down in a swoon. The jury found a
verdict of Guilty. When the court rose Lord Berkeley called on
all his friends to help him to seize his daughter. The partisans
of Grey rallied round her. Swords were drawn on both sides; a
skirmish took place in Westminster Hall; and it was with
difficulty that the Judges and tipstaves parted the combatants.
In our time such a trial would be fatal to the character of a
public man; but in that age the standard of morality among the
great was so low, and party spirit was so violent, that Grey
still continued to have considerable influence, though the
Puritans, who formed a strong section of the Whig party, looked
somewhat coldly on him.325
One part of the character, or rather, it may be, of the fortune,
of Grey deserves notice. It was admitted that everywhere, except
on the field of battle, he showed a high degree of courage. More
than once, in embarrassing circumstances, when his life and
liberty were at stake, the dignity of his deportment and his
perfect command of all his faculties extorted praise from those
who neither loved nor esteemed him. But as a soldier he incurred,
less perhaps by his fault than by mischance, the degrading
imputation of personal cowardice.
In this respect he differed widely from his friend the Duke of
Monmouth. Ardent and intrepid on the field of battle, Monmouth
was everywhere else effeminate and irresolute. The accident of
his birth, his personal courage, and his superficial graces, had
placed him in a post for which he was altogether unfitted. After
witnessing the ruin of the party of which he had been the nominal
head, he had retired to Holland. The Prince and Princess of
Orange had now ceased to regard him as a rival. They received him
most hospitably; for they hoped that, by treating, him with
kindness, they should establish a claim to the gratitude of his
father. They knew that paternal affection was not yet wearied
out, that letters and supplies of money still came secretly from
Whitehall to Monmouth's retreat, and that Charles frowned on
those who sought to pay their court to him by speaking ill of his
banished son. The Duke had been encouraged to expect that, in a
very short time, if he gave no new cause of displeasure, he would
be recalled to his native land, and restored to all his high
honours and commands. Animated by such expectations he had been
the life of the Hague during the late winter. He had been the
most conspicuous figure at a succession of balls in that splendid
Orange Hall, which blazes on every side with the most
ostentatious colouring of Jordæns and Hondthorst.326 He had
taught the English country dance to the Dutch ladies, and had in
his turn learned from them to skate on the canals. The Princess
had accompanied him in his expeditions on the ice; and the figure
which she made there, poised on one leg, and clad in petticoats
shorter than are generally worn by ladies so strictly decorous,
had caused some wonder and mirth to the foreign ministers. The
sullen gravity which had been characteristic of the Stadtholder's
court seemed to have vanished before the influence of the
fascinating Englishman. Even the stern and pensive William
relaxed into good humour when his brilliant guest appeared.327
Monmouth meanwhile carefully avoided all that could give offence
in the quarter to which he looked for protection. He saw little
of any Whigs, and nothing of those violent men who had been
concerned in the worst part of the Whig plot. He was therefore
loudly accused, by his old associates, of fickleness and
ingratitude.328
By none of the exiles was this accusation urged with more
vehemence and bitterness than by Robert Ferguson, the Judas of
Dryden's great satire. Ferguson was by birth a Scot; but England
had long been his residence. At the time of the Restoration,
indeed, he had held a living in Kent. He had been bred a
Presbyterian; but the Presbyterians had cast him out, and he had
become an Independent. He had been master of an academy which the
Dissenters had set up at Islington as a rival to Westminster
School and the Charter House; and he had preached to large
congregations at a meeting house in Moorfields. He had also
published some theological treatises which may still be found in
the dusty recesses of a few old libraries; but, though texts of
Scripture were always on his lips, those who had pecuniary
transactions with him soon found him to be a mere swindler.
At length he turned his attention almost entirely from theology
to the worst part of politics. He belonged to the class whose
office it is to render in troubled times to exasperated parties
those services from which honest men shrink in disgust and
prudent men in fear, the class of fanatical knaves. Violent,
malignant, regardless of truth, insensible to shame, insatiable
of notoriety, delighting in intrigue, in tumult, in mischief for
its own sake, he toiled during many years in the darkest mines of
faction. He lived among libellers and false witnesses. He was the
keeper of a secret purse from which agents too vile to be
acknowledged received hire, and the director of a secret press
whence pamphlets, bearing no name, were daily issued. He boasted
that he had contrived to scatter lampoons about the terrace of
Windsor, and even to lay them under the royal pillow. In this way
of life he was put to many shifts, was forced to assume many
names, and at one time had four different lodgings in different
corners of London. He was deeply engaged in the Rye House plot.
There is, indeed, reason to believe that he was the original
author of those sanguinary schemes which brought so much
discredit on the whole Whig party. When the conspiracy was
detected and his associates were in dismay, he bade them farewell
with a laugh, and told them that they were novices, that he had
been used to flight, concealment and disguise, and that he should
never leave off plotting while he lived. He escaped to the
Continent. But it seemed that even on the Continent he was not
secure. The English envoys at foreign courts were directed to be
on the watch for him. The French government offered a reward of
five hundred pistoles to any who would seize him. Nor was it easy
for him to escape notice; for his broad Scotch accent, his tall
and lean figure, his lantern jaws, the gleam of his sharp eyes
which were always overhung by his wig, his cheeks inflamed by an
eruption, his shoulders deformed by a stoop, and his gait
distinguished from that of other men by a peculiar shuffle, made
him remarkable wherever he appeared. But, though he was, as it
seemed, pursued with peculiar animosity, it was whispered that
this animosity was feigned, and that the officers of justice had
secret orders not to see him. That he was really a bitter
malecontent can scarcely be doubted. But there is strong reason
to believe that he provided for his own safety by pretending at
Whitehall to be a spy on the Whigs, and by furnishing the
government with just so much information as sufficed to keep up
his credit. This hypothesis furnishes a simple explanation of
what seemed to his associates to be his unnatural recklessness
and audacity. Being himself out of danger, he always gave his
vote for the most violent and perilous course, and sneered very
complacently at the pusillanimity of men who, not having taken
the infamous precautions on which he relied, were disposed to
think twice before they placed life, and objects dearer than
life, on a single hazard 329
As soon as he was in the Low Countries he began to form new
projects against the English government, and found among his
fellow emigrants men ready to listen to his evil counsels.
Monmouth, however, stood obstinately aloof; and, without the help
of Monmouth's immense popularity, it was impossible to effect
anything. Yet such was the impatience and rashness of the exiles
that they tried to find another leader. They sent an embassy to
that solitary retreat on the shores of Lake Leman where Edmund
Ludlow, once conspicuous among the chiefs of the parliamentary
army and among the members of the High Court of Justice, had,
during many years, hidden himself from the vengeance of the
restored Stuarts. The stern old regicide, however, refused to
quit his hermitage. His work, he said, was done. If England was
still to be saved, she must be saved by younger men.330
The unexpected demise of the crown changed the whole aspect of
affairs. Any hope which the proscribed Whigs might have cherished
of returning peaceably to their native land was extinguished by
the death of a careless and goodnatured prince, and by the
accession of a prince obstinate in all things, and especially
obstinate in revenge. Ferguson was in his element. Destitute of
the talents both of a writer and of a statesman, he had in a high
degree the unenviable qualifications of a tempter; and now, with
the malevolent activity and dexterity of an evil spirit, he ran
from outlaw to outlaw, chattered in every ear, and stirred up in
every bosom savage animosities and wild desires.
He no longer despaired of being able to seduce Monmouth. The
situation of that unhappy young man was completely changed. While
he was dancing and skating at the Hague, and expecting every day
a summons to London, he was overwhelmed with misery by the
tidings of his father's death and of his uncle's accession.
During the night which followed the arrival of the news, those
who lodged near him could distinctly hear his sobs and his
piercing cries. He quitted the Hague the next day, having
solemnly pledged his word both to the Prince and to the Princess
of Orange not to attempt anything against the government of
England, and having been supplied by them with money to meet
immediate demands.331
The prospect which lay before Monmouth was not a bright one.
There was now no probability that he would be recalled from
banishment. On the Continent his life could no longer be passed
amidst the splendour and festivity of a court. His cousins at the
Hague seem to have really regarded him with kindness; but they
could no longer countenance him openly without serious risk of
producing a rupture between England and Holland. William offered
a kind and judicious suggestion. The war which was then raging in
Hungary, between the Emperor and the Turks, was watched by all
Europe with interest almost as great as that which the Crusades
had excited five hundred years earlier. Many gallant gentlemen,
both Protestant and Catholic, were fighting as volunteers in the
common cause of Christendom. The Prince advised Monmouth to
repair to the Imperial camp, and assured him that, if he would do
so, he should not want the means of making an appearance
befitting an English nobleman.332 This counsel was excellent: but
the Duke could not make up his mind. He retired to Brussels
accompanied by Henrietta Wentworth, Baroness Wentworth of
Nettlestede, a damsel of high rank and ample fortune, who loved
him passionately, who had sacrificed for his sake her maiden
honour and the hope of a splendid alliance, who had followed him
into exile, and whom he believed to be his wife in the sight of
heaven. Under the soothing influence of female friendship, his
lacerated mind healed fast. He seemed to have found happiness in
obscurity and repose, and to have forgotten that he had been the
ornament of a splendid court and the head of a great party, that
he had commanded armies, and that he had aspired to a throne.
But he was not suffered to remain quiet. Ferguson employed all
his powers of temptation. Grey, who knew not where to turn for a
pistole, and was ready for any undertaking, however desperate,
lent his aid. No art was spared which could draw Monmouth from
retreat. To the first invitations which he received from his old
associates he returned unfavourable answers. He pronounced the
difficulties of a descent on England insuperable, protested that
he was sick of public life, and begged to be left in the
enjoyment of his newly found happiness. But he was little in the
habit of resisting skilful and urgent importunity. It is said,
too, that he was induced to quit his retirement by the same
powerful influence which had made that retirement delightful.
Lady Wentworth wished to see him a King. Her rents, her diamonds,
her credit were put at his disposal. Monmouth's judgment was not
convinced; but he had not the firmness to resist such
solicitations.333
By the English exiles he was joyfully welcomed, and unanimously
acknowledged as their head. But there was another class of
emigrants who were not disposed to recognise his supremacy.
Misgovernment, such as had never been known in the southern part
of our island, had driven from Scotland to the Continent many
fugitives, the intemperance of whose political and religious zeal
was proportioned to the oppression which they had undergone.
These men were not willing to follow an English leader. Even in
destitution and exile they retained their punctilious national
pride, and would not consent that their country should be, in
their persons, degraded into a province. They had a captain of
their own, Archibald, ninth Earl of Argyle, who, as chief of the
great tribe of Campbell, was known among the population of the
Highlands by the proud name of Mac Callum More. His father, the
Marquess of Argyle, had been the head of the Scotch Covenanters,
had greatly contributed to the ruin of Charles the First, and was
not thought by the Royalists to have atoned for this offence by
consenting to bestow the empty title of King, and a state prison
in a palace, on Charles the Second. After the return of the royal
family the Marquess was put to death. His marquisate became
extinct; but his son was permitted to inherit the ancient
earldom, and was still among the greatest if not the greatest, of
the nobles of Scotland. The Earl's conduct during the twenty
years which followed the Restoration had been, as he afterwards
thought, criminally moderate. He had, on some occasions, opposed
the administration which afflicted his country: but his
opposition had been languid and cautious. His compliances in
ecclesiastical matters had given scandal to rigid Presbyterians:
and so far had he been from showing any inclination to resistance
that, when the Covenanters had been persecuted into insurrection,
he had brought into the field a large body of his dependents to
support the government.
Such had been his political course until the Duke of York came
down to Edinburgh armed with the whole regal authority The
despotic viceroy soon found that he could not expect entire
support from Argyle. Since the most powerful chief in the kingdom
could not be gained, it was thought necessary that he should be
destroyed. On grounds so frivolous that even the spirit of party
and the spirit of chicane were ashamed of them, he was brought to
trial for treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. The
partisans of the Stuarts afterwards asserted that it was never
meant to carry this sentence into effect, and that the only
object of the prosecution was to frighten him into ceding his
extensive jurisdiction in the Highlands. Whether James designed,
as his enemies suspected, to commit murder, or only, as his
friends affirmed, to commit extortion by threatening to commit
murder, cannot now be ascertained. "I know nothing of the Scotch
law," said Halifax to King Charles; "but this I know, that we
should not hang a dog here on the grounds on which my Lord Argyle
has been sentenced."334
Argyle escaped in disguise to England, and thence passed over to
Friesland. In that secluded province his father had bought a
small estate, as a place of refuge for the family in civil
troubles. It was said, among the Scots that this purchase had
been made in consequence of the predictions of a Celtic seer, to
whom it had been revealed that Mac Callum More would one day be
driven forth from the ancient mansion of his race at Inverary.335
But it is probable that the politic Marquess had been warned
rather by the signs of the times than by the visions of any
prophet. In Friesland Earl Archibald resided during some time so
quietly that it was not generally known whither he had fled. From
his retreat he carried on a correspondence with his friends in
Great Britain, was a party to the Whig conspiracy, and concerted
with the chiefs of that conspiracy a plan for invading
Scotland.336 This plan had been dropped upon the detection of the
Rye House plot, but became again the Subject of his thoughts
after the demise of the crown.
He had, during his residence on the Continent, reflected much
more deeply on religious questions than in the preceding years of
his life. In one respect the effect of these reflections on his
mind had been pernicious. His partiality for the synodical form
of church government now amounted to bigotry. When he remembered
how long he had conformed to the established worship, he was
overwhelmed with shame and remorse, and showed too many signs of
a disposition to atone for his defection by violence and
intolerance. He had however, in no long time, an opportunity of
proving that the fear and love of a higher Power had nerved him
for the most formidable conflicts by which human nature can be
tried.
To his companions in adversity his assistance was of the highest
moment. Though proscribed and a fugitive. he was still, in some
sense, the most powerful subject in the British dominions. In
wealth, even before his attainder, he was probably inferior, not
only to the great English nobles, but to some of the opulent
esquires of Kent and Norfolk. But his patriarchal authority, an
authority which no wealth could give and which no attainder could
take away, made him, as a leader of an insurrection, truly
formidable. No southern lord could feel any confidence that, if
he ventured to resist the government, even his own gamekeepers
and huntsmen would stand by him. An Earl of Bedford, an Earl of
Devonshire, could not engage to bring ten men into the field. Mac
Callum More, penniless and deprived of his earldom, might at any
moment, raise a serious civil war. He bad only to show himself on
the coast of Lorn; and an army would, in a few days, gather round
him. The force which, in favourable circumstances, he could bring
into the field, amounted to five thousand fighting, men, devoted
to his service accustomed to the use of target and broadsword,
not afraid to encounter regular troops even in the open plain,
and perhaps superior to regular troops in the qualifications
requisite for the defence of wild mountain passes, hidden in
mist, and torn by headlong torrents. What such a force, well
directed, could effect, even against veteran regiments and
skilful commanders, was proved, a few years later, at
Killiecrankie.
But, strong as was the claim of Argyle to the confidence of the
exiled Scots, there was a faction among them which regarded him
with no friendly feeling, and which wished to make use of his
name and influence, without entrusting to him any real power. The
chief of this faction was a lowland gentleman, who had been
implicated in the Whig plot, and had with difficulty eluded the
vengeance of the court, Sir Patrick Hume, of Polwarth, in
Berwickshire. Great doubt has been thrown on his integrity, but
without sufficient reason. It must, however, be admitted that he
injured his cause by perverseness as much as he could have done
by treachery. He was a man incapable alike of leading and of
following, conceited, captious, and wrongheaded, an endless
talker, a sluggard in action against the enemy and active only
against his own allies. With Hume was closely connected another
Scottish exile of great note, who had many, of the same faults,
Sir John Cochrane, second son of the Earl of Dundonald.
A far higher character belonged to Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, a
man distinguished by learning and eloquence, distinguished also
by courage, disinterestedness, and public spirit but of an
irritable and impracticable temper. Like many of his most
illustrious contemporaries, Milton for example, Harrington,
Marvel, and Sidney, Fletcher had, from the misgovernment of
several successive princes, conceived a strong aversion to
hereditary monarchy. Yet he was no democrat. He was the head of
an ancient Norman house, and was proud of his descent. He was a
fine speaker and a fine writer, and was proud of his intellectual
superiority. Both in his character of gentleman, and in his
character of scholar, he looked down with disdain on the common
people, and was so little disposed to entrust them with political
power that he thought them unfit even to enjoy personal freedom.
It is a curious circumstance that this man, the most honest,
fearless, and uncompromising republican of his time, should have
been the author of a plan for reducing a large part of the
working classes of Scotland to slavery. He bore, in truth, a
lively resemblance to those Roman Senators who, while they hated
the name of King, guarded the privileges of their order with
inflexible pride against the encroachments of the multitude, and
governed their bondmen and bondwomen by means of the stocks and
the scourge.
Amsterdam was the place where the leading emigrants, Scotch and
English, assembled. Argyle repaired thither from Friesland,
Monmouth from Brabant. It soon appeared that the fugitives had
scarcely anything in common except hatred of James and impatience
to return from banishment. The Scots were jealous of the English,
the English of the Scots. Monmouth's high pretensions were
offensive to Argyle, who, proud of ancient nobility and of a
legitimate descent from kings, was by no means inclined to do
homage to the offspring of a vagrant and ignoble love. But of all
the dissensions by which the little band of outlaws was
distracted the most serious was that which arose between Argyle
and a portion of his own followers. Some of the Scottish exiles
had, in a long course of opposition to tyranny, been excited into
a morbid state of understanding and temper, which made the most
just and necessary restraint insupportable to them. They knew
that without Argyle they could do nothing. They ought to have
known that, unless they wished to run headlong to ruin, they must
either repose full confidence in their leader, or relinquish all
thoughts of military enterprise. Experience has fully proved that
in war every operation, from the greatest to the smallest, ought
to be under the absolute direction of one mind, and that every
subordinate agent, in his degree, ought to obey implicitly,
strenuously, and with the show of cheerfulness, orders which he
disapproves, or of which the reasons are kept secret from him.
Representative assemblies, public discussions, and all the other
checks by which, in civil affairs, rulers are restrained from
abusing power, are out of place in a camp. Machiavel justly
imputed many of the disasters of Venice and Florence to the
jealousy which led those republics to interfere with every one of
their generals.337 The Dutch practice of sending to an army
deputies, without whose consent no great blow could be struck,
was almost equally pernicious. It is undoubtedly by no means
certain that a captain, who has been entrusted with dictatorial
power in the hour of peril, will quietly surrender that power in
the hour of triumph; and this is one of the many considerations
which ought to make men hesitate long before they resolve to
vindicate public liberty by the sword. But, if they determine to
try the chance of war, they will, if they are wise, entrust to
their chief that plenary authority without which war cannot be
well conducted. It is possible that, if they give him that
authority, he may turn out a Cromwell or a Napoleon. But it is
almost certain that, if they withhold from him that authority,
their enterprises will end like the enterprise of Argyle.
Some of the Scottish emigrants, heated with republican
enthusiasm, and utterly destitute of the skill necessary to the
conduct of great affairs, employed all their industry and
ingenuity, not in collecting means for the attack which they were
about to make on a formidable enemy, but in devising restraints
on their leader's power and securities against his ambition. The
selfcomplacent stupidity with which they insisted on Organising
an army as if they had been organising a commonwealth would be
incredible if it had not been frankly and even boastfully
recorded by one of themselves.338
At length all differences were compromised. It was determined
that an attempt should be forthwith made on the western coast of
Scotland, and that it should be promptly followed by a descent on
England.
Argyle was to hold the nominal command in Scotland: but be was
placed under the control of a Committee which reserved to itself
all the most important parts of the military administration. This
committee was empowered to determine where the expedition should
land, to appoint officers, to superintend the levying of troops,
to dole out provisions and ammunition. All that was left to the
general was to direct the evolutions of the army in the field,
and he was forced to promise that even in the field, except in
the case of a surprise, he would do nothing without the assent of
a council of war.
Monmouth was to command in England. His soft mind had as usual,
taken an impress from the society which surrounded him. Ambitious
hopes, which had seemed to be extinguished, revived in his bosom.
He remembered the affection with which he had been constantly
greeted by the common people in town and country, and expected
that they would now rise by hundreds of thousands to welcome him.
He remembered the good will which the soldiers had always borne
him, and flattered himself that they would come over to him by
regiments. Encouraging messages reached him in quick succession
from London. He was assured that the violence and injustice with
which the elections had been carried on had driven the nation
mad, that the prudence of the leading Whigs had with difficulty
prevented a sanguinary outbreak on the day of the coronation, and
that all the great Lords who had supported the Exclusion Bill
were impatient to rally round him. Wildman, who loved to talk
treason in parables, sent to say that the Earl of Richmond, just
two hundred years before, had landed in England with a handful of
men, and had a few days later been crowned, on the field of
Bosworth, with the diadem taken from the head of Richard. Danvers
undertook to raise the City. The Duke was deceived into the
belief that, as soon as he set up his standard, Bedfordshire,
Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Cheshire would rise in arms.339 He
consequently became eager for the enterprise from which a few
weeks before he had shrunk. His countrymen did not impose on him
restrictions so elaborately absurd as those which the Scotch
emigrants had devised. All that was required of him was to
promise that he would not assume the regal title till his
pretensions has been submitted to the judgment of a free
Parliament.
It was determined that two Englishmen, Ayloffe and Rumbold,
should accompany Argyle to Scotland, and that Fletcher should go
with Monmouth to England. Fletcher, from the beginning, had
augured ill of the enterprise: but his chivalrous spirit would
not suffer him to decline a risk which his friends seemed eager
to encounter. When Grey repeated with approbation what Wildman
had said about Richmond and Richard, the well read and thoughtful
Scot justly remarked that there was a great difference between
the fifteenth century and the seventeenth. Richmond was assured
of the support of barons, each of whom could bring an army of
feudal retainers into the field; and Richard had not one regiment
of regular soldiers.340
The exiles were able to raise, partly from their own resources
and partly from the contributions of well wishers in Holland, a
sum sufficient for the two expeditions. Very little was obtained
from London. Six thousand pounds had been expected thence. But
instead of the money came excuses from Wildman, which ought to
have opened the eyes of all who were not wilfully blind. The Duke
made up the deficiency by pawning his own jewels and those of
Lady Wentworth. Arms, ammunition, and provisions were bought, and
several ships which lay at Amsterdam were freighted.341
It is remarkable that the most illustrious and the most grossly
injured man among the British exiles stood far aloof from these
rash counsels. John Locke hated tyranny and persecution as a
philosopher; but his intellect and his temper preserved him from
the violence of a partisan. He had lived on confidential terms
with Shaftesbury, and had thus incurred the displeasure of the
court. Locke's prudence had, however, been such that it would
have been to little purpose to bring him even before the corrupt
and partial tribunals of that age. In one point, however, he was
vulnerable. He was a student of Christ Church in the University
of Oxford. It was determined to drive from that celebrated
college the greatest man of whom it could ever boast. But this
was not easy. Locke had, at Oxford, abstained from expressing any
opinion on the politics of the day. Spies had been set about him.
Doctors of Divinity and Masters of Arts had not been ashamed to
perform the vilest of all offices, that of watching the lips of a
companion in order to report his words to his ruin. The
conversation in the hall had been purposely turned to irritating
topics, to the Exclusion Bill, and to the character of the Earl
of Shaftesbury, but in vain. Locke neither broke out nor
dissembled, but maintained such steady silence and composure as
forced the tools of power to own with vexation that never man was
so complete a master of his tongue and of his passions. When it
was found that treachery could do nothing, arbitrary power was
used. After vainly trying to inveigle Locke into a fault, the
government resolved to punish him without one. Orders came from
Whitehall that he should be ejected; and those orders the Dean
and Canons made haste to obey.
Locke was travelling on the Continent for his health when he
learned that he had been deprived of his home and of his bread
without a trial or even a notice. The injustice with which he had
been treated would have excused him if he had resorted to violent
methods of redress. But he was not to be blinded by personal
resentment he augured no good from the schemes of those who had
assembled at Amsterdam; and he quietly repaired to Utrecht,
where, while his partners in misfortune were planning their own
destruction, he employed himself in writing his celebrated letter
on Toleration.342
The English government was early apprised that something was in
agitation among the outlaws. An invasion of England seems not to
have been at first expected; but it was apprehended that Argyle
would shortly appear in arms among his clansmen. A proclamation
was accordingly issued directing that Scotland should be put into
a state of defence. The militia was ordered to be in readiness.
All the clans hostile to the name of Campbell were set in motion.
John Murray, Marquess of Athol, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of
Argyleshire, and, at the head of a great body of his followers,
occupied the castle of Inverary. Some suspected persons were
arrested. Others were compelled to give hostages. Ships of war
were sent to cruise near the isle of Bute; and part of the army
of Ireland was moved to the coast of Ulster.343
While these preparations were making in Scotland, James called
into his closet Arnold Van Citters, who had long resided in
England as Ambassador from the United Provinces, and Everard Van
Dykvelt, who, after the death of Charles, had been sent by the
State General on a special mission of condolence and
congratulation. The King said that he had received from
unquestionable sources intelligence of designs which were forming
against the throne by his banished subjects in Holland. Some of
the exiles were cutthroats, whom nothing but the special
providence of God had prevented from committing a foul murder;
and among them was the owner of the spot which had been fixed for
the butchery. "Of all men living," said the King, "Argyle has the
greatest means of annoying me; and of all places Holland is that
whence a blow may be best aimed against me." The Dutch envoys
assured his Majesty that what he had said should instantly be
communicated to the government which they represented, and
expressed their full confidence that every exertion would be made
to satisfy him.344
They were justified in expressing this confidence. Both the
Prince of Orange and the States General, were, at this time, most
desirous that the hospitality of their country should not be
abused for purposes of which the English government could justly
complain. James had lately held language which encouraged the
hope that he would not patiently submit to the ascendancy of
France. It seemed probable that he would consent to form a close
alliance with the United Provinces and the House of Austria.
There was, therefore, at the Hague, an extreme anxiety to avoid
all that could give him offence. The personal interest of William
was also on this occasion identical with the interest of his
father in law.
But the case was one which required rapid and vigorous action;
and the nature of the Batavian institutions made such action
almost impossible. The Union of Utrecht, rudely formed, amidst
the agonies of a revolution, for the purpose of meeting immediate
exigencies, had never been deliberately revised and perfected in
a time of tranquillity. Every one of the seven commonwealths
which that Union had bound together retained almost all the
rights of sovereignty, and asserted those rights punctiliously
against the central government. As the federal authorities had
not the means of exacting prompt obedience from the provincial
authorities, so the provincial authorities had not the means of
exacting prompt obedience from the municipal authorities. Holland
alone contained eighteen cities, each of which was, for many
purposes, an independent state, jealous of all interference from
without. If the rulers of such a city received from the Hague an
order which was unpleasing to them, they either neglected it
altogether, or executed it languidly and tardily. In some town
councils, indeed, the influence of the Prince of Orange was all
powerful. But unfortunately the place where the British exiles
had congregated, and where their ships had been fitted out, was
the rich and populous Amsterdam; and the magistrates of Amsterdam
were the heads of the faction hostile to the federal government
and to the House of Nassau. The naval administration of the
United Provinces was conducted by five distinct boards of
Admiralty. One of those boards sate at Amsterdam, was partly
nominated by the authorities of that city, and seems to have been
entirely animated by their spirit.
All the endeavours of the federal government to effect what James
desired were frustrated by the evasions of the functionaries of
Amsterdam, and by the blunders of Colonel Bevil Skelton, who had
just arrived at the Hague as envoy from England. Skelton had been
born in Holland during the English troubles, and was therefore
supposed to be peculiarly qualified for his post;345 but he was,
in truth, unfit for that and for every other diplomatic
situation. Excellent judges of character pronounced him to be the
most shallow, fickle, passionate, presumptuous, and garrulous of
men.346 He took no serious notice of the proceedings of the
refugees till three vessels which had been equipped for the
expedition to Scotland were safe out of the Zuyder Zee, till the
arms, ammunition, and provisions were on board, and till the
passengers had embarked. Then, instead of applying, as he should
have done, to the States General, who sate close to his own door,
he sent a messenger to the magistrates of Amsterdam, with a
request that the suspected ships might be detained. The
magistrates of Amsterdam answered that the entrance of the Zuyder
Zee was out of their jurisdiction, and referred him to the
federal government. It was notorious that this was a mere excuse,
and that, if there had been any real wish at the Stadthouse of
Amsterdam to prevent Argyle from sailing, no difficulties would
have been made. Skelton now addressed himself to the States
General. They showed every disposition to comply with his demand,
and, as the case was urgent, departed from the course which they
ordinarily observed in the transaction of business. On the same
day on which he made his application to them, an order, drawn in
exact conformity with his request, was despatched to the
Admiralty of Amsterdam. But this order, in consequence of some
misinformation, did not correctly describe the situation of the
ships. They were said to be in the Texel. They were in the Vlie.
The Admiralty of Amsterdam made this error a plea for doing
nothing; and, before the error could be rectified, the three
ships had sailed.347
The last hours which Argyle passed on the coast of Holland were
hours of great anxiety. Near him lay a Dutch man of war whose
broadside would in a moment have put an end to his expedition.
Round his little fleet a boat was rowing, in which were some
persons with telescopes whom he suspected to be spies. But no
effectual step was taken for the purpose of detaining him; and on
the afternoon of the second of May he stood out to sea before a
favourable breeze.
The voyage was prosperous. On the sixth the Orkneys were in
sight. Argyle very unwisely anchored off Kirkwall, and allowed
two of his followers to go on shore there. The Bishop ordered
them to be arrested. The refugees proceeded to hold a long and
animated debate on this misadventure: for, from the beginning to
the end of their expedition, however languid and irresolute their
conduct might be, they never in debate wanted spirit or
perseverance. Some were for an attack on Kirkwall. Some were for
proceeding without delay to Argyleshire. At last the Earl seized
some gentlemen who lived near the coast of the island, and
proposed to the Bishop an exchange of prisoners. The Bishop
returned no answer; and the fleet, after losing three days,
sailed away.
This delay was full of danger. It was speedily known at Edinburgh
that the rebel squadron had touched at the Orkneys. Troops were
instantly put in motion. When the Earl reached his own province,
he found that preparations had been made to repel him. At
Dunstaffnage he sent his second son Charles on Shore to call the
Campbells to arms. But Charles returned with gloomy tidings. The
herdsmen and fishermen were indeed ready to rally round Mac
Callum More; but, of the heads of the clan, some were in
confinement, and others had fled. Those gentlemen who remained at
their homes were either well affected to the government or afraid
of moving, and refused even to see the son of their chief. From
Dunstaffnage the small armament proceeded to Campbelltown, near
the southern extremity of the peninsula of Kintyre. Here the Earl
published a manifesto, drawn up in Holland, under the direction
of the Committee, by James Stewart, a Scotch advocate, whose pen
was, a few months later, employed in a very different way. In
this paper were set forth, with a strength of language sometimes
approaching to scurrility, many real and some imaginary
grievances. It was hinted that the late King had died by poison.
A chief object of the expedition was declared to be the entire
suppression, not only of Popery, but of Prelacy, which was termed
the most bitter root and offspring of Popery; and all good
Scotchmen were exhorted to do valiantly for the cause of their
country and of their God.
Zealous as Argyle was for what he considered as pure religion, he
did not scruple to practice one rite half Popish and half Pagan.
The mysterious cross of yew, first set on fire, and then quenched
in the blood of a goat, was sent forth to summon all the
Campbells, from sixteen to sixty. The isthmus of Tarbet was
appointed for the place of gathering. The muster, though small
indeed when compared with what it would have been if the spirit
and strength of the clan had been unbroken, was still formidable.
The whole force assembled amounted to about eighteen hundred men.
Argyle divided his mountaineers into three regiments, and
proceeded to appoint officers.
The bickerings which had begun in Holland had never been
intermitted during the whole course of the expedition; but at
Tarbet they became more violent than ever. The Committee wished
to interfere even with the patriarchal dominion of the Earl over
the Campbells, and would not allow him to settle the military
rank of his kinsmen by his own authority. While these
disputatious meddlers tried to wrest from him his power over the
Highlands, they carried on their own correspondence with the
Lowlands, and received and sent letters which were never
communicated to the nominal General. Hume and his confederates
had reserved to themselves the superintendence of the Stores, and
conducted this important part of the administration of war with a
laxity hardly to be distinguished from dishonesty, suffered the
arms to be spoiled, wasted the provisions, and lived riotously at
a time when they ought to have set to all beneath them an example
of abstemiousness.
The great question was whether the Highlands or the Lowlands
should be the seat of war. The Earl's first object was to
establish his authority over his own domains, to drive out the
invading clans which had been poured from Perthshire into
Argyleshire, and to take possession of the ancient seat of his
family at Inverary. He might then hope to have four or five
thousand claymores at his command. With such a force he would be
able to defend that wild country against the whole power of the
kingdom of Scotland. and would also have secured an excellent
base for offensive operations. This seems to have been the wisest
course open to him. Rumbold, who had been trained in an excellent
military school, and who, as an Englishman, might be supposed to
be an impartial umpire between the Scottish factions, did all in
his power to strengthen the Earl's hands. But Hume and Cochrane
were utterly impracticable. Their jealousy of Argyle was, in
truth, stronger than their wish for the success of the
expedition. They saw that, among his own mountains and lakes, and
at the head of an army chiefly composed of his own tribe, he
would be able to bear down their opposition, and to exercise the
full authority of a General. They muttered that the only men who
had the good cause at heart were the Lowlanders, and that the
Campbells took up arms neither for liberty nor for the Church of
God, but for Mac Callum More alone.
Cochrane declared that he would go to Ayrshire if he went by
himself, and with nothing but a pitchfork in his hand. Argyle,
after long resistance, consented, against his better judgment, to
divide his little army. He remained with Rumbold in the
Highlands. Cochrane and Hume were at the head of the force which
sailed to invade the Lowlands.
Ayrshire was Cochrane's object: but the coast of Ayrshire was
guarded by English frigates; and the adventurers were under the
necessity of running up the estuary of the Clyde to Greenock,
then a small fishing village consisting of a single row of
thatched hovels, now a great and flourishing port, of which the
customs amount to more than five times the whole revenue which
the Stuarts derived from the kingdom of Scotland. A party of
militia lay at Greenock: but Cochrane, who wanted provisions, was
determined to land. Hume objected. Cochrane was peremptory, and
ordered an officer, named Elphinstone, to take twenty men in a
boat to the shore. But the wrangling spirit of the leaders had
infected all ranks. Elphinstone answered that he was bound to
obey only reasonable commands, that he considered this command as
unreasonable, and, in short, that he would not go. Major
Fullarton, a brave man, esteemed by all parties, but peculiarly
attached to Argyle, undertook to land with only twelve men, and
did so in spite of a fire from the coast. A slight skirmish
followed. The militia fell back. Cochrane entered Greenock and
procured a supply of meal, but found no disposition to
insurrection among the people.
In fact, the state of public feeling in Scotland was not such as
the exiles, misled by the infatuation common in all ages to
exiles, had supposed it to be. The government was, indeed,
hateful and hated. But the malecontents were divided into parties
which were almost as hostile to one another as to their rulers;
nor was any of those parties eager to join the invaders. Many
thought that the insurrection had no chance of success. The
spirit of many had been effectually broken by long and cruel
oppression. There was, indeed, a class of enthusiasts who were
little in the habit of calculating chances, and whom oppression
had not tamed but maddened. But these men saw little difference
between Argyle and James. Their wrath had been heated to such a
temperature that what everybody else would have called boiling
zeal seemed to them Laodicean lukewarmness. The Earl's past life
had been stained by what they regarded as the vilest apostasy.
The very Highlanders whom he now summoned to extirpate Prelacy he
had a few years before summoned to defend it. And were slaves who
knew nothing and cared nothing about religion, who were ready to
fight for synodical government, for Episcopacy, for Popery, just
as Mac Callum More might be pleased to command, fit allies for
the people of God? The manifesto, indecent and intolerant as was
its tone, was, in the view of these fanatics, a cowardly and
worldly performance. A settlement such as Argyle would have made,
such as was afterwards made by a mightier and happier deliverer,
seemed to them not worth a struggle. They wanted not only freedom
of conscience for themselves, but absolute dominion over the
consciences of others; not only the Presbyterian doctrine,
polity, and worship, but the Covenant in its utmost rigour.
Nothing would content them but that every end for which civil
society exists should be sacrificed to the ascendency of a
theological system. One who believed no form of church government
to be worth a breach of Christian charity, and who recommended
comprehension and toleration, was in their phrase, halting
between Jehovah and Baal. One who condemned such acts as the
murder of Cardinal Beatoun and Archbishop Sharpe fell into the
same sin for which Saul had been rejected from being King over
Israel. All the rules, by which, among civilised and Christian
men, the horrors of war are mitigated, were abominations in the
sight of the Lord. Quarter was to be neither taken nor given. A
Malay running a muck, a mad dog pursued by a crowd, were the
models to be imitated by warriors fighting in just self-defence.
To reasons such as guide the conduct of statesmen and generals
the minds of these zealots were absolutely impervious. That a man
should venture to urge such reasons was sufficient evidence that
he was not one of the faithful. If the divine blessing were
withheld, little would be effected by crafty politicians, by
veteran captains, by cases of arms from Holland, or by regiments
of unregenerate Celts from the mountains of Lorn. If, on the
other hand, the Lord's time were indeed come, he could still, as
of old, cause the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise, and could save alike by many and by few. The broadswords of
Athol and the bayonets of Claverhouse would be put to rout by
weapons as insignificant as the sling of David or the pitcher of
Gideon.348
Cochrane, having found it impossible to raise the population on
the south of the Clyde, rejoined Argyle, who was in the island of
Bute. The Earl now again proposed to make an attempt upon
Inverary. Again he encountered a pertinacious opposition. The
seamen sided with Hume and Cochrane. The Highlanders were
absolutely at the command of their chieftain. There was reason to
fear that the two parties would come to blows; and the dread of
such a disaster induced the Committee to make some concession.
The castle of Ealan Ghierig, situated at the mouth of Loch
Riddan, was selected to be the chief place of arms. The military
stores were disembarked there. The squadron was moored close to
the walls in a place where it was protected by rocks and shallows
such as, it was thought, no frigate could pass. Outworks were
thrown up. A battery was planted with some small guns taken from
the ships. The command of the fort was most unwisely given to
Elphinstone, who had already proved himself much more disposed to
argue with his commanders than to fight the enemy.
And now, during a few hours, there was some show of vigour.
Rumbold took the castle of Ardkinglass. The Earl skirmished
successfully with Athol's troops, and was about to advance on
Inverary, when alarming news from the ships and factions in the
Committee forced him to turn back. The King's frigates had come
nearer to Ealan Ghierig than had been thought possible. The
Lowland gentlemen positively refused to advance further into the
Highlands. Argyle hastened back to Ealan Ghierig. There he
proposed to make an attack on the frigates. His ships, indeed,
were ill fitted for such an encounter. But they would have been
supported by a flotilla of thirty large fishing boats, each well
manned with armed Highlanders. The Committee, however, refused to
listen to this plan, and effectually counteracted it by raising a
mutiny among the sailors.
All was now confusion and despondency. The provisions had been so
ill managed by the Committee that there was no longer food for
the troops. The Highlanders consequently deserted by hundreds;
and the Earl, brokenhearted by his misfortunes, yielded to the
urgency of those who still pertinaciously insisted that he should
march into the Lowlands.
The little army therefore hastened to the shore of Loch Long,
passed that inlet by night in boats, and landed in
Dumbartonshire. Hither, on the following morning, came news that
the frigates had forced a passage, that all the Earl's ships had
been taken, and that Elphinstone had fled from Ealan Ghierig
without a blow, leaving the castle and stores to the enemy.
All that remained was to invade the Lowlands under every
disadvantage. Argyle resolved to make a bold push for Glasgow.
But, as soon as this resolution was announced, the very men, who
had, up to that moment, been urging him to hasten into the low
country, took fright, argued, remonstrated, and when argument and
remonstrance proved vain, laid a scheme for seizing the boats,
making their own escape, and leaving their General and his
clansmen to conquer or perish unaided. This scheme failed; and
the poltroons who had formed it were compelled to share with
braver men the risks of the last venture.
During the march through the country which lies between Loch Long
and Loch Lomond, the insurgents were constantly infested by
parties of militia. Some skirmishes took place, in which the Earl
had the advantage; but the bands which he repelled, falling back
before him, spread the tidings of his approach, and, soon after
he had crossed the river Leven, he found a strong body of regular
and irregular troops prepared to encounter him.
He was for giving battle. Ayloffe was of the same opinion. Hume,
on the other hand, declared that to fight would be madness. He
saw one regiment in scarlet. More might be behind. To attack such
a force was to rush on certain death The best course was to
remain quiet till night, and then to give the enemy the slip.
A sharp altercation followed, which was with difficulty quieted
by the mediation of Rumbold. It was now evening. The hostile
armies encamped at no great distance from each other. The Earl
ventured to propose a night attack, and was again overruled.
Since it was determined not to fight, nothing was left but to
take the step which Hume had recommended. There was a chance
that, by decamping secretly, and hastening all night across
heaths and morasses, the Earl might gain many miles on the enemy,
and might reach Glasgow without further obstruction. The watch
fires were left burning; and the march began. And now disaster
followed disaster fast. The guides mistook the track across the
moors, and led the army into boggy ground. Military order could
not be preserved by undisciplined and disheartened soldiers under
a dark sky, and on a treacherous and uneven soil. Panic after
panic spread through the broken ranks. Every sight and sound was
thought to indicate the approach of pursuers. Some of the
officers contributed to spread the terror which it was their duty
to calm. The army had become a mob; and the mob melted fast away.
Great numbers fled under cover of the night. Rumbold and a few
other brave men whom no danger could have scared lost their way,
and were unable to rejoin the main body. When the day broke, only
five hundred fugitives, wearied and dispirited, assembled at
Kilpatrick.
All thought of prosecuting the war was at an end: and it was
plain that the chiefs of the expedition would have sufficient
difficulty in escaping with their lives. They fled in different
directions. Hume reached the Continent in safety. Cochrane was
taken and sent up to London. Argyle hoped to find a secure asylum
under the roof of one of his old servants who lived near
Kilpatrick. But this hope was disappointed; and he was forced to
cross the Clyde. He assumed the dress of a peasant and pretended
to be the guide of Major Fullarton, whose courageous fidelity was
proof to all danger. The friends journeyed together through
Renfrewshire as far as Inchinnan. At that place the Black Cart
and the White Cart, two streams which now flow through prosperous
towns, and turn the wheels of many factories, but which then held
their quiet course through moors and sheepwalks, mingle before
they join the Clyde. The only ford by which the travellers could
cross was guarded by a party of militia. Some questions were
asked. Fullarton tried to draw suspicion on himself, in order
that his companion might escape unnoticed. But the minds of the
questioners misgave them that the guide was not the rude clown
that he seemed. They laid hands on him. He broke loose and sprang
into the water, but was instantly chased. He stood at bay for a
short time against five assailants. But he had no arms except his
pocket pistols, and they were so wet, in consequence of his
plunge, that they would not go off. He was struck to the ground
with a broadsword, and secured.
He owned himself to be the Earl of Argyle, probably in the hope
that his great name would excite the awe and pity of those who
had seized him. And indeed they were much moved. For they were
plain Scotchmen of humble rank, and, though in arms for the
crown, probably cherished a preference for the Calvinistic church
government and worship, and had been accustomed to reverence
their captive as the head of an illustrious house and as a
champion of the Protestant religion But, though they were
evidently touched, and though some of them even wept, they were
not disposed to relinquish a large reward and to incur the
vengeance of an implacable government. They therefore conveyed
their prisoner to Renfrew. The man who bore the chief part in the
arrest was named Riddell. On this account the whole race of
Riddells was, during more than a century, held in abhorrence by
the great tribe of Campbell. Within living memory, when a Riddell
visited a fair in Argyleshire, he found it necessary to assume a
false name.
And now commenced the brightest part of Argyle's career. His
enterprise had hitherto brought on him nothing but reproach and
derision. His great error was that he did not resolutely refuse
to accept the name without the power of a general. Had he
remained quietly at his retreat in Friesland, he would in a few
years have been recalled with honour to his country, and would
have been conspicuous among the ornaments and the props of
constitutional monarchy. Had he conducted his expedition
according to his own views, and carried with him no followers but
such as were prepared implicitly to obey all his orders, he might
possibly have effected something great. For what he wanted as a
captain seems to have been, not courage, nor activity, nor skill,
but simply authority. He should have known that of all wants this
is the most fatal. Armies have triumphed under leaders who
possessed no very eminent qualifications. But what army commanded
by a debating club ever escaped discomfiture and disgrace?
The great calamity which had fallen on Argyle had this advantage,
that it enabled him to show, by proofs not to be mistaken, what
manner of man he was. From the day when he quitted. Friesland to
the day when his followers separated at Kilpatrick, he had never
been a free agent. He had borne the responsibility of a long
series of measures which his judgment disapproved. Now at length
he stood alone. Captivity had restored to him the noblest kind of
liberty, the liberty of governing himself in all his words and
actions according to his own sense of the right and of the
becoming. From that moment he became as one inspired with new
wisdom and virtue. His intellect seemed to be strengthened and
concentrated, his moral character to be at once elevated and
softened. The insolence of the conquerors spared nothing that
could try the temper of a man proud of ancient nobility and of
patriarchal dominion. The prisoner was dragged through Edinburgh
in triumph. He walked on foot, bareheaded, up the whole length of
that stately street which, overshadowed by dark and gigantic
piles of stone, leads from Holyrood House to the Castle. Before
him marched the hangman, bearing the ghastly instrument which was
to be used at the quartering block. The victorious party had not
forgotten that, thirty-five years before this time, the father of
Argyle had been at the head of the faction which put Montrose to
death. Before that event the houses of Graham and Campbell had
borne no love to each other; and they had ever since been at
deadly feud. Care was taken that the prisoner should pass through
the same gate and the same streets through which Montrose had
been led to the same doom.349 When the Earl reached the Castle
his legs were put in irons, and he was informed that he had but a
few days to live. It had been determined not to bring him to
trial for his recent offence, but to put him to death under the
sentence pronounced against him several years before, a sentence
so flagitiously unjust that the most servile and obdurate lawyers
of that bad age could not speak of it without shame.
But neither the ignominious procession up the High Street, nor
the near view of death, had power to disturb the gentle and
majestic patience of Argyle. His fortitude was tried by a still
more severe test. A paper of interrogatories was laid before him
by order of the Privy Council. He replied to those questions to
which he could reply without danger to any of his friends, and
refused to say more. He was told that unless he returned fuller
answers he should be put to the torture. James, who was doubtless
sorry that he could not feast his own eyes with the sight of
Argyle in the boots, sent down to Edinburgh positive orders that
nothing should be omitted which could wring out of the traitor
information against all who had been concerned in the treason.
But menaces were vain. With torments and death in immediate
prospect Mac Callum More thought far less of himself than of his
poor clansmen. "I was busy this day," he wrote from his cell,
"treating for them, and in some hopes. But this evening orders
came that I must die upon Monday or Tuesday; and I am to be put
to the torture if I answer not all questions upon oath. Yet I
hope God shall support me."
The torture was not inflicted. Perhaps the magnanimity of the
victim had moved the conquerors to unwonted compassion. He
himself remarked that at first they had been very harsh to him,
but that they soon began to treat him with respect and kindness.
God, he said, had melted their hearts. It is certain that he did
not, to save himself from the utmost cruelty of his enemies,
betray any of his friends. On the last morning of his life he
wrote these words: "I have named none to their disadvantage. I
thank God he hath supported me wonderfully!"
He composed his own epitaph, a short poem, full of meaning and
spirit, simple and forcible in style, and not contemptible in
versification. In this little piece he complained that, though
his enemies had repeatedly decreed his death, his friends had
been still more cruel. A comment on these expressions is to be
found in a letter which he addressed to a lady residing in
Holland. She had furnished him with a large sum of money for his
expedition, and he thought her entitled to a full explanation of
the causes which had led to his failure. He acquitted his
coadjutors of treachery, but described their folly, their
ignorance, and their factious perverseness, in terms which their
own testimony has since proved to have been richly deserved. He
afterwards doubted whether he had not used language too severe to
become a dying Christian, and, in a separate paper, begged his
friend to suppress what he had said of these men "Only this I
must acknowledge," he mildly added; "they were not governable."
Most of his few remaining hours were passed in devotion, and in
affectionate intercourse with some members of his family. He
professed no repentance on account of his last enterprise, but
bewailed, with great emotion, his former compliance in spiritual
things with the pleasure of the government He had, he said, been
justly punished. One who had so long been guilty of cowardice and
dissimulation was not worthy to be the instrument of salvation to
the State and Church. Yet the cause, he frequently repeated, was
the cause of God, and would assuredly triumph. "I do not," he
said, "take on myself to be a prophet. But I have a strong
impression on my spirit, that deliverance will come very
suddenly." It is not strange that some zealous Presbyterians
should have laid up his saying in their hearts, and should, at a
later period, have attributed it to divine inspiration.
So effectually had religious faith and hope, co-operating with
natural courage and equanimity, composed his spirits, that, on
the very day on which he was to die, he dined with appetite,
conversed with gaiety at table, and, after his last meal, lay
down, as he was wont, to take a short slumber, in order that his
body and mind might be in full vigour when he should mount the
scaffold. At this time one of the Lords of the Council, who had
probably been bred a Presbyterian, and had been seduced by
interest to join in oppressing the Church of which he had once
been a member, came to the Castle with a message from his
brethren, and demanded admittance to the Earl. It was answered
that the Earl was asleep. The Privy Councillor thought that this
was a subterfuge, and insisted on entering. The door of the cell
was softly opened; and there lay Argyle, on the bed, sleeping, in
his irons, the placid sleep of infancy. The conscience of the
renegade smote him. He turned away sick at heart, ran out of the
Castle, and took refuge in the dwelling of a lady of his family
who lived hard by. There he flung himself on a couch, and gave
himself up to an agony of remorse and shame. His kinswoman,
alarmed by his looks and groans, thought that he had been taken
with sudden illness, and begged him to drink a cup of sack. "No,
no," he said; "that will do me no good." She prayed him to tell
her what had disturbed him. "I have been," he said, "in Argyle's
prison. I have seen him within an hour of eternity, sleeping as
sweetly as ever man did. But as for me ----"
And now the Earl had risen from his bed, and had prepared himself
for what was yet to be endured. He was first brought down the
High Street to the Council House, where he was to remain during
the short interval which was still to elapse before the
execution. During that interval he asked for pen and ink, and
wrote to his wife: "Dear heart, God is unchangeable: He hath
always been good and gracious to me: and no place alters it.
Forgive me all my faults; and now comfort thyself in Him, in whom
only true comfort is to be found. The Lord be with thee, bless
and comfort thee, my dearest. Adieu."
It was now time to leave the Council House. The divines who
attended the prisoner were not of his own persuasion; but he
listened to them with civility, and exhorted them to caution
their flocks against those doctrines which all Protestant
churches unite in condemning. He mounted the scaffold, where the
rude old guillotine of Scotland, called the Maiden, awaited him,
and addressed the people in a speech, tinctured with the peculiar
phraseology of his sect, but breathing the spirit of serene
piety. His enemies, he said, he forgave, as he hoped to be
forgiven. Only a single acrimonious expression escaped him. One
of the episcopal clergymen who attended him went to the edge of
the scaffold, and called out in a loud voice, "My Lord dies a
Protestant." "Yes," said the Earl, stepping forward, "and not
only a Protestant, but with a heart hatred of Popery, of Prelacy,
and of all superstition." He then embraced his friends, put into
their hands some tokens of remembrance for his wife and children,
kneeled down, laid his head on the block, prayed during a few
minutes, and gave the signal to the executioner. His head was
fixed on the top of the Tolbooth, where the head of Montrose had
formerly decayed.350
The head of the brave and sincere, though not blameless Rumbold,
was already on the West Port of Edinburgh. Surrounded by factious
and cowardly associates, he had, through the whole campaign,
behaved himself like a soldier trained in the school of the great
Protector, had in council strenuously supported the authority of
Argyle, and had in the field been distinguished by tranquil
intrepidity. After the dispersion of the army he was set upon by
a party of militia. He defended himself desperately, and would
have cut his way through them, had they not hamstringed his
horse. He was brought to Edinburgh mortally wounded. The wish of
the government was that he should be executed in England. But he
was so near death, that, if he was not hanged in Scotland, he
could not be hanged at all; and the pleasure of hanging him was
one which the conquerors could not bear to forego. It was indeed
not to be expected that they would show much lenity to one who
was regarded as the chief of the Rye House plot, and who was the
owner of the building from which that plot took its name: but the
insolence with which they treated the dying man seems to our more
humane age almost incredible. One of the Scotch Privy Councillors
told him that he was a confounded villain. "I am at peace with
God," answered Rumbold, calmly; "how then can I be confounded?"
He was hastily tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged and
quartered within a few hours, near the City Cross in the High
Street. Though unable to stand without the support of two men, he
maintained his fortitude to the last, and under the gibbet raised
his feeble voice against Popery and tyranny with such vehemence
that the officers ordered the drums to strike up, lest the people
should hear him. He was a friend, he said, to limited monarchy.
But he never would believe that Providence had sent a few men
into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions
ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. "I desire," he cried, "to
bless and magnify God's holy name for this, that I stand here,
not for any wrong that I have done, but for adhering to his cause
in an evil day. If every hair of my head were a man, in this
quarrel I would venture them all."
Both at his trial and at his execution he spoke of assassination
with the abhorrence which became a good Christian and a brave
soldier. He had never, he protested, on the faith of a dying man,
harboured the thought of committing such villany. But he frankly
owned that, in conversation with his fellow conspirators, he had
mentioned his own house as a place where Charles and James might
with advantage be attacked, and that much had been said on the
subject, though nothing had been determined. It may at first
sight seem that this acknowledgment is inconsistent with his
declaration that he had always regarded assassination with
horror. But the truth appears to be that he was imposed upon by a
distinction which deluded many of his contemporaries. Nothing
would have induced him to put poison into the food of the two
princes, or to poinard them in their sleep. But to make an
unexpected onset on the troop of Life Guards which surrounded the
royal coach, to exchange sword cuts and pistol shots, and to take
the chance of slaying or of being slain, was, in his view, a
lawful military operation. Ambuscades and surprises were among
the ordinary incidents of war. Every old soldier, Cavalier or
Roundhead, had been engaged in such enterprises. If in the
skirmish the King should fall, he would fall by fair fighting and
not by murder. Precisely the same reasoning was employed, after
the Revolution, by James himself and by some of his most devoted
followers, to justify a wicked attempt on the life of William the
Third. A band of Jacobites was commissioned to attack the Prince
of Orange in his winter quarters. The meaning latent under this
specious phrase was that the Prince's throat was to be cut as he
went in his coach from Richmond to Kensington. It may seem
strange that such fallacies, the dregs of the Jesuitical
casuistry, should have had power to seduce men of heroic spirit,
both Whigs and Tories, into a crime on which divine and human
laws have justly set a peculiar note of infamy. But no sophism is
too gross to delude minds distempered by party spirit.351
Argyle, who survived Rumbold a few hours, left a dying testimony
to the virtues of the gallant Englishman. "Poor Rumbold was a
great support to me, and a brave man, and died Christianly."352
Ayloffe showed as much contempt of death as either Argyle or
Rumbold: but his end did not, like theirs, edify pious minds.
Though political sympathy had drawn him towards the Puritans, he
had no religious sympathy with them, and was indeed regarded by
them as little better than an atheist. He belonged to that
section of the Whigs which sought for models rather among the
patriots of Greece and Rome than among the prophets and judges of
Israel. He was taken prisoner, and carried to Glasgow. There he
attempted to destroy himself with a small penknife: but though he
gave himself several wounds, none of them proved mortal, and he
had strength enough left to bear a journey to London. He was
brought before the Privy Council, and interrogated by the King,
but had too much elevation of mind to save himself by informing
against others. A story was current among the Whigs that the King
said, "You had better be frank with me, Mr. Ayloffe. You know
that it is in my power to pardon you." Then, it was rumoured, the
captive broke his sullen silence, and answered, "It may he in
your power; but it is not in your nature." He was executed under
his old outlawry before the gate of the Temple, and died with
stoical composure 353
In the meantime the vengeance of the conquerors was mercilessly
wreaked on the people of Argyleshire. Many of the Campbells were
hanged by Athol without a trial; and he was with difficulty
restrained by the Privy Council from taking more lives. The
country to the extent of thirty miles round Inverary was wasted.
Houses were burned: the stones of mills were broken to pieces:
fruit trees were cut down, and the very roots seared with fire.
The nets and fishing boats, the sole means by which many
inhabitants of the coast subsisted, were destroyed. More than
three hundred rebels and malecontents were transported to the
colonies. Many of them were also Sentenced to mutilation. On a
single day the hangman of Edinburgh cut off the ears of
thirty-five prisoners. Several women were sent across the
Atlantic after being first branded in the cheek with a hot iron.
It was even in contemplation to obtain an act of Parliament
proscribing the name of Campbell, as the name of Macgregor had
been proscribed eighty years before.354
Argyle's expedition appears to have produced little sensation in
the south of the island. The tidings of his landing reached
London just before the English Parliament met. The King mentioned
the news from the throne; and the Houses assured him that they
would stand by him against every enemy. Nothing more was required
of them. Over Scotland they had no authority; and a war of which
the theatre was so distant, and of which the event might, almost
from the first, be easily foreseen, excited only a languid
interest in London.
But, a week before the final dispersion of Argyle's army England
was agitated by the news that a more formidable invader had
landed on her own shores. It had been agreed among the refugees
that Monmouth should sail from Holland six days after the
departure of the Scots. He had deferred his expedition a short
time, probably in the hope that most of the troops in the south
of the island would be moved to the north as soon as war broke
out in the Highlands, and that he should find no force ready to
oppose him. When at length he was desirous to proceed, the wind
had become adverse and violent.
While his small fleet lay tossing in the Texel, a contest was
going on among the Dutch authorities. The States General and the
Prince of Orange were on one side, the Town Council and Admiralty
of Amsterdam on the other.
Skelton had delivered to the States General a list of the
refugees whose residence in the United Provinces caused
uneasiness to his master. The States General, anxious to grant
every reasonable request which James could make, sent copies of
the list to the provincial authorities. The provincial
authorities sent copies to the municipal authorities. The
magistrates of all the towns were directed to take such measures
as might prevent the proscribed Whigs from molesting the English
government. In general those directions were obeyed. At Rotterdam
in particular, where the influence of William was all powerful,
such activity was shown as called forth warm acknowledgments from
James. But Amsterdam was the chief seat of the emigrants; and the
governing body of Amsterdam would see nothing, hear nothing, know
of nothing. The High Bailiff of the city, who was himself in
daily communication with Ferguson, reported to the Hague that he
did not know where to find a single one of the refugees; and with
this excuse the federal government was forced to be content. The
truth was that the English exiles were as well known at
Amsterdam, and as much stared at in the streets, as if they had
been Chinese.355
A few days later, Skelton received orders from his Court to
request that, in consequence of the dangers which threatened his
master's throne, the three Scotch regiments in the service of the
United Provinces might be sent to Great Britain without delay. He
applied to the Prince of Orange; and the prince undertook to
manage the matter, but predicted that Amsterdam would raise some
difficulty. The prediction proved correct. The deputies of
Amsterdam refused to consent, and succeeded in causing some
delay. But the question was not one of those on which, by the
constitution of the republic, a single city could prevent the
wish of the majority from being carried into effect. The
influence of William prevailed; and the troops were embarked with
great expedition.356
Skelton was at the same time exerting himself, not indeed very
judiciously or temperately, to stop the ships which the English
refugees had fitted out. He expostulated in warm terms with the
Admiralty of Amsterdam. The negligence of that board, he said,
had already enabled one band of rebels to invade Britain. For a
second error of the same kind there could be no excuse. He
peremptorily demanded that a large vessel, named the
Helderenbergh, might be detained. It was pretended that this
vessel was bound for the Canaries. But in truth, she had been
freighted by Monmouth, carried twenty-six guns, and was loaded
with arms and ammunition. The Admiralty of Amsterdam replied that
the liberty of trade and navigation was not to be restrained for
light reasons, and that the Helderenbergh could not be stopped
without an order from the States General. Skelton, whose uniform
practice seems to have been to begin at the wrong end, now had
recourse to the States General. The States General gave the
necessary orders. Then the Admiralty of Amsterdam pretended that
there was not a sufficient naval force in the Texel to seize so
large a ship as the Helderenbergh, and suffered Monmouth to sail
unmolested.357
The weather was bad: the voyage was long; and several English
men-of-war were cruising in the channel. But Monmouth escaped
both the sea and the enemy. As he passed by the cliffs of
Dorsetshire, it was thought desirable to send a boat to the beach
with one of the refugees named Thomas Dare. This man, though of
low mind and manners, had great influence at Taunton. He was
directed to hasten thither across the country, and to apprise his
friends that Monmouth would soon be on English ground.358
On the morning of the eleventh of June the Helderenbergh,
accompanied by two smaller vessels, appeared off the port of
Lyme. That town is a small knot of steep and narrow alleys, lying
on a coast wild, rocky, and beaten by a stormy sea. The place was
then chiefly remarkable for a pier which, in the days of the
Plantagenets, had been constructed of stones, unhewn and
uncemented. This ancient work, known by the name of the Cob,
enclosed the only haven where, in a space of many miles, the
fishermen could take refuge from the tempests of the Channel.
The appearance of the three ships, foreign built and without
colours, perplexed the inhabitants of Lyme; and the uneasiness
increased when it was found that the Customhouse officers, who
had gone on board according to usage, did not return. The town's
people repaired to the cliffs, and gazed long and anxiously, but
could find no solution of the mystery. At length seven boats put
off from the largest of the strange vessels, and rowed to the
shore. From these boats landed about eighty men, well armed and
appointed. Among them were Monmouth, Grey, Fletcher, Ferguson,
Wade, and Anthony Buyse, an officer who had been in the service
of the Elector of Brandenburg.359
Monmouth commanded silence, kneeled down on the shore, thanked
God for having preserved the friends of liberty and pure religion
from the perils of the sea, and implored the divine blessing on
what was yet to be done by land. He then drew his sword, and led
his men over the cliffs into the town.
As soon as it was known under what leader and for what purpose
the expedition came, the enthusiasm of the populace burst through
all restraints. The little town was in an uproar with men running
to and fro, and shouting "A Monmouth! a Monmouth! the Protestant
religion!" Meanwhile the ensign of the adventurers, a blue flag,
was set up in the marketplace. The military stores were deposited
in the town hall; and a Declaration setting forth the objects of
the expedition was read from the Cross.360
This Declaration, the masterpiece of Ferguson's genius, was not a
grave manifesto such as ought to be put forth by a leader drawing
the sword for a great public cause, but a libel of the lowest
class, both in sentiment and language.361 It contained
undoubtedly many just charges against the government. But these
charges were set forth in the prolix and inflated style of a bad
pamphlet; and the paper contained other charges of which the
whole disgrace falls on those who made them. The Duke of York, it
was positively affirmed, had burned down London, had strangled
Godfrey, had cut the throat of Essex, and had poisoned the late
King. On account of those villanous and unnatural crimes, but
chiefly of that execrable fact, the late horrible and barbarous
parricide,-such was the copiousness and such the felicity of
Ferguson's diction,-James was declared a mortal and bloody
enemy, a tyrant, a murderer, and an usurper. No treaty should be
made with him. The sword should not be sheathed till he had been
brought to condign punishment as a traitor. The government should
be settled on principles favourable to liberty. All Protestant
sects should be tolerated. The forfeited charters should be
restored. Parliament should be held annually, and should no
longer be prorogued or dissolved by royal caprice. The only
standing force should be the militia: the militia should be
commanded by the Sheriffs; and the Sheriffs should be chosen by
the freeholders. Finally Monmouth declared that he could prove
himself to have been born in lawful wedlock, and to be, by right
of blood, King of England, but that, for the present, he waived
his claims, that he would leave them to the judgment of a free
Parliament, and that, in the meantime, he desired to be
considered only as the Captain General of the English
Protestants, who were in arms against tyranny and Popery.
Disgraceful as this manifesto was to those who put it forth, it
was not unskilfully framed for the purpose of stimulating the
passions of the vulgar. In the West the effect was great. The
gentry and clergy of that part of England were indeed, with few
exceptions, Tories. But the yeomen, the traders of the towns, the
peasants, and the artisans were generally animated by the old
Roundhead spirit. Many of them were Dissenters, and had been
goaded by petty persecution into a temper fit for desperate
enterprise. The great mass of the population abhorred Popery and
adored Monmouth. He was no stranger to them. His progress through
Somersetshire and Devonshire in the. summer of 1680 was still
fresh in the memory of all men.
He was on that occasion sumptuously entertained by Thomas Thynne
at Longleat Hall, then, and perhaps still, the most magnificent
country house in England. From Longleat to Exeter the hedges were
lined with shouting spectators. The roads were strewn with boughs
and flowers. The multitude, in their eagerness to see and touch
their favourite, broke down the palings of parks, and besieged
the mansions where he was feasted. When he reached Chard his
escort consisted of five thousand horsemen. At Exeter all
Devonshire had been gathered together to welcome him. One
striking part of the show was a company of nine hundred young men
who, clad in a white uniform, marched before him into the
city.362 The turn of fortune which had alienated the gentry from
his cause had produced no effect on the common people. To them he
was still the good Duke, the Protestant Duke, the rightful heir
whom a vile conspiracy kept out of his own. They came to his
standard in crowds. All the clerks whom he could employ were too
few to take down the names of the recruits. Before he had been
twenty-four hours on English ground he was at the head of fifteen
hundred men. Dare arrived from Taunton with forty horsemen of no
very martial appearance, and brought encouraging intelligence as
to the state of public feeling in Somersetshire. As Yet all
seemed to promise well.363
But a force was collecting at Bridport to oppose the insurgents.
On the thirteenth of June the red regiment of Dorsetshire militia
came pouring into that town. The Somersetshire, or yellow
regiment, of which Sir William Portman, a Tory gentleman of great
note, was Colonel, was expected to arrive on the following
day.364 The Duke determined to strike an immediate blow. A
detachment of his troops was preparing to march to Bridport when
a disastrous event threw the whole camp into confusion.
Fletcher of Saltoun had been appointed to command the cavalry
under Grey. Fletcher was ill mounted; and indeed there were few
chargers in the camp which had not been taken from the plough.
When he was ordered to Bridport, he thought that the exigency of
the case warranted him in borrowing, without asking permission, a
fine horse belonging to Dare. Dare resented this liberty, and
assailed Fletcher with gross abuse. Fletcher kept his temper
better than any one who knew him expected. At last Dare,
presuming on the patience with which his insolence had been
endured, ventured to shake a switch at the high born and high
spirited Scot Fletcher's blood boiled. He drew a pistol and shot
Dare dead. Such sudden and violent revenge would not have been
thought strange in Scotland, where the law had always been weak,
where he who did not right himself by the strong hand was not
likely to be righted at all, and where, consequently, human life
was held almost as cheap as in the worst governed provinces of
Italy. But the people of the southern part of the island were not
accustomed to see deadly weapons used and blood spilled on
account of a rude word or gesture, except in duel between
gentlemen with equal arms. There was a general cry for vengeance
on the foreigner who had murdered an Englishman. Monmouth could
not resist the clamour. Fletcher, who, when his first burst of
rage had spent itself, was overwhelmed with remorse and sorrow,
took refuge on board of the Helderenbergh, escaped to the
Continent, and repaired to Hungary, where he fought bravely
against the common enemy of Christendom.365
Situated as the insurgents were, the loss of a man of parts and
energy was not easily to be repaired. Early on the morning of the
following day, the fourteenth of June, Grey, accompanied by Wade,
marched with about five hundred men to attack Bridport. A
confused and indecisive action took place, such as was to be
expected when two bands of ploughmen, officered by country
gentlemen and barristers, were opposed to each other. For a time
Monmouth's men drove the militia before them. Then the militia
made a stand, and Monmouth's men retreated in some confusion.
Grey and his cavalry never stopped till they were safe at Lyme
again: but Wade rallied the infantry and brought them off in good
order.366
There was a violent outcry against Grey; and some of the
adventurers pressed Monmouth to take a severe course. Monmouth,
however, would not listen to this advice. His lenity has been
attributed by some writers to his good nature, which undoubtedly
often amounted to weakness. Others have supposed that he was
unwilling to deal harshly with the only peer who served in his
army. It is probable, however, that the Duke, who, though not a
general of the highest order, understood war very much better
than the preachers and lawyers who were always obtruding their
advice on him, made allowances which people altogether inexpert
in military affairs never thought of making. In justice to a man
who has had few defenders, it must be observed that the task,
which, throughout this campaign, was assigned to Grey, was one
which, if he had been the boldest and most skilful of soldiers,
he would scarcely have performed in such a manner as to gain
credit. He was at the head of the cavalry. It is notorious that a
horse soldier requires a longer training than a foot soldier, and
that the war horse requires a longer training than his rider.
Something may be done with a raw infantry which has enthusiasm
and animal courage: but nothing can be more helpless than a raw
cavalry, consisting of yeomen and tradesmen mounted on cart
horses and post horses; and such was the cavalry which Grey
commanded. The wonder is, not that his men did not stand fire
with resolution, not that they did not use their weapons with
vigour, but that they were able to keep their seats.
Still recruits came in by hundreds. Arming and drilling went on
all day. Meantime the news of the insurrection had spread fast
and wide. On the evening on which the Duke landed, Gregory
Alford, Mayor of Lyme, a zealous Tory, and a bitter persecutor of
Nonconformists, sent off his servants to give the alarm to the
gentry of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire, and himself took horse
for the West. Late at night he stopped at Honiton, and thence
despatched a few hurried lines to London with the ill tidings.367
He then pushed on to Exeter, where he found Christopher Monk,
Duke of Albemarle. This nobleman, the son and heir of George
Monk, the restorer of the Stuarts, was Lord Lieutenant of
Devonshire, and was then holding a muster of militia. Four
thousand men of the trainbands were actually assembled under his
command. He seems to have thought that, with this force, he
should be able at once to crush the rebellion. He therefore
marched towards Lyme.
But when, on the afternoon of Monday the fifteenth of June, he
reached Axminster, he found the insurgents drawn up there to
encounter him. They presented a resolute front. Four field pieces
were pointed against the royal troops. The thick hedges, which on
each side overhung the narrow lanes, were lined with musketeers.
Albemarle, however, was less alarmed by the preparations of the
enemy than by the spirit which appeared in his own ranks. Such
was Monmouth's popularity among the common people of Devonshire
that, if once the trainbands had caught sight of his well known
face and figure, they would have probably gone over to him in a
body.
Albemarle, therefore, though he had a great superiority of force,
thought it advisable to retreat. The retreat soon became a rout.
The whole country was strewn with the arms and uniforms which the
fugitives had thrown away; and, had Monmouth urged the pursuit
with vigour, he would probably have taken Exeter without a blow.
But he was satisfied with the advantage which he had gained, and
thought it desirable that his recruits should be better trained
before they were employed in any hazardous service. He therefore
marched towards Taunton, where he arrived on the eighteenth of
June, exactly a week after his landing.368
The Court and the Parliament had been greatly moved by the news
from the West. At five in the morning of Saturday the thirteenth
of June, the King had received the letter which the Mayor of Lyme
had despatched from Honiton. The Privy Council was instantly
called together. Orders were given that the strength of every
company of infantry and of every troop of cavalry should be
increased. Commissions were issued for the levying of new
regiments. Alford's communication was laid before the Lords; and
its substance was communicated to the Commons by a message. The
Commons examined the couriers who had arrived from the West, and
instantly ordered a bill to be brought in for attainting Monmouth
of high treason. Addresses were voted assuring the King that both
his peers and his people were determined to stand by him with
life and fortune against all his enemies. At the next meeting of
the Houses they ordered the Declaration of the rebels to be
burned by the hangman, and passed the bill of attainder through
all its stages. That bill received the royal assent on the same
day; and a reward of five thousand pounds was promised for the
apprehension of Monmouth.369
The fact that Monmouth was in arms against the government was so
notorious that the bill of attainder became a law with only a
faint show of opposition from one or two peers, and has seldom
been severely censured even by Whig historians. Yet, when we
consider how important it is that legislative and judicial
functions should be kept distinct, how important it is that
common fame, however strong and general, should not be received
as a legal proof of guilt, how important it is to maintain the
rule that no man shall be condemned to death without an
opportunity of defending himself, and how easily and speedily
breaches in great principles, when once made, are widened, we
shall probably be disposed to think that the course taken by the
Parliament was open to some objection. Neither House had before
it anything which even so corrupt a judge as Jeffreys could have
directed a jury to consider as proof of Monmouth's crime. The
messengers examined by the Commons were not on oath, and might
therefore have related mere fictions without incurring the
penalties of perjury. The Lords, who might have administered an
oath, appeared not to have examined any witness, and to have had
no evidence before them except the letter of the Mayor of Lyme,
which, in the eye of the law, was no evidence at all. Extreme
danger, it is true, justifies extreme remedies. But the Act of
Attainder was a remedy which could not operate till all danger
was over, and which would become superfluous at the very moment
at which it ceased to be null. While Monmouth was in arms it was
impossible to execute him. If he should be vanquished and taken,
there would be no hazard and no difficulty in trying him. It was
afterwards remembered as a curious circumstance that, among
zealous Tories who went up with the bill from the House of
Commons to the bar of the Lords, was Sir John Fenwick, member for
Northumberland. This gentleman, a few years later, had occasion
to reconsider the whole subject, and then came to the conclusion
that acts of attainder are altogether unjustifiable.370
The Parliament gave other proofs of loyalty in this hour of
peril. The Commons authorised the King to raise an extraordinary
sum of four hundred thousand pounds for his present necessities,
and that he might have no difficulty in finding the money,
proceeded to devise new imposts. The scheme of taxing houses
lately built in the capital was revived and strenuously supported
by the country gentlemen. It was resolved not only that such
houses should be taxed, but that a bill should be brought in
prohibiting the laying of any new foundations within the bills of
mortality. The resolution, however, was not carried into effect.
Powerful men who had land in the suburbs and who hoped to see new
streets and squares rise on their estates, exerted all their
influence against the project. It was found that to adjust the
details would be a work of time; and the King's wants were so
pressing that he thought it necessary to quicken the movements of
the House by a gentle exhortation to speed. The plan of taxing
buildings was therefore relinquished; and new duties were imposed
for a term of five years on foreign silks, linens, and
spirits.371
The Tories of the Lower House proceeded to introduce what they
called a bill for the preservation of the King's person and
government. They proposed that it should be high treason to say
that Monmouth was legitimate, to utter any words tending to bring
the person or government of the sovereign into hatred or
contempt, or to make any motion in Parliament for changing the
order of succession. Some of these provisions excited general
disgust and alarm. The Whigs, few and weak as they were,
attempted to rally, and found themselves reinforced by a
considerable number of moderate and sensible Cavaliers. Words, it
was said, may easily be misunderstood by a dull man. They may be
easily misconstrued by a knave. What was spoken metaphorically
may be apprehended literally. What was spoken ludicrously may be
apprehended seriously. A particle, a tense, a mood, an emphasis,
may make the whole difference between guilt and innocence. The
Saviour of mankind himself, in whose blameless life malice could
find no acts to impeach, had been called in question for words
spoken. False witnesses had suppressed a syllable which would
have made it clear that those words were figurative, and had thus
furnished the Sanhedrim with a pretext under which the foulest of
all judicial murders had been perpetrated. With such an example
on record, who could affirm that, if mere talk were made a
substantive treason, the most loyal subject would be safe? These
arguments produced so great an effect that in the committee
amendments were introduced which greatly mitigated the severity
of the bill. But the clause which made it high treason in a
member of Parliament to propose the exclusion of a prince of the
blood seems to have raised no debate, and was retained. That
clause was indeed altogether unimportant, except as a proof of
the ignorance and inexperience of the hotheaded Royalists who
thronged the House of Commons. Had they learned the first
rudiments of legislation, they would have known that the
enactment to which they attached so much value would be
superfluous while the Parliament was disposed to maintain the
order of succession, and would be repealed as soon as there was a
Parliament bent on changing the order of succession.372
The bill, as amended, was passed and carried up to the Lords, but
did not become law. The King had obtained from the Parliament all
the pecuniary assistance that he could expect; and he conceived
that, while rebellion was actually raging, the loyal nobility and
gentry would be of more use in their counties than at
Westminster. He therefore hurried their deliberations to a close,
and, on the second of July, dismissed them. On the same day the
royal assent was given to a law reviving that censorship of the
press which had terminated in 1679. This object was affected by a
few words at the end of a miscellaneous statute which continued
several expiring acts. The courtiers did not think that they had
gained a triumph. The Whigs did not utter a murmur. Neither in
the Lords nor in the Commons was there any division, or even, as
far as can now be learned, any debate on a question which would,
in our age, convulse the whole frame of society. In truth, the
change was slight and almost imperceptible; for, since the
detection of the Rye House plot, the liberty of unlicensed
printing had existed only in name. During many months scarcely
one Whig pamphlet had been published except by stealth; and by
stealth such pamphlets might be published still.373
The Houses then rose. They were not prorogued, but only
adjourned, in order that, when they should reassemble, they might
take up their business in the exact state in which they had left
it.374
While the Parliament was devising sharp laws against Monmouth and
his partisans, he found at Taunton a reception which might well
encourage him to hope that his enterprise would have a prosperous
issue. Taunton, like most other towns in the south of England,
was, in that age, more important than at present. Those towns
have not indeed declined. On the contrary, they are, with very
few exceptions, larger and richer, better built and better
peopled, than in the seventeenth century. But, though they have
positively advanced, they have relatively gone back. They have
been far outstripped in wealth and population by the great
manufacturing and commercial cities of the north, cities which,
in the time of the Stuarts, were but beginning to be known as
seats of industry. When Monmouth marched into Taunton it was an
eminently prosperous place. Its markets were plentifully
supplied. It was a celebrated seat of the woollen manufacture.
The people boasted that they lived in a land flowing with milk
and honey. Nor was this language held only by partial natives;
for every stranger who climbed the graceful tower of St. Mary
Magdalene owned that he saw beneath him the most fertile of
English valleys. It was a country rich with orchards and green
pastures, among which were scattered, in gay abundance, manor
houses, cottages, and village spires. The townsmen had long
leaned towards Presbyterian divinity and Whig politics. In the
great civil war Taunton had, through all vicissitudes, adhered to
the Parliament, had been twice closely besieged by Goring, and
had been twice defended with heroic valour by Robert Blake,
afterwards the renowned Admiral of the Commonwealth. Whole
streets had been burned down by the mortars and grenades of the
Cavaliers. Food had been so scarce that the resolute governor had
announced his intention of putting the garrison on rations of
horse flesh. But the spirit of the town had never been subdued
either by fire or by hunger.375
The Restoration had produced no effect on the temper of the
Taunton men. They had still continued to celebrate the
anniversary of the happy day on which the siege laid to their
town by the royal army had been raised; and their stubborn
attachment to the old cause had excited so much fear and
resentment at Whitehall that, by a royal order, their moat had
been filled up, and their wall demolished to the foundation.376
The puritanical spirit had been kept up to the height among them
by the precepts and example of one of the most celebrated of the
dissenting clergy, Joseph Alleine. Alleine was the author of a
tract, entitled, An Alarm to the Unconverted, which is still
popular both in England and in America. From the gaol to which he
was consigned by the victorious Cavaliers, he addressed to his
loving friends at Taunton many epistles breathing the spirit of a
truly heroic piety. His frame soon sank under the effects of
study, toil, and persecution: but his memory was long cherished
with exceeding love and reverence by those whom he had exhorted
and catechised.377
The children of the men who, forty years before, had manned the
ramparts of Taunton against the Royalists, now welcomed Monmouth
with transports of joy and affection. Every door and window was
adorned with wreaths of flowers. No man appeared in the streets
without wearing in his hat a green bough, the badge of the
popular cause. Damsels of the best families in the town wove
colours for the insurgents. One flag in particular was
embroidered gorgeously with emblems of royal dignity, and was
offered to Monmouth by a train of young girls. He received the
gift with the winning courtesy which distinguished him. The lady
who headed the procession presented him also with a small Bible
of great price. He took it with a show of reverence. "I come," he
said, "to defend the truths contained in this book, and to seal
them, if it must be so, with my blood."378
But while Monmouth enjoyed the applause of the multitude, he
could not but perceive, with concern and apprehension, that the
higher classes were. with scarcely an exception, hostile to his
undertaking, and that no rising had taken place except in the
counties where he had himself appeared. He had been assured by
agents, who professed to have derived their information from
Wildman, that the whole Whig aristocracy was eager to take arms.
Nevertheless more than a week had now elapsed since the blue
standard had been set up at Lyme. Day labourers, small farmers,
shopkeepers, apprentices, dissenting preachers, had flocked to
the rebel camp: but not a single peer, baronet, or knight, not a
single member of the House of Commons, and scarcely any esquire
of sufficient note to have ever been in the commission of the
peace, had joined the invaders. Ferguson, who, ever since the
death of Charles, had been Monmouth's evil angel, had a
suggestion ready. The Duke had put himself into a false position
by declining the royal title. Had he declared himself sovereign
of England, his cause would have worn a show of legality. At
present it was impossible to reconcile his Declaration with the
principles of the constitution. It was clear that either Monmouth
or his uncle was rightful King. Monmouth did not venture to
pronounce himself the rightful King, and yet denied that his
uncle was so. Those who fought for James fought for the only
person who ventured to claim the throne, and were therefore
clearly in their duty, according to the laws of the realm. Those
who fought for Monmouth fought for some unknown polity, which was
to be set up by a convention not yet in existence. None could
wonder that men of high rank and ample fortune stood aloof from
an enterprise which threatened with destruction that system in
the permanence of which they were deeply interested. If the Duke
would assert his legitimacy and assume the crown, he would at
once remove this objection. The question would cease to be a
question between the old constitution and a new constitution. It
would be merely a question of hereditary right between two
princes.
On such grounds as these Ferguson, almost immediately after the
landing, had earnestly pressed the Duke to proclaim himself King;
and Grey had seconded Ferguson. Monmouth had been very willing to
take this advice; but Wade and other republicans had been
refractory; and their chief, with his usual pliability, had
yielded to their arguments. At Taunton the subject was revived.
Monmouth talked in private with the dissentients, assured them
that he saw no other way of obtaining the support of any portion
of the aristocracy, and succeeded in extorting their reluctant
consent. On the morning of the twentieth of June he was
proclaimed in the market place of Taunton. His followers repeated
his new title with affectionate delight. But, as some confusion
might have arisen if he had been called King James the Second,
they commonly used the strange appellation of King Monmouth: and
by this name their unhappy favourite was often mentioned in the
western counties, within the memory of persons still living.379
Within twenty-four hours after he had assumed the regal title, he
put forth several proclamations headed with his sign manual. By
one of these he set a price on the head of his rival. Another
declared the Parliament then sitting at Westminster an unlawful
assembly, and commanded the members to disperse. A third forbade
the people to pay taxes to the usurper. A fourth pronounced
Albemarle a traitor.380
Albemarle transmitted these proclamations to London merely as
specimens of folly and impertinence. They produced no effect,
except wonder and contempt; nor had Monmouth any reason to think
that the assumption of royalty had improved his position. Only a
week had elapsed since he had solemnly bound himself not to take
the crown till a free Parliament should have acknowledged his
rights. By breaking that engagement he had incurred the
imputation of levity, if not of perfidy. The class which he had
hoped to conciliate still stood aloof. The reasons which
prevented the great Whig lords and gentlemen from recognising him
as their King were at least as strong as those which had
prevented them from rallying round him as their Captain General.
They disliked indeed the person, the religion, and the politics
of James. But James was no longer young. His eldest daughter was
justly popular. She was attached to the reformed faith. She was
married to a prince who was the hereditary chief of the
Protestants of the Continent, to a prince who had been bred in a
republic, and whose sentiments were supposed to be such as became
a constitutional King. Was it wise to incur the horrors of civil
war, for the mere chance of being able to effect immediately what
nature would, without bloodshed, without any violation of law,
effect, in all probability, before many years should have
expired? Perhaps there might be reasons for pulling down James.
But what reason could be given for setting up Monmouth? To
exclude a prince from the throne on account of unfitness was a
course agreeable to Whig principles. But on no principle could it
be proper to exclude rightful heirs, who were admitted to be, not
only blameless, but eminently qualified for the highest public
trust. That Monmouth was legitimate, nay, that he thought himself
legitimate, intelligent men could not believe. He was therefore
not merely an usurper, but an usurper of the worst sort, an
impostor. If he made out any semblance of a case, he could do so
only by means of forgery and perjury. All honest and sensible
persons were unwilling to see a fraud which, if practiced to
obtain an estate, would have been punished with the scourge and
the pillory, rewarded with the English crown. To the old nobility
of the realm it seemed insupportable that the bastard of Lucy
Walters should be set up high above the lawful descendants of the
Fitzalans and De Veres. Those who were capable of looking forward
must have seen that, if Monmouth should succeed in overpowering
the existing government, there would still remain a war between
him and the House of Orange, a war which might last longer and
produce more misery than the war of the Roses, a war which might
probably break up the Protestants of Europe into hostile parties,
might arm England and Holland against each other, and might make
both those countries an easy prey to France. The opinion,
therefore, of almost all the leading Whigs seems to have been
that Monmouth's enterprise could not fail to end in some great
disaster to the nation, but that, on the whole, his defeat would
be a less disaster than his victory.
It was not only by the inaction of the Whig aristocracy that the
invaders were disappointed. The wealth and power of London had
sufficed in the preceding generation, and might again suffice, to
turn the scale in a civil conflict. The Londoners had formerly
given many proofs of their hatred of Popery and of their
affection for the Protestant Duke. He had too readily believed
that, as soon as he landed, there would be a rising in the
capital. But, though advices came down to him that many thousands
of the citizens had been enrolled as volunteers for the good
cause, nothing was done. The plain truth was that the agitators
who had urged him to invade England, who had promised to rise on
the first signal, and who had perhaps imagined, while the danger
was remote, that they should have the courage to keep their
promise, lost heart when the critical time drew near. Wildman's
fright was such that he seemed to have lost his understanding.
The craven Danvers at first excused his inaction by saying that
he would not take up arms till Monmouth was proclaimed King, and.
when Monmouth had been proclaimed King, turned round and declared
that good republicans were absolved from all engagements to a
leader who had so shamefully broken faith. In every age the
vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among
demagogues.381
On the day following that on which Monmouth had assumed the regal
title he marched from Taunton to Bridgewater. His own spirits, it
was remarked, were not high. The acclamations of the devoted
thousands who surrounded him wherever he turned could not dispel
the gloom which sate on his brow. Those who had seen him during
his progress through Somersetshire five years before could not
now observe without pity the traces of distress and anxiety on
those soft and pleasing features which had won so many hearts.382
Ferguson was in a very different temper. With this man's knavery
was strangely mingled an eccentric vanity which resembled
madness. The thought that he had raised a rebellion and bestowed
a crown had turned his head. He swaggered about, brandishing his
naked sword, and crying to the crowd of spectators who had
assembled to see the army march out of Taunton, "Look at me! You
have heard of me. I am Ferguson, the famous Ferguson, the
Ferguson for whose head so many hundred pounds have been
offered." And this man, at once unprincipled and brainsick, had
in his keeping the understanding and the conscience of the
unhappy Monmouth.383
Bridgewater was one of the few towns which still had some Whig
magistrates. The Mayor and Aldermen came in their robes to
welcome the Duke, walked before him in procession to the high
cross, and there proclaimed him King. His troops found excellent
quarters, and were furnished with necessaries at little or no
cost by the people of the town and neighbourhood. He took up his
residence in the Castle, a building which had been honoured by
several royal visits. In the Castle Field his army was encamped.
It now consisted of about six thousand men, and might easily have
been increased to double the number, but for the want of arms.
The Duke had brought with him from the Continent but a scanty
supply of pikes and muskets. Many of his followers had,
therefore, no other weapons than such as could be fashioned out
of the tools which they had used in husbandry or mining. Of these
rude implements of war the most formidable was made by fastening
the blade of a scythe erect on a strong pole.384 The tithing men
of the country round Taunton and Bridgewater received orders to
search everywhere for scythes and to bring all that could be
found to the camp. It was impossible, however, even with the help
of these contrivances, to supply the demand; and great numbers
who were desirous to enlist were sent away.385
The foot were divided into six regiments. Many of the men had
been in the militia, and still wore their uniforms, red and
yellow. The cavalry were about a thousand in number; but most of
them had only large colts, such as were then bred in great herds
on the marshes of Somersetshire for the purpose of supplying
London with coach horses and cart horses. These animals were so
far from being fit for any military purpose that they had not yet
learned to obey the bridle, and became ungovernable as soon as
they heard a gun fired or a drum beaten. A small body guard of
forty young men, well armed, and mounted at their own charge,
attended Monmouth. The people of Bridgewater, who were enriched
by a thriving coast trade, furnished him with a small sum of
money.386
All this time the forces of the government were fast assembling.
On the west of the rebel army, Albemarle still kept together a
large body of Devonshire militia. On the east, the trainbands of
Wiltshire had mustered under the command of Thomas Herbert, Earl
of Pembroke. On the north east, Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort,
was in arms. The power of Beaufort bore some faint resemblance to
that of the great barons of the fifteenth century. He was
President of Wales and Lord Lieutenant of four English counties.
His official tours through the extensive region in which he
represented the majesty of the throne were scarcely inferior in
pomp to royal progresses. His household at Badminton was
regulated after the fashion of an earlier generation. The land to
a great extent round his pleasure grounds was in his own hands;
and the labourers who cultivated it formed part of his family.
Nine tables were every day spread under his roof for two hundred
persons. A crowd of gentlemen and pages were under the orders of
the steward. A whole troop of cavalry obeyed the master of the
horse. The fame of the kitchen, the cellar, the kennel, and the
stables was spread over all England. The gentry, many miles
round, were proud of the magnificence of their great neighbour,
and were at the same time charmed by his affability and good
nature. He was a zealous Cavalier of the old school. At this
crisis, therefore, he used his whole influence and authority in
support of the crown, and occupied Bristol with the trainbands of
Gloucestershire, who seem to have been better disciplined than
most other troops of that description.387
In the counties more remote from Somersetshire the supporters of
the throne were on the alert. The militia of Sussex began to
march westward, under the command of Richard, Lord Lumley, who,
though he had lately been converted from the Roman Catholic
religion, was still firm in his allegiance to a Roman Catholic
King. James Bertie, Earl of Abingdon, called out the array of
Oxfordshire. John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, who was also Dean of
Christchurch, summoned the undergraduates of his University to
take arms for the crown. The gownsmen crowded to give in their
names. Christchurch alone furnished near a hundred pikemen and
musketeers. Young noblemen and gentlemen commoners acted as
officers; and the eldest son of the Lord Lieutenant was
Colonel.388
But it was chiefly on the regular troops that the King relied.
Churchill had been sent westward with the Blues; and Feversham
was following with all the forces that could be spared from the
neighbourhood of London. A courier had started for Holland with a
letter directing Skelton instantly to request that the three
English regiments in the Dutch service might be sent to the
Thames. When the request was made, the party hostile to the House
of Orange, headed by the deputies of Amsterdam, again tried to
cause delay. But the energy of William, who had almost as much at
stake as James, and who saw Monmouth's progress with serious
uneasiness, bore down opposition, and in a few days the troops
sailed.389 The three Scotch regiments were already in England.
They had arrived at Gravesend in excellent condition, and James
had reviewed them on Blackheath. He repeatedly declared to the
Dutch Ambassador that he had never in his life seen finer or
better disciplined soldiers, and expressed the warmest gratitude
to the Prince of Orange and the States for so valuable and
seasonable a reinforcement This satisfaction, however, was not
unmixed. Excellently as the men went through their drill, they
were not untainted with Dutch politics and Dutch divinity. One of
them was shot and another flogged for drinking the Duke of
Monmouth's health. It was therefore not thought advisable to
place them in the post of danger. They were kept in the
neighbourhood of London till the end of the campaign. But their
arrival enabled the King to send to the West some infantry which
would otherwise have been wanted in the capital.390
While the government was thus preparing for a conflict with the
rebels in the field, precautions of a different kind were not
neglected. In London alone two hundred of those persons who were
thought most likely to be at the head of a Whig movement were
arrested. Among the prisoners were some merchants of great note.
Every man who was obnoxious to the Court went in fear. A general
gloom overhung the capital. Business languished on the Exchange;
and the theatres were so generally deserted that a new opera,
written by Dryden, and set off by decorations of unprecedented
magnificence, was withdrawn, because the receipts would not cover
the expenses of the performance.391 The magistrates and clergy
were everywhere active. the Dissenters were everywhere closely
observed. In Cheshire and Shropshire a fierce persecution raged;
in Northamptonshire arrests were numerous; and the gaol of Oxford
was crowded with prisoners. No Puritan divine, however moderate
his opinions, however guarded his conduct, could feel any
confidence that he should not be torn from his family and flung
into a dungeon.392
Meanwhile Monmouth advanced from Bridgewater harassed through the
whole march by Churchill, who appears to have done all that, with
a handful of men, it was possible for a brave and skilful officer
to effect. The rebel army, much annoyed, both by the enemy and by
a heavy fall of rain, halted in the evening of the twenty-second
of June at Glastonbury. The houses of the little town did not
afford shelter for so large a force. Some of the troops were
therefore quartered in the churches, and others lighted their
fires among the venerable ruins of the Abbey, once the wealthiest
religious house in our island. From Glastonbury the Duke marched
to Wells, and from Wells to Shepton Mallet.393
Hitherto he seems to have wandered from place to place with no
other object than that of collecting troops. It was now necessary
for him to form some plan of military operations. His first
scheme was to seize Bristol. Many of the chief inhabitants of
that important place were Whigs. One of the ramifications of the
Whig plot had extended thither. The garrison consisted only of
the Gloucestershire trainbands. If Beaufort and his rustic
followers could be overpowered before the regular troops arrived,
the rebels would at once find themselves possessed of ample
pecuniary resources; the credit of Monmouth's arms would be
raised; and his friends throughout the kingdom would be
encouraged to declare themselves. Bristol had fortifications
which, on the north of the Avon towards Gloucestershire, were
weak, but on the south towards Somersetshire were much stronger.
It was therefore determined that the attack should be made on the
Gloucestershire side. But for this purpose it was necessary to
take a circuitous route, and to cross the Avon at Keynsham. The
bridge at Keynsham had been partly demolished by the militia, and
was at present impassable. A detachment was therefore sent
forward to make the necessary repairs. The other troops followed
more slowly, and on the evening of the twenty-fourth of June
halted for repose at Pensford. At Pensford they were only five
miles from the Somersetshire side of Bristol; but the
Gloucestershire side, which could be reached only by going round
through Keynsham, was distant a long day's march.394
That night was one of great tumult and expectation in Bristol.
The partisans of Monmouth knew that he was almost within sight of
their city, and imagined that he would be among them before
daybreak. About an hour after sunset a merchantman lying at the
quay took fire. Such an occurrence, in a port crowded with
shipping, could not but excite great alarm. The whole river was
in commotion. The streets were crowded. Seditious cries were
heard amidst the darkness and confusion. It was afterwards
asserted, both by Whigs and by Tories, that the fire had been
kindled by the friends of Monmouth, in the hope that the
trainbands would be busied in preventing the conflagration from
spreading, and that in the meantime the rebel army would make a
bold push, and would enter the city on the Somersetshire side. If
such was the design of the incendiaries, it completely failed.
Beaufort, instead of sending his men to the quay, kept them all
night drawn up under arms round the beautiful church of Saint
Mary Redcliff, on the south of the Avon. He would see Bristol
burnt down, he said, nay, he would burn it down himself, rather
than that it should be occupied by traitors. He was able, with
the help of some regular cavalry which had joined him from
Chippenham a few hours before, to prevent an insurrection. It
might perhaps have been beyond his power at once to overawe the
malecontents within the walls and to repel an attack from
without: but no such attack was made. The fire, which caused so
much commotion at Bristol, was distinctly seen at Pensford.
Monmouth, however, did not think it expedient to change his plan.
He remained quiet till sunrise, and then marched to Keynsham.
There he found the bridge repaired. He determined to let his army
rest during the afternoon, and, as soon as night came, to proceed
to Bristol.395
But it was too late. The King's forces were now near at hand.
Colonel Oglethorpe, at the head of about a hundred men of the
Life Guards, dashed into Keynsham, scattered two troops of rebel
horse which ventured to oppose him, and retired after inflicting
much injury and suffering little. In these circumstances it was
thought necessary to relinquish the design on Bristol.396
But what was to be done? Several schemes were proposed and
discussed. It was suggested that Monmouth might hasten to
Gloucester, might cross the Severn there, might break down the
bridge behind him, and, with his right flank protected by the
river, might march through Worcestershire into Shropshire and
Cheshire. He had formerly made a progress through those counties,
and had been received there with as much enthusiasm as in
Somersetshire and Devonshire. His presence might revive the zeal
of his old friends; and his army might in a few days be swollen
to double its present numbers.
On full consideration, however, it appeared that this plan,
though specious, was impracticable. The rebels were ill shod for
such work as they had lately undergone, and were exhausted by
toiling, day after day, through deep mud under heavy rain.
Harassed and impeded as they would be at every stage by the
enemy's cavalry, they could not hope to reach Gloucester without
being overtaken by the main body of the royal troops, and forced
to a general action under every disadvantage.
Then it was proposed to enter Wiltshire. Persons who professed to
know that county well assured the Duke that he would be joined
there by such strong reinforcements as would make it safe for him
to give battle.397
He took this advice, and turned towards Wiltshire. He first
summoned Bath. But Bath was strongly garrisoned for the King; and
Feversham was fast approaching. The rebels, therefore made no
attempt on the walls, but hastened to Philip's Norton, where they
halted on the evening of the twenty-sixth of June.
Feversham followed them thither. Early on the morning of the
twenty-seventh they were alarmed by tidings that he was close at
hand. They got into order, and lined the hedges leading to the
town.
The advanced guard of the royal army soon appeared. It consisted
of about five hundred men, commanded by the Duke of Grafton, a
youth of bold spirit and rough manners, who was probably eager to
show that he had no share in the disloyal schemes of his half
brother. Grafton soon found himself in a deep lane with fences on
both sides of him, from which a galling fire of musketry was kept
up. Still he pushed boldly on till he came to the entrance of
Philip's Norton. There his way was crossed by a barricade, from
which a third fire met him full in front. His men now lost heart,
and made the best of their way back. Before they got out of the
lane more than a hundred of them had been killed or wounded.
Grafton's retreat was intercepted by some of the rebel cavalry:
but he cut his way gallantly through them, and came off safe.398
The advanced guard, thus repulsed, fell back on the main body of
the royal forces. The two armies were now face to face; and a few
shots were exchanged that did little or no execution. Neither
side was impatient to come to action. Feversham did not wish to
fight till his artillery came up, and fell back to Bradford.
Monmouth, as soon as the night closed in, quitted his position,
marched southward, and by daybreak arrived at Frome, where he
hoped to find reinforcements.
Frome was as zealous in his cause as either Taunton or
Bridgewater, but could do nothing to serve him. There had been a
rising a few days before; and Monmouth's declaration had been
posted up in the market place. But the news of this movement had
been carried to the Earl of Pembroke, who lay at no great
distance with the Wiltshire militia. He had instantly marched to
Frome, had routed a mob of rustics who, with scythes and
pitchforks, attempted to oppose him, had entered the town and had
disarmed the inhabitants. No weapons, therefore, were left there;
nor was Monmouth able to furnish any.399
The rebel army was in evil case. The march of the preceding night
had been wearisome. The rain had fallen in torrents; and the
roads had become mere quagmires. Nothing was heard of the
promised succours from Wiltshire. One messenger brought news that
Argyle's forces had been dispersed in Scotland. Another reported
that Feversham, having been joined by his artillery, was about to
advance. Monmouth understood war too well not to know that his
followers, with all their courage and all their zeal, were no
match for regular soldiers. He had till lately flattered himself
with the hope that some of those regiments which he had formerly
commanded would pass over to his standard: but that hope he was
now compelled to relinquish. His heart failed him. He could
scarcely muster firmness enough to give orders. In his misery he
complained bitterly of the evil counsellors who had induced him
to quit his happy retreat in Brabant. Against Wildman in
particular he broke forth into violent imprecations.400 And now
an ignominious thought rose in his weak and agitated mind. He
would leave to the mercy of the government the thousands who had,
at his call and for his sake, abandoned their quiet fields and
dwellings. He would steal away with his chief officers, would
gain some seaport before his flight was suspected, would escape
to the Continent, and would forget his ambition and his shame in
the arms of Lady Wentworth. He seriously discussed this scheme
with his leading advisers. Some of them, trembling for their
necks, listened to it with approbation; but Grey, who, by the
admission of his detractors, was intrepid everywhere except where
swords were clashing and guns going off around him, opposed the
dastardly proposition with great ardour, and implored the Duke to
face every danger rather than requite with ingratitude and
treachery the devoted attachment of the Western peasantry.401
The scheme of flight was abandoned: but it was not now easy to
form any plan for a campaign. To advance towards London would
have been madness; for the road lay right across Salisbury Plain;
and on that vast open space regular troops, and above all regular
cavalry, would have acted with every advantage against
undisciplined men. At this juncture a report reached the camp
that the rustics of the marshes near Axbridge had risen in
defence of the Protestant religion, had armed themselves with
flails, bludgeons, and pitchforks, and were assembling by
thousands at Bridgewater. Monmouth determined to return thither,
and to strengthen himself with these new allies.402
The rebels accordingly proceeded to Wells, and arrived there in
no amiable temper. They were, with few exceptions, hostile to
Prelacy; and they showed their hostility in a way very little to
their honour. They not only tore the lead from the roof of the
magnificent Cathedral to make bullets, an act for which they
might fairly plead the necessities of war, but wantonly defaced
the ornaments of the building. Grey with difficulty preserved the
altar from the insults of some ruffians who wished to carouse
round it, by taking his stand before it with his sword drawn.403
On Thursday, the second of July, Monmouth again entered
Bridgewater, In circumstances far less cheering than those in
which he had marched thence ten days before. The reinforcement
which he found there was inconsiderable. The royal army was close
upon him. At one moment he thought of fortifying the town; and
hundreds of labourers were summoned to dig trenches and throw up
mounds. Then his mind recurred to the plan of marching into
Cheshire, a plan which he had rejected as impracticable when he
was at Keynsham, and which assuredly was not more practicable now
that he was at Bridgewater.404
While he was thus wavering between projects equally hopeless, the
King's forces came in sight. They consisted of about two thousand
five hundred regular troops, and of about fifteen hundred of the
Wiltshire militia. Early on the morning of Sunday, the fifth of
July, they left Somerton, and pitched their tents that day about
three miles from Bridgewater, on the plain of Sedgemoor.
Dr. Peter Mew, Bishop of Winchester, accompanied them. This
prelate had in his youth borne arms for Charles the First against
the Parliament. Neither his years nor his profession had wholly
extinguished his martial ardour; and he probably thought that the
appearance of a father of the Protestant Church in the King's
camp might confirm the loyalty of some honest men who were
wavering between their horror of Popery and their horror of
rebellion.
The steeple of the parish church of Bridgewater is said to be the
loftiest of Somersetshire, and commands a wide view over the
surrounding country. Monmouth, accompanied by some of his
officers, went up to the top of the square tower from which the
spire ascends, and observed through a telescope the position of
the enemy. Beneath him lay a flat expanse, now rich with
cornfields and apple trees, but then, as its name imports, for
the most part a dreary morass. When the rains were heavy, and the
Parret and its tributary streams rose above their banks, this
tract was often flooded. It was indeed anciently part of that
great swamp which is renowned in our early chronicles as having
arrested the progress of two successive races of invaders, which
long protected the Celts against the aggressions of the kings of
Wessex, and which sheltered Alfred from the pursuit of the Danes.
In those remote times this region could be traversed only in
boats. It was a vast pool, wherein were scattered many islets of
shifting and treacherous soil, overhung with rank jungle, and
swarming with deer and wild swine. Even in the days of the
Tudors, the traveller whose journey lay from Ilchester to
Bridgewater was forced to make a circuit of several miles in
order to avoid the waters. When Monmouth looked upon Sedgemoor,
it had been partially reclaimed by art, and was intersected by
many deep and wide trenches which, in that country, are called
rhines. In the midst of the moor rose, clustering round the
towers of churches, a few villages of which the names seem to
indicate that they once were surrounded by waves. In one of these
villages, called Weston Zoyland, the royal cavalry lay; and
Feversham had fixed his headquarters there. Many persons still
living have seen the daughter of the servant girl who waited on
him that day at table; and a large dish of Persian ware, which
was set before him, is still carefully preserved in the
neighbourhood. It is to be observed that the population of
Somersetshire does not, like that of the manufacturing districts,
consist of emigrants from distant places. It is by no means
unusual to find farmers who cultivate the same land which their
ancestors cultivated when the Plantagenets reigned in England.
The Somersetshire traditions are therefore, of no small value to
a historian.405
At a greater distance from Bridgewater lies the village of
Middlezoy. In that village and its neighbourhood, the Wiltshire
militia were quartered, under the command of Pembroke. On the
open moor, not far from Chedzoy, were encamped several battalions
of regular infantry. Monmouth looked gloomily on them. He could
not but remember how, a few years before, he had, at the head of
a column composed of some of those very men, driven before him in
confusion the fierce enthusiasts who defended Bothwell Bridge He
could distinguish among the hostile ranks that gallant band which
was then called from the name of its Colonel, Dumbarton's
regiment, but which has long been known as the first of the line,
and which, in all the four quarters of the world, has nobly
supported its early reputation. "I know those men," said
Monmouth; "they will fight. If I had but them, all would go
well."406
Yet the aspect of the enemy was not altogether discouraging. The
three divisions of the royal army lay far apart from one another.
There was all appearance of negligence and of relaxed discipline
in all their movements. It was reported that they were drinking
themselves drunk with the Zoyland cider. The incapacity of
Feversham, who commanded in chief, was notorious. Even at this
momentous crisis he thought only of eating and sleeping.
Churchill was indeed a captain equal to tasks far more arduous
than that of scattering a crowd of ill armed and ill trained
peasants. But the genius, which, at a later period, humbled six
Marshals of France, was not now in its proper place. Feversham
told Churchill little, and gave him no encouragement to offer any
suggestion. The lieutenant, conscious of superior abilities and
science, impatient of the control of a chief whom he despised,
and trembling for the fate of the army, nevertheless preserved
his characteristic self-command, and dissembled his feelings so
well that Feversham praised his submissive alacrity, and promised
to report it to the King.407
Monmouth, having observed the disposition of the royal forces,
and having been apprised of the state in which they were,
conceived that a night attack might be attended with success. He
resolved to run the hazard; and preparations were instantly made.
It was Sunday; and his followers, who had, for the most part,
been brought up after the Puritan fashion, passed a great part of
the day in religious exercises. The Castle Field, in which the
army was encamped, presented a spectacle such as, since the
disbanding of Cromwell's soldiers, England had never seen. The
dissenting preachers who had taken arms against Popery, and some
of whom had probably fought in the great civil war, prayed and
preached in red coats and huge jackboots, with swords by their
sides. Ferguson was one of those who harangued. He took for his
text the awful imprecation by which the Israelites who dwelt
beyond Jordan cleared themselves from the charge ignorantly
brought against them by their brethren on the other side of the
river. "The Lord God of Gods, the Lord God of Gods, he knoweth;
and Israel he shall know. If it be in rebellion, or if in
transgression against the Lord, save us not this day."408
That an attack was to be made under cover of the night was no
secret in Bridgewater. The town was full of women, who had
repaired thither by hundreds from the surrounding region, to see
their husbands, sons, lovers, and brothers once more. There were
many sad partings that day; and many parted never to meet
again.409 The report of the intended attack came to the ears of a
young girl who was zealous for the King. Though of modest
character, she had the courage to resolve that she would herself
bear the intelligence to Feversham. She stole out of Bridgewater,
and made her way to the royal camp. But that camp was not a place
where female innocence could be safe. Even the officers,
despising alike the irregular force to which they were opposed,
and the negligent general who commanded them, had indulged
largely in wine, and were ready for any excess of licentiousness
and cruelty. One of them seized the unhappy maiden, refused to
listen to her errand, and brutally outraged her. She fled in
agonies of rage and shame, leaving the wicked army to its
doom.410
And now the time for the great hazard drew near. The night was
not ill suited for such an enterprise. The moon was indeed at the
full, and the northern streamers were shining brilliantly. But
the marsh fog lay so thick on Sedgemoor that no object could be
discerned there at the distance of fifty paces.411
The clock struck eleven; and the Duke with his body guard rode
out of the Castle. He was not in the frame of mind which befits
one who is about to strike a decisive blow. The very children who
pressed to see him pass observed, and long remembered, that his
look was sad and full of evil augury. His army marched by a
circuitous path, near six miles in length, towards the royal
encampment on Sedgemoor. Part of the route is to this day called
War Lane. The foot were led by Monmouth himself. The horse were
confided to Grey, in spite of the remonstrances of some who
remembered the mishap at Bridport. Orders were given that strict
silence should be preserved, that no drum should be beaten, and
no shot fired. The word by which the insurgents were to recognise
one another in the darkness was Soho. It had doubtless been
selected in allusion to Soho Fields in London, where their
leader's palace stood.412
At about one in the morning of Monday the sixth of July, the
rebels were on the open moor. But between them and the enemy lay
three broad rhines filled with water and soft mud. Two of these,
called the Black Ditch and the Langmoor Rhine, Monmouth knew that
he must pass. But, strange to say, the existence of a trench,
called the Bussex Rhine, which immediately covered the royal
encampment, had not been mentioned to him by any of his scouts.
The wains which carried the ammunition remained at the entrance
of the moor. The horse and foot, in a long narrow column, passed
the Black Ditch by a causeway. There was a similar causeway
across the Langmoor Rhine: but the guide, in the fog, missed his
way. There was some delay and some tumult before the error could
be rectified. At length the passage was effected: but, in the
confusion, a pistol went off. Some men of the Horse Guards, who
were on watch, heard the report, and perceived that a great
multitude was advancing through the mist. They fired their
carbines, and galloped off in different directions to give the
alarm. Some hastened to Weston Zoyland, where the cavalry lay.
One trooper spurred to the encampment of the infantry, and cried
out vehemently that the enemy was at hand. The drums of
Dumbarton's regiment beat to arms; and the men got fast into
their ranks. It was time; for Monmouth was already drawing up his
army for action. He ordered Grey to lead the way with the
cavalry, and followed himself at the head of the infantry. Grey
pushed on till his progress was unexpectedly arrested by the
Bussex Rhine. On the opposite side of the ditch the King's foot
were hastily forming in order of battle.
"For whom are you?" called out an officer of the Foot Guards.
"For the King," replied a voice from the ranks of the rebel
cavalry. "For which King?" was then demanded. The answer was a
shout of "King Monmouth," mingled with the war cry, which forty
years before had been inscribed on the colours of the
parliamentary regiments, "God with us." The royal troops
instantly fired such a volley of musketry as sent the rebel horse
flying in all directions. The world agreed to ascribe this
ignominious rout to Grey's pusillanimity. Yet it is by no means
clear that Churchill would have succeeded better at the head of
men who had never before handled arms on horseback, and whose
horses were unused, not only to stand fire, but to obey the rein.
A few minutes after the Duke's horse had dispersed themselves
over the moor, his infantry came up running fast, and guided
through the gloom by the lighted matches of Dumbarton's regiment.
Monmouth was startled by finding that a broad and profound trench
lay between him and the camp which he had hoped to surprise. The
insurgents halted on the edge of the rhine, and fired. Part of
the royal infantry on the opposite bank returned the fire. During
three quarters of an hour the roar of the musketry was incessant.
The Somersetshire peasants behaved themselves as if they had been
veteran soldiers, save only that they levelled their pieces too
high.
But now the other divisions of the royal army were in motion. The
Life Guards and Blues came pricking fast from Weston Zoyland, and
scattered in an instant some of Grey's horse, who had attempted
to rally. The fugitives spread a panic among their comrades in
the rear, who had charge of the ammunition. The waggoners drove
off at full speed, and never stopped till they were many miles
from the field of battle. Monmouth had hitherto done his part
like a stout and able warrior. He had been seen on foot, pike in
hand, encouraging his infantry by voice and by example. But he
was too well acquainted with military affairs not to know that
all was over. His men had lost the advantage which surprise and
darkness had given them. They were deserted by the horse and by
the ammunition waggons. The King's forces were now united and in
good order. Feversham had been awakened by the firing, had got
out of bed, had adjusted his cravat, had looked at himself well
in the glass, and had come to see what his men were doing.
Meanwhile, what was of much more importance, Churchill had
rapidly made an entirely new disposition of the royal infantry.
The day was about to break. The event of a conflict on an open
plain, by broad sunlight, could not be doubtful. Yet Monmouth
should have felt that it was not for him to fly, while thousands
whom affection for him had hurried to destruction were still
fighting manfully in his cause. But vain hopes and the intense
love of life prevailed. He saw that if he tarried the royal
cavalry would soon intercept his retreat. He mounted and rode
from the field.
Yet his foot, though deserted, made a gallant stand. The Life
Guards attacked them on the right, the Blues on the left; but the
Somersetshire clowns, with their scythes and the butt ends of
their muskets, faced the royal horse like old soldiers.
Oglethorpe made a vigorous attempt to break them and was manfully
repulsed. Sarsfield, a brave Irish officer, whose name afterwards
obtained a melancholy celebrity, charged on the other flank. His
men were beaten back. He was himself struck to the ground, and
lay for a time as one dead. But the struggle of the hardy rustics
could not last. Their powder and ball were spent. Cries were
heard of "Ammunition! For God's sake ammunition!" But no
ammunition was at hand. And now the King's artillery came up. It
had been posted half a mile off, on the high road from Weston
Zoyland to Bridgewater. So defective were then the appointments
of an English army that there would have been much difficulty in
dragging the great guns to the place where the battle was raging,
had not the Bishop of Winchester offered his coach horses and
traces for the purpose. This interference of a Christian prelate
in a matter of blood has, with strange inconsistency, been
condemned by some Whig writers who can see nothing criminal in
the conduct of the numerous Puritan ministers then in arms
against the government. Even when the guns had arrived, there was
such a want of gunners that a serjeant of Dumbarton's regiment
was forced to take on himself the management of several
pieces.413 The cannon, however, though ill served, brought the
engagement to a speedy close. The pikes of the rebel battalions
began to shake: the ranks broke; the King's cavalry charged
again, and bore down everything before them; the King's infantry
came pouring across the ditch. Even in that extremity the Mendip
miners stood bravely to their arms, and sold their lives dearly.
But the rout was in a few minutes complete. Three hundred of the
soldiers had been killed or wounded. Of the rebels more than a
thousand lay dead on the moor.414
So ended the last fight deserving the name of battle, that has
been fought on English ground. The impression left on the simple
inhabitants of the neighbourhood was deep and lasting. That
impression, indeed, has been frequently renewed. For even in our
own time the plough and the spade have not seldom turned up
ghastly memorials of the slaughter, skulls, and thigh bones, and
strange weapons made out of implements of husbandry. Old peasants
related very recently that, in their childhood, they were
accustomed to play on the moor at the fight between King James's
men and King Monmouth's men, and that King Monmouth's men always
raised the cry of Soho.415
What seems most extraordinary in the battle of Sedgemoor is that
the event should have been for a moment doubtful, and that the
rebels should have resisted so long. That five or six thousand
colliers and ploughmen should contend during an hour with half
that number of regular cavalry and infantry would now be thought
a miracle. Our wonder will, perhaps, be diminished when we
remember that, in the time of James the Second, the discipline of
the regular army was extremely lax, and that, on the other hand,
the peasantry were accustomed to serve in the militia. The
difference, therefore, between a regiment of the Foot Guards and
a regiment of clowns just enrolled, though doubtless
considerable, was by no means what it now is. Monmouth did not
lead a mere mob to attack good soldiers. For his followers were
not altogether without a tincture of soldiership; and Feversham's
troops, when compared with English troops of our time, might
almost he called a mob.
It was four o'clock: the sun was rising; and the routed army came
pouring into the streets of Bridgewater. The uproar, the blood,
the gashes, the ghastly figures which sank down and never rose
again, spread horror and dismay through the town. The pursuers,
too, were close behind. Those inhabitants who had favoured the
insurrection expected sack and massacre, and implored the
protection of their neighbours who professed the Roman Catholic
religion, or had made themselves conspicuous by Tory politics;
and it is acknowledged by the bitterest of Whig historians that
this protection was kindly and generously given.416
During that day the conquerors continued to chase the fugitives.
The neighbouring villagers long remembered with what a clatter of
horsehoofs and what a storm of curses the whirlwind of cavalry
swept by. Before evening five hundred prisoners had been crowded
into the parish church of Weston Zoyland. Eighty of them were
wounded; and five expired within the consecrated walls. Great
numbers of labourers were impressed for the purpose of burying
the slain. A few, who were notoriously partial to the vanquished
side, were set apart for the hideous office of quartering the
captives. The tithing men of the neighbouring parishes were
busied in setting up gibbets and providing chains. All this while
the bells of Weston Zoyland and Chedzoy rang joyously; and the
soldiers sang and rioted on the moor amidst the corpses. For the
farmers of the neighbourhood had made haste, as soon as the event
of the fight was known to send hogsheads of their best cider as
peace offerings to the victors.417
Feversham passed for a goodnatured man: but he was a foreigner,
ignorant of the laws and careless of the feelings of the English.
He was accustomed to the military license of France, and had
learned from his great kinsman, the conqueror and devastator of
the Palatinate, not indeed how to conquer, but how to devastate.
A considerable number of prisoners were immediately selected for
execution. Among them was a youth famous for his speed. Hopes
were held out to him that his life would be spared If he could
run a race with one of the colts of the marsh. The space through
which the man kept up with the horse is still marked by well
known bounds on the moor, and is about three quarters of a mile.
Feversham was not ashamed, after seeing the performance, to send
the wretched performer to the gallows. The next day a long line
of gibbets appeared on the road leading from Bridgewater to
Weston Zoyland. On each gibbet a prisoner was suspended. Four of
the sufferers were left to rot in irons.418
Meanwhile Monmouth, accompanied by Grey, by Buyse, and by a few
other friends, was flying from the field of battle. At Chedzoy he
stopped a moment to mount a fresh horse and to hide his blue
riband and his George. He then hastened towards the Bristol
Channel. From the rising ground on the north of the field of
battle he saw the flash and the smoke of the last volley fired by
his deserted followers. Before six o'clock he was twenty miles
from Sedgemoor. Some of his companions advised him to cross the
water, and seek refuge in Wales; and this would undoubtedly have
been his wisest course. He would have been in Wales many hours
before the news of his defeat was known there; and in a country
so wild and so remote from the seat of government, he might have
remained long undiscovered. He determined, however, to push for
Hampshire, in the hope that he might lurk in the cabins of
deerstealers among the oaks of the New Forest, till means of
conveyance to the Continent could be procured. He therefore, with
Grey and the German, turned to the southeast. But the way was
beset with dangers. The three fugitives had to traverse a country
in which every one already knew the event of the battle, and in
which no traveller of suspicious appearance could escape a close
scrutiny. They rode on all day, shunning towns and villages. Nor
was this so difficult as it may now appear. For men then living
could remember the time when the wild deer ranged freely through
a succession of forests from the banks of the Avon in Wiltshire
to the southern coast of Hampshire.419 At length, on Cranbourne
Chase, the strength of the horses failed. They were therefore
turned loose. The bridles and saddles were concealed. Monmouth
and his friends procured rustic attire, disguised themselves, and
proceeded on foot towards the New Forest. They passed the night
in the open air: but before morning they were Surrounded on every
side by toils. Lord Lumley, who lay at Ringwood with a strong
body of the Sussex militia, had sent forth parties in every
direction. Sir William Portman, with the Somerset militia, had
formed a chain of posts from the sea to the northern extremity of
Dorset. At five in the morning of the seventh, Grey, who had
wandered from his friends, was seized by two of the Sussex
scouts. He submitted to his fate with the calmness of one to whom
suspense was more intolerable than despair. "Since we landed," he
said, "I have not had one comfortable meal or one quiet night."
It could hardly be doubted that the chief rebel was not far off.
The pursuers redoubled their vigilance and activity. The cottages
scattered over the heathy country on the boundaries of
Dorsetshire and Hampshire were strictly examined by Lumley; and
the clown with whom Monmouth had changed clothes was discovered.
Portman came with a strong body of horse and foot to assist in
the search. Attention was soon drawn to a place well fitted to
shelter fugitives. It was an extensive tract of land separated by
an enclosure from the open country, and divided by numerous
hedges into small fields. In some of these fields the rye, the
pease, and the oats were high enough to conceal a man. Others
were overgrown with fern and brambles. A poor woman reported that
she had seen two strangers lurking in this covert. The near
prospect of reward animated the zeal of the troops. It was agreed
that every man who did his duty in the search should have a share
of the promised five thousand pounds. The outer fence was
strictly guarded: the space within was examined with
indefatigable diligence; and several dogs of quick scent were
turned out among the bushes. The day closed before the work could
be completed: but careful watch was kept all night. Thirty times
the fugitives ventured to look through the outer hedge: but
everywhere they found a sentinel on the alert: once they were
seen and fired at; they then separated and concealed themselves
in different hiding places.
At sunrise the next morning the search recommenced, and Buyse was
found. He owned that he had parted from the Duke only a few hours
before. The corn and copsewood were now beaten with more care
than ever. At length a gaunt figure was discovered hidden in a
ditch. The pursuers sprang on their prey. Some of them were about
to fire: but Portman forbade all violence. The prisoner's dress
was that of a shepherd; his beard, prematurely grey, was of
several days' growth. He trembled greatly, and was unable to
speak. Even those who had often seen him were at first in doubt
whether this were truly the brilliant and graceful Monmouth. His
pockets were searched by Portman, and in them were found, among
some raw pease gathered in the rage of hunger, a watch, a purse
of gold, a small treatise on fortification, an album filled with
songs, receipts, prayers, and charms, and the George with which,
many years before, King Charles the Second had decorated his
favourite son. Messengers were instantly despatched to Whitehall
with the good news, and with the George as a token that the news
was true. The prisoner was conveyed under a strong guard to
Ringwood.420
And all was lost; and nothing remained but that he should prepare
to meet death as became one who had thought himself not unworthy
to wear the crown of William the Conqueror and of Richard the
Lionhearted, of the hero of Cressy and of the hero of Agincourt.
The captive might easily have called to mind other domestic
examples, still better suited to his condition. Within a hundred
years, two sovereigns whose blood ran in his veins, one of them a
delicate woman, had been placed in the same situation in which he
now stood. They had shown, in the prison and on the scaffold,
virtue of which, in the season of prosperity, they had seemed
incapable, and had half redeemed great crimes and errors by
enduring with Christian meekness and princely dignity all that
victorious enemies could inflict. Of cowardice Monmouth had never
been accused; and, even had he been wanting in constitutional
courage, it might have been expected that the defect would be
supplied by pride and by despair. The eyes of the whole world
were upon him. The latest generations would know how, in that
extremity, he had borne himself. To the brave peasants of the
West he owed it to show that they had not poured forth their
blood for a leader unworthy of their attachment. To her who had
sacrificed everything for his sake he owed it so to bear himself
that, though she might weep for him, she should not blush for
him. It was not for him to lament and supplicate. His reason,
too, should have told him that lamentation and supplication would
be unavailing. He had done that which could never be forgiven. He
was in the grasp of one who never forgave.
But the fortitude of Monmouth was not that highest sort of
fortitude which is derived from reflection and from selfrespect;
nor had nature given him one of those stout hearts from which
neither adversity nor peril can extort any sign of weakness. His
courage rose and fell with his animal spirits. It was sustained
on the field of battle by the excitement of action. By the hope
of victory, by the strange influence of sympathy. All such aids
were now taken away. The spoiled darling of the court and of the
populace, accustomed to be loved and worshipped wherever he
appeared, was now surrounded by stern gaolers in whose eyes he
read his doom. Yet a few hours of gloomy seclusion, and he must
die a violent and shameful death. His heart sank within him. Life
seemed worth purchasing by any humiliation; nor could his mind,
always feeble, and now distracted by terror, perceive that
humiliation must degrade, but could not save him.
As soon as he reached Ringwood he wrote to the King. The letter
was that of a man whom a craven fear had made insensible to
shame. He professed in vehement terms his remorse for his
treason. He affirmed that, when be promised his cousins at the
Hague not to raise troubles in England, he had fully meant to
keep his word. Unhappily he had afterwards been seduced from his
allegiance by some horrid people who had heated his mind by
calumnies and misled him by sophistry; but now he abhorred them:
he abhorred himself. He begged in piteous terms that he might be
admitted to the royal presence. There was a secret which he could
not trust to paper, a secret which lay in a single word, and
which, if he spoke that word, would secure the throne against all
danger. On the following day he despatched letters, imploring the
Queen Dowager and the Lord Treasurer to intercede in his
behalf.421
When it was known in London how he had abased himself the general
surprise was great; and no man was more amazed than Barillon, who
had resided in England during two bloody proscriptions, and had
seen numerous victims, both of the Opposition and of the Court,
submit to their fate without womanish entreaties and
lamentations.422
Monmouth and Grey remained at Ringwood two days. They were then
carried up to London, under the guard of a large body of regular
troops and militia. In the coach with the Duke was an officer
whose orders were to stab the prisoner if a rescue were
attempted. At every town along the road the trainbands of the
neighbourhood had been mustered under the command of the
principal gentry. The march lasted three days, and terminated at
Vauxhall, where a regiment, commanded by George Legge, Lord
Dartmouth, was in readiness to receive the prisoners. They were
put on board of a state barge, and carried down the river to
Whitehall Stairs. Lumley and Portman had alternately watched the
Duke day and night till they had brought him within the walls of
the palace.423
Both the demeanour of Monmouth and that of Grey, during the
journey, filled all observers with surprise. Monmouth was
altogether unnerved. Grey was not only calm but cheerful, talked
pleasantly of horses, dogs, and field sports, and even made
jocose allusions to the perilous situation in which he stood.
The King cannot be blamed for determining that Monmouth should
suffer death. Every man who heads a rebellion against an
established government stakes his life on the event; and
rebellion was the smallest part of Monmouth's crime. He had
declared against his uncle a war without quarter. In the
manifesto put forth at Lyme, James had been held up to execration
as an incendiary, as an assassin who had strangled one innocent
man and cut the throat of another, and, lastly, as the poisoner
of his own brother. To spare an enemy who had not scrupled to
resort to such extremities would have been an act of rare,
perhaps of blamable generosity. But to see him and not to spare
him was an outrage on humanity and decency.424 This outrage the
King resolved to commit. The arms of the prisoner were bound
behind him with a silken cord; and, thus secured, he was ushered
into the presence of the implacable kinsman whom he had wronged.
Then Monmouth threw himself on the ground, and crawled to the
King's feet. He wept. He tried to embrace his uncle's knees with
his pinioned arms. He begged for life, only life, life at any
price. He owned that he had been guilty of a greet crime, but
tried to throw the blame on others, particularly on Argyle, who
would rather have put his legs into the boots than have saved his
own life by such baseness. By the ties of kindred, by the memory
of the late King, who had been the best and truest of brothers,
the unhappy man adjured James to show some mercy. James gravely
replied that this repentance was of the latest, that he was sorry
for the misery which the prisoner had brought on himself, but
that the case was not one for lenity. A Declaration, filled with
atrocious calumnies, had been put forth. The regal title had been
assumed. For treasons so aggravated there could be no pardon on
this side of the grave. The poor terrified Duke vowed that he had
never wished to take the crown, but had been led into that fatal
error by others. As to the Declaration, he had not written it: he
had not read it: he had signed it without looking at it: it was
all the work of Ferguson, that bloody villain Ferguson. "Do you
expect me to believe," said James, with contempt but too well
merited, "that you set your hand to a paper of such moment
without knowing what it contained?" One depth of infamy only
remained; and even to that the prisoner descended. He was
preeminently the champion of the Protestant religion. The
interest of that religion had been his plea for conspiring
against the government of his father, and for bringing on his
country the miseries of civil war; yet he was not ashamed to hint
that he was inclined to be reconciled to the Church of Rome. The
King eagerly offered him spiritual assistance, but said nothing
of pardon or respite. "Is there then no hope?" asked Monmouth.
James turned away in silence. Then Monmouth strove to rally his
courage, rose from his knees, and retired with a firmness which
he had not shown since his overthrow.425
Grey was introduced next. He behaved with a propriety and
fortitude which moved even the stern and resentful King, frankly
owned himself guilty, made no excuses, and did not once stoop to
ask his life. Both the prisoners were sent to the Tower by water.
There was no tumult; but many thousands of people, with anxiety
and sorrow in their faces, tried to catch a glimpse of the
captives. The Duke's resolution failed as soon as he had left the
royal presence. On his way to his prison he bemoaned himself,
accused his followers, and abjectly implored the intercession of
Dartmouth. "I know, my Lord, that you loved my father. For his
sake, for God's sake, try if there be any room for mercy."
Dartmouth replied that the King had spoken the truth, and that a
subject who assumed the regal title excluded himself from all
hope of pardon.426
Soon after Monmouth had been lodged in the Tower, he was informed
that his wife had, by the royal command, been sent to see him.
She was accompanied by the Earl of Clarendon, Keeper of the Privy
Seal. Her husband received her very coldly, and addressed almost
all his discourse to Clarendon whose intercession he earnestly
implored. Clarendon held out no hopes; and that same evening two
prelates, Turner, Bishop of Ely, and Ken, Bishop of Bath and
Wells, arrived at the Tower with a solemn message from the King.
It was Monday night. On Wednesday morning Monmouth was to die.
He was greatly agitated. The blood left his cheeks; and it was
some time before he could speak. Most of the short time which
remained to him he wasted in vain attempts to obtain, if not a
pardon, at least a respite. He wrote piteous letters to the King
and to several courtiers, but in vain. Some Roman Catholic
divines were sent to him from Whitehall. But they soon discovered
that, though he would gladly have purchased his life by
renouncing the religion of which he had professed himself in an
especial manner the defender, yet, if he was to die, he would as
soon die without their absolution as with it.427
Nor were Ken and Turner much better pleased with his frame of
mind. The doctrine of nonresistance was, in their view, as in the
view of most of their brethren, the distinguishing badge of the
Anglican Church. The two Bishops insisted on Monmouth's owning
that, in drawing the sword against the government, he had
committed a great sin; and, on this point, they found him
obstinately heterodox. Nor was this his only heresy. He
maintained that his connection with Lady Wentworth was blameless
in the sight of God. He had been married, he said, when a child.
He had never cared for his Duchess. The happiness which he had
not found at home he had sought in a round of loose amours,
condemned by religion and morality. Henrietta had reclaimed him
from a life of vice. To her he had been strictly constant. They
had, by common consent, offered up fervent prayers for the divine
guidance. After those prayers they had found their affection for
each other strengthened; and they could then no longer doubt
that, in the sight of God, they were a wedded pair. The Bishops
were so much scandalised by this view of the conjugal relation
that they refused to administer the sacrament to the prisoner.
All that they could obtain from him was a promise that, during
the single night which still remained to him, he would pray to be
enlightened if he were in error.
On the Wednesday morning, at his particular request, Doctor
Thomas Tenison, who then held the vicarage of Saint Martin's,
and, in that important cure, had obtained the high esteem of the
public, came to the Tower. From Tenison, whose opinions were
known to be moderate, the Duke expected more indulgence than Ken
and Turner were disposed to show. But Tenison, whatever might be
his sentiments concerning nonresistance in the abstract, thought
the late rebellion rash and wicked, and considered Monmouth's
notion respecting marriage as a most dangerous delusion. Monmouth
was obstinate. He had prayed, he said, for the divine direction.
His sentiments remained unchanged; and he could not doubt that
they were correct. Tenison's exhortations were in milder tone
than those of the Bishops. But he, like them, thought that he
should not be justified in administering the Eucharist to one
whose penitence was of so unsatisfactory a nature.428
The hour drew near: all hope was over; and Monmouth had passed
from pusillanimous fear to the apathy of despair. His children
were brought to his room that he might take leave of them, and
were followed by his wife. He spoke to her kindly, but without
emotion. Though she was a woman of great strength of mind, and
had little cause to love him, her misery was such that none of
the bystanders could refrain from weeping. He alone was
unmoved.429
It was ten o'clock. The coach of the Lieutenant of the Tower was
ready. Monmouth requested his spiritual advisers to accompany him
to the place of execution; and they consented: but they told him
that, in their judgment, he was about to die in a perilous state
of mind, and that, if they attended him it would be their duty to
exhort him to the last. As he passed along the ranks of the
guards he saluted them with a smile; and he mounted the scaffold
with a firm tread. Tower Hill was covered up to the chimney tops
with an innumerable multitude of gazers, who, in awful silence,
broken only by sighs and the noise of weeping, listened for the
last accents of the darling of the people. "I shall say little,"
he began. "I come here, not to speak, but to die. I die a
Protestant of the Church of England." The Bishops interrupted
him, and told him that, unless he acknowledged resistance to be
sinful, he was no member of their church He went on to speak of
his Henrietta. She was, he said, a young lady of virtue and
honour. He loved her to the last, and he could not die without
giving utterance to his feelings The Bishops again interfered,
and begged him not to use such language. Some altercation
followed. The divines have been accused of dealing harshly with
the dying man. But they appear to have only discharged what, in
their view, was a sacred duty. Monmouth knew their principles,
and, if he wished to avoid their importunity, should have
dispensed with their attendance. Their general arguments against
resistance had no effect on him. But when they reminded him of
the ruin which he had brought on his brave and loving followers,
of the blood which had been shed, of the souls which had been
sent unprepared to the great account, he was touched, and said,
in a softened voice, "I do own that. I am sorry that it ever
happened." They prayed with him long and fervently; and he joined
in their petitions till they invoked a blessing on the King. He
remained silent. "Sir," said one of the Bishops, "do you not pray
for the King with us?" Monmouth paused some time, and, after an
internal struggle, exclaimed "Amen." But it was in vain that the
prelates implored him to address to the soldiers and to the
people a few words on the duty of obedience to the government. "I
will make no speeches," he exclaimed. "Only ten words, my Lord."
He turned away, called his servant, and put into the man's hand a
toothpick case, the last token of ill starred love. "Give it," he
said, "to that person." He then accosted John Ketch the
executioner, a wretch who had butchered many brave and noble
victims, and whose name has, during a century and a half, been
vulgarly given to all who have succeeded him in his odious
office.430 "Here," said the Duke, "are six guineas for you. Do
not hack me as you did my Lord Russell. I have heard that you
struck him three or four times. My servant will give you some
more gold if you do the work well." He then undressed, felt the
edge of the axe, expressed some fear that it was not sharp
enough, and laid his head on the block. The divines in the
meantime continued to ejaculate with great energy: "God accept
your repentance! God accept your imperfect repentance!"
The hangman addressed himself to his office. But he had been
disconcerted by what the Duke had said. The first blow inflicted
only a slight wound. The Duke struggled, rose from the block, and
looked reproachfully at the executioner. The head sunk down once
more. The stroke was repeated again and again; but still the neck
was not severed, and the body continued to move. Yells of rage
and horror rose from the crowd. Ketch flung down the axe with a
curse. "I cannot do it," he said; "my heart fails me." "Take up
the axe, man," cried the sheriff. "Fling him over the rails,"
roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Two more blows
extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was used to
separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd was wrought up to
such an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of
being torn in pieces, and was conveyed away under a strong
guard.431
In the meantime many handkerchiefs were dipped in the Duke's
blood; for by a large part of the multitude he was regarded as a
martyr who had died for the Protestant religion. The head and
body were placed in a coffin covered with black velvet, and were
laid privately under the communion table of Saint Peter's Chapel
in the Tower. Within four years the pavement of the chancel was
again disturbed, and hard by the remains of Monmouth were laid
the remains of Jeffreys. In truth there is no sadder spot on the
earth than that little cemetery. Death is there associated, not,
as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with genius and virtue,
with public veneration and imperishable renown; not, as in our
humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is most
endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is
darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage
triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the
ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of
fallen greatness and of blighted fame. Thither have been carried,
through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without
one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been
the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of
senates, and the ornaments of courts. Thither was borne, before
the window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled corpse of
Guilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Protector
of the realm, reposes there by the brother whom he murdered.
There has mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher,
Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy
to have lived in a better age and to have died in a better cause.
There are laid John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Lord High
Admiral, and Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Lord High Treasurer.
There, too, is another Essex, on whom nature and fortune had
lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valour, grace,
genius, royal favour, popular applause, conducted to an early and
ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs of the great house
of Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh
Earl of Arundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of
unquiet and aspiring statesmen, lie more delicate sufferers;
Margaret of Salisbury, the last of the proud name of Plantagenet;
and those two fair Queens who perished by the jealous rage of
Henry. Such was the dust with which the dust of Monmouth
mingled.432
Yet a few months, and the quiet village of Toddington, in
Bedfordshire, witnessed a still sadder funeral. Near that village
stood an ancient and stately hall, the seat of the Wentworths.
The transept of the parish church had long been their burial
place. To that burial place, in the spring which followed the
death of Monmouth, was borne the coffin of the young Baroness
Wentworth of Nettlestede. Her family reared a sumptuous mausoleum
over her remains: but a less costly memorial of her was long
contemplated with far deeper interest. Her name, carved by the
hand of him whom she loved too well, was, a few years ago, still
discernible on a tree in the adjoining park.
It was not by Lady Wentworth alone that the memory of Monmouth
was cherished with idolatrous fondness. His hold on the hearts of
the people lasted till the generation which had seen him had
passed away. Ribands, buckles, and other trifling articles of
apparel which he had worn, were treasured up as precious relics
by those who had fought under him at Sedgemoor. Old men who long
survived him desired, when they were dying, that these trinkets
might be buried with them. One button of gold thread which
narrowly escaped this fate may still be seen at a house which
overlooks the field of battle. Nay, such was the devotion of the
people to their unhappy favourite that, in the face of the
strongest evidence by which the fact of a death was ever
verified, many continued to cherish a hope that he was still
living, and that he would again appear in arms. A person, it was
said, who was remarkably like Monmouth, had sacrificed himself to
save the Protestant hero. The vulgar long continued, at every
important crisis, to whisper that the time was at hand, and that
King Monmouth would soon show himself. In 1686, a knave who had
pretended to be the Duke, and had levied contributions in several
villages of Wiltshire, was apprehended, and whipped from Newgate
to Tyburn. In 1698, when England had long enjoyed constitutional
freedom under a new dynasty, the son of an innkeeper passed
himself on the yeomanry of Sussex as their beloved Monmouth, and
defrauded many who were by no means of the lowest class. Five
hundred pounds were collected for him. The farmers provided him
with a horse. Their wives sent him baskets of chickens and ducks,
and were lavish, it was said, of favours of a more tender kind;
for in gallantry at least, the counterfeit was a not unworthy
representative of the original. When this impostor was thrown
into prison for his fraud, his followers maintained him in
luxury. Several of them appeared at the bar to countenance him
when he was tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this
delusion last that, when George the Third had been some years on
the English throne, Voltaire thought it necessary gravely to
confute the hypothesis that the man in the iron mask was the Duke
of Monmouth.433
It is, perhaps, a fact scarcely less remarkable that, to this
day, the inhabitants of some parts of the West of England, when
any bill affecting their interest is before the House of Lords,
think themselves entitled to claim the help of the Duke of
Buccleuch, the descendant of the unfortunate leader for whom
their ancestors bled.
The history of Monmouth would alone suffice to refute the
Imputation of inconstancy which is so frequently thrown on the
common people. The common people are sometimes inconstant; for
they are human beings. But that they are inconstant as compared
with the educated classes, with aristocracies, or with princes,
may be confidently denied. It would be easy to name demagogues
whose popularity has remained undiminished while sovereigns and
parliaments have withdrawn their confidence from a long
succession of statesmen. When Swift had survived his faculties
many years, the Irish populace still continued to light bonfires
on his birthday, in commemoration of the services which they
fancied that he had rendered to his country when his mind was in
full vigour. While seven administrations were raised to power and
hurled from it in consequence of court intrigues or of changes in
the sentiments of the higher classes of society, the profligate
Wilkes retained his hold on the selections of a rabble whom he
pillaged and ridiculed. Politicians, who, in 1807, had sought to
curry favour with George the Third by defending Caroline of
Brunswick, were not ashamed, in 1820, to curry favour with George
the Fourth by persecuting her. But in 1820, as in 1807, the whole
body of working men was fanatically devoted to her cause. So it
was with Monmouth. In 1680, he had been adored alike by the
gentry and by the peasantry of the West. In 1685 he came again.
To the gentry he had become an object of aversion: but by the
peasantry he was still loved with a love strong as death, with a
love not to be extinguished by misfortunes or faults, by the
flight from Sedgemoor, by the letter from Ringwood, or by the
tears and abject supplications at Whitehall. The charge which may
with justice be brought against the common people is, not that
they are inconstant, but that they almost invariably choose their
favourite so ill that their constancy is a vice and not a virtue.
While the execution of Monmouth occupied the thoughts of the
Londoners, the counties which had risen against the government
were enduring all that a ferocious soldiery could inflict.
Feversham had been summoned to the court, where honours and
rewards which he little deserved awaited him. He was made a
Knight of the Garter and Captain of the first and most lucrative
troop of Life Guards: but Court and City laughed at his military
exploits; and the wit of Buckingham gave forth its last feeble
flash at the expense of the general who had won a battle in
bed.434 Feversham left in command at Bridgewater Colonel Percy
Kirke, a military adventurer whose vices had been developed by
the worst of all schools, Tangier. Kirke had during some years
commanded the garrison of that town, and had been constantly
employed in hostilities against tribes of foreign barbarians,
ignorant of the laws which regulate the warfare of civilized and
Christian nations. Within the ramparts of his fortress he was a
despotic prince. The only check on his tyranny was the fear of
being called to account by a distant and a careless government.
He might therefore safely proceed to the most audacious excesses
of rapacity, licentiousness, and cruelty. He lived with boundless
dissoluteness, and procured by extortion the means of indulgence.
No goods could be sold till Kirke had had the refusal of them. No
question of right could be decided till Kirke had been bribed.
Once, merely from a malignant whim, he staved all the wine in a
vintner's cellar. On another occasion he drove all the Jews from
Tangier. Two of them he sent to the Spanish Inquisition, which
forthwith burned them. Under this iron domination scarce a
complaint was heard; for hatred was effectually kept down by
terror. Two persons who had been refractory were found murdered;
and it was universally believed that they had been slain by
Kirke's order. When his soldiers displeased him he flogged them
with merciless severity: but he indemnified them by permitting
them to sleep on watch, to reel drunk about the streets, to rob,
beat, and insult the merchants and the labourers.
When Tangier was abandoned, Kirke returned to England. He still
continued to command his old soldiers, who were designated
sometimes as the First Tangier Regiment, and sometimes as Queen
Catharine's Regiment. As they had been levied for the purpose of
waging war on an infidel nation, they bore on their flag a
Christian emblem, the Paschal Lamb. In allusion to this device,
and with a bitterly ironical meaning, these men, the rudest and
most ferocious in the English army, were called Kirke's Lambs.
The regiment, now the second of the line, still retains this
ancient badge, which is however thrown into the shade by
decorations honourably earned in Egypt, in Spain, and in the
heart of Asia.435
Such was the captain and such the soldiers who were now let loose
on the people of Somersetshire. From Bridgewater Kirke marched to
Taunton. He was accompanied by two carts filled with wounded
rebels whose gashes had not been dressed, and by a long drove of
prisoners on foot, who were chained two and two Several of these
he hanged as soon as he reached Taunton, without the form of a
trial. They were not suffered even to take leave of their nearest
relations. The signpost of the White Hart Inn served for a
gallows. It is said that the work of death went on in sight of
the windows where the officers of the Tangier regiment were
carousing, and that at every health a wretch was turned off. When
the legs of the dying man quivered in the last agony, the colonel
ordered the drums to strike up. He would give the rebels, he said
music to their dancing. The tradition runs that one of the
captives was not even allowed the indulgence of a speedy death.
Twice he was suspended from the signpost, and twice cut down.
Twice he was asked if he repented of his treason, and twice he
replied that, if the thing were to do again, he would do it. Then
he was tied up for the last time. So many dead bodies were
quartered that the executioner stood ankle deep in blood. He was
assisted by a poor man whose loyalty was suspected, and who was
compelled to ransom his own life by seething the remains of his
friends in pitch. The peasant who had consented to perform this
hideous office afterwards returned to his plough. But a mark like
that of Cain was upon him. He was known through his village by
the horrible name of Tom Boilman. The rustics long continued to
relate that, though he had, by his sinful and shameful deed,
saved himself from the vengeance of the Lambs, he had not escaped
the vengeance of a higher power. In a great storm he fled for
shelter under an oak, and was there struck dead by lightning.436
The number of those who were thus butchered cannot now be
ascertained. Nine were entered in the parish registers of
Taunton: but those registers contained the names of such only as
had Christian burial. Those who were hanged in chains, and those
whose heads and limbs were sent to the neighbouring villages,
must have been much more numerous. It was believed in London, at
the time, that Kirke put a hundred captives to death during the
week which followed the battle.437
Cruelty, however, was not this man's only passion. He loved
money; and was no novice in the arts of extortion. A safe conduct
might be bought of him for thirty or forty pounds; and such a
safe conduct, though of no value in law, enabled the purchaser to
pass the post of the Lambs without molestation, to reach a
seaport, and to fly to a foreign country. The ships which were
bound for New England were crowded at this juncture with so many
fugitives from Sedgemoor that there was great danger lest the
water and provisions should fail.438
Kirke was also, in his own coarse and ferocious way, a man of
pleasure; and nothing is more probable than that he employed his
power for the purpose of gratifying his licentious appetites. It
was reported that he conquered the virtue of a beautiful woman by
promising to spare the life of one to whom she was strongly
attached, and that, after she had yielded, he showed her
suspended on the gallows the lifeless remains of him for whose
sake she had sacrificed her honour. This tale an impartial judge
must reject. It is unsupported by proof. The earliest authority
for it is a poem written by Pomfret. The respectable historians
of that age, while they speak with just severity of the crimes of
Kirke, either omit all mention of this most atrocious crime, or
mention it as a thing rumoured but not proved. Those who tell the
story tell it with such variations as deprive it of all title to
credit. Some lay the scene at Taunton, some at Exeter. Some make
the heroine of the tale a maiden, some a married woman. The
relation for whom the shameful ransom was paid is described by
some as her father, by some as her brother, and by some as her
husband. Lastly the story is one which, long before Kirke was
born, had been told of many other oppressors, and had become a
favourite theme of novelists and dramatists. Two politicians of
the fifteenth century, Rhynsault, the favourite of Charles the
Bold of Burgundy, and Oliver le Dain, the favourite of Lewis the
Eleventh of France, had been accused of the same crime. Cintio
had taken it for the subject of a romance. Whetstone had made out
of Cintio's narrative the rude play of Promos and Cassandra; and
Shakspeare had borrowed from Whetstone the plot of the noble
tragicomedy of Measure for Measure. As Kirke was not the first so
he was not the last, to whom this excess of wickedness was
popularly imputed. During the reaction which followed the Jacobin
tyranny in France, a very similar charge was brought against
Joseph Lebon, one of the most odious agents of the Committee of
Public Safety, and, after enquiry, was admitted even by his
prosecutors to be unfounded.439
The government was dissatisfied with Kirke, not on account of the
barbarity with which he had treated his needy prisoners, but on
account of the interested lenity which he had shown to rich
delinquents.440 He was soon recalled from the West. A less
irregular and more cruel massacre was about to be perpetrated.
The vengeance was deferred during some weeks. It was thought
desirable that the Western Circuit should not begin till the
other circuits had terminated. In the meantime the gaols of
Somersetshire and Dorsetshire were filled with thousands of
captives. The chief friend and protector of these unhappy men in
their extremity was one who abhorred their religious and
political opinions, one whose order they hated, and to whom they
had done unprovoked wrong, Bishop Ken. That good prelate used all
his influence to soften the gaolers, and retrenched from his own
episcopal state that he might be able to make some addition to
the coarse and scanty fare of those who had defaced his beloved
Cathedral. His conduct on this occasion was of a piece with his
whole life. His intellect was indeed darkened by many
superstitions and prejudices: but his moral character, when
impartially reviewed, sustains a comparison with any in
ecclesiastical history, and seems to approach, as near as human
infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of Christian
virtue.441
His labour of love was of no long duration. A rapid and effectual
gaol delivery was at hand. Early in September, Jeffreys,
accompanied by four other judges, set out on that circuit of
which the memory will last as long as our race and language. The
officers who commanded the troops in the districts through which
his course lay had orders to furnish him with whatever military
aid he might require. His ferocious temper needed no spur; yet a
spur was applied. The health and spirits of the Lord Keeper had
given way. He had been deeply mortified by the coldness of the
King and by the insolence of the Chief Justice, and could find
little consolation in looking back on a life, not indeed
blackened by any atrocious crime, but sullied by cowardice,
selfishness, and servility. So deeply was the unhappy man humbled
that, when he appeared for the last time in Westminster Hall. he
took with him a nosegay to hide his face, because, as he
afterwards owned, he could not bear the eyes of the bar and of
the audience. The prospect of his approaching end seems to have
inspired him with unwonted courage. He determined to discharge
his conscience, requested an audience of the King, spoke
earnestly of the dangers inseparable from violent and arbitrary
counsels, and condemned the lawless cruelties which the soldiers
had committed in Somersetshire. He soon after retired from London
to die. He breathed his last a few days after the Judges set out
for the West. It was immediately notified to Jeffreys that he
might expect the Great Seal as the reward of faithful and
vigorous service.442
At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commission.
Hampshire had not been the theatre of war; but many of the
vanquished rebels had, like their leader, fled thither. Two of
them, John Hickes, a Nonconformist divine, and Richard Nelthorpe,
a lawyer who had been outlawed for taking part in the Rye House
plot, had sought refuge at the house of Alice, widow of John
Lisle. John Lisle had sate in the Long Parliament and in the High
Court of Justice, had been a commissioner of the Great Seal in
the days of the Commonwealth and had been created a Lord by
Cromwell. The titles given by the Protector had not been
recognised by any government which had ruled England since the
downfall of his house; but they appear to have been often used in
conversation even by Royalists. John Lisle's widow was therefore
commonly known as the Lady Alice. She was related to many
respectable, and to some noble, families; and she was generally
esteemed even by the Tory gentlemen of her country. For it was
well known to them that she had deeply regretted some violent
acts in which her husband had borne a part, that she had shed
bitter tears for Charles the First, and that she had protected
and relieved many Cavaliers in their distress. The same womanly
kindness, which had led her to befriend the Royalists in their
time of trouble, would not suffer her to refuse a meal and a
hiding place to the wretched men who now entreated her to protect
them. She took them into her house, set meat and drink before
them, and showed them where they might take rest. The next
morning her dwelling was surrounded by soldiers. Strict search
was made. Hickes was found concealed in the malthouse, and
Nelthorpe in the chimney. If Lady Alice knew her guests to have
been concerned in the insurrection, she was undoubtedly guilty of
what in strictness was a capital crime. For the law of principal
and accessory, as respects high treason, then was, and is to this
day, in a state disgraceful to English jurisprudence. In cases of
felony, a distinction founded on justice and reason, is made
between the principal and the accessory after the fact. He who
conceals from justice one whom he knows to be a murderer is
liable to punishment, but not to the punishment of murder. He, on
the other hand, who shelters one whom he knows to be a traitor
is, according to all our jurists, guilty of high treason. It is
unnecessary to point out the absurdity and cruelty of a law which
includes under the same definition, and visits with the same
penalty, offences lying at the opposite extremes of the scale of
guilt. The feeling which makes the most loyal subject shrink from
the thought of giving up to a shameful death the rebel who,
vanquished, hunted down, and in mortal agony, begs for a morsel
of bread and a cup of water, may be a weakness; but it is surely
a weakness very nearly allied to virtue, a weakness which,
constituted as human beings are, we can hardly eradicate from the
mind without eradicating many noble and benevolent sentiments. A
wise and good ruler may not think it right to sanction this
weakness; but he will generally connive at it, or punish it very
tenderly. In no case will he treat it as a crime of the blackest
dye. Whether Flora Macdonald was justified in concealing the
attainted heir of the Stuarts, whether a brave soldier of our own
time was justified in assisting the escape of Lavalette, are
questions on which casuists may differ: but to class such actions
with the crimes of Guy Faux and Fieschi is an outrage to humanity
and common sense. Such, however, is the classification of our
law. It is evident that nothing but a lenient administration
could make such a state of the law endurable. And it is just to
say that, during many generations, no English government, save
one, has treated with rigour persons guilty merely of harbouring
defeated and flying insurgents. To women especially has been
granted, by a kind of tacit prescription, the right of indulging
in the midst of havoc and vengeance, that compassion which is the
most endearing of all their charms. Since the beginning of the
great civil war, numerous rebels, some of them far more important
than Hickes or Nelthorpe, have been protected from the severity
of victorious governments by female adroitness and generosity.
But no English ruler who has been thus baffled, the savage and
implacable James alone excepted, has had the barbarity even to
think of putting a lady to a cruel and shameful death for so
venial and amiable a transgression.
Odious as the law was, it was strained for the purpose of
destroying Alice Lisle. She could not, according to the doctrine
laid down by the highest authority, be convicted till after the
conviction of the rebels whom she had harboured.443 She was,
however, set to the bar before either Hickes or Nelthorpe had
been tried. It was no easy matter in such a case to obtain a
verdict for the crown. The witnesses prevaricated. The jury,
consisting of the principal gentlemen of Hampshire, shrank from
the thought of sending a fellow creature to the stake for conduct
which seemed deserving rather of praise than of blame. Jeffreys
was beside himself with fury. This was the first case of treason
on the circuit; and there seemed to be a strong probability that
his prey would escape him. He stormed, cursed, and swore in
language which no wellbred man would have used at a race or a
cockfight. One witness named Dunne, partly from concern for Lady
Alice, and partly from fright at the threats and maledictions of
the Chief Justice, entirely lost his head, and at last stood
silent. "Oh how hard the truth is," said Jeffreys, "to come out
of a lying Presbyterian knave." The witness, after a pause of
some minutes, stammered a few unmeaning words. "Was there ever,"
exclaimed the judge, with an oath, "was there ever such a villain
on the face of the earth? Dost thou believe that there is a God?
Dost thou believe in hell fire. Of all the witnesses that I ever
met with I never saw thy fellow." Still the poor man, scared out
of his senses, remained mute; and again Jeffreys burst forth. "I
hope, gentlemen of the jury, that you take notice of the horrible
carriage of this fellow. How can one help abhorring both these
men and their religion? A Turk is a saint to such a fellow as
this. A Pagan would be ashamed of such villany. Oh blessed Jesus!
What a generation of vipers do we live among!" "I cannot tell
what to say, my Lord," faltered Dunne. The judge again broke
forth into a volley of oaths. "Was there ever," he cried, "such
an impudent rascal? Hold the candle to him that we may see his
brazen face. You, gentlemen, that are of counsel for the crown,
see that an information for perjury be preferred against this
fellow." After the witnesses had been thus handled, the Lady
Alice was called on for her defence. She began by saying, what
may possibly have been true, that though she knew Hickes to be in
trouble when she took him in, she did not know or suspect that he
had been concerned in the rebellion. He was a divine, a man of
peace. It had, therefore, never occurred to her that he could
have borne arms against the government; and she had supposed that
he wished to conceal himself because warrants were out against
him for field preaching. The Chief Justice began to storm. "But I
will tell you. There is not one of those lying, snivelling,
canting Presbyterians but, one way or another, had a hand in the
rebellion. Presbytery has all manner of villany in it. Nothing
but Presbytery could have made Dunne such a rogue. Show me a
Presbyterian; and I'll show thee a lying knave." He summed up in
the same style, declaimed during an hour against Whigs and
Dissenters, and reminded the jury that the prisoner's husband had
borne a part in the death of Charles the First, a fact which had
not been proved by any testimony, and which, if it had been
proved, would have been utterly irrelevant to the issue. The jury
retired, and remained long in consultation. The judge grew
impatient. He could not conceive, he said, how, in so plain a
case, they should even have left the box. He sent a messenger to
tell them that, if they did not instantly return, he would
adjourn the court and lock them up all night. Thus put to the
torture, they came, but came to say that they doubted whether the
charge had been made out. Jeffreys expostulated with them
vehemently, and, after another consultation, they gave a
reluctant verdict of Guilty.
On the following morning sentence was pronounced. Jeffreys gave
directions that Alice Lisle should be burned alive that very
afternoon. This excess of barbarity moved the pity and
indignation even of the class which was most devoted to the
crown. The clergy of Winchester Cathedral remonstrated with the
Chief Justice, who, brutal as he was, was not mad enough to risk
a quarrel on such a subject with a body so much respected by the
Tory party. He consented to put off the execution five days.
During that time the friends of the prisoner besought James to be
merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her. Feversham,
whose recent victory had increased his influence at court, and
who, it is said, had been bribed to take the compassionate side,
spoke in her favour. Clarendon, the King's brother in law,
pleaded her cause. But all was vain. The utmost that could be
obtained was that her sentence should be commuted from burning to
beheading. She was put to death on a scaffold in the marketplace
of Winchester, and underwent her fate with serene courage.444
In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on the day
following her execution, Jeffreys reached Dorchester, the
principal town of the county in which Monmouth had landed; and
the judicial massacre began. The court was hung, by order of the
Chief Justice, with scarlet; and this innovation seemed to the
multitude to indicate a bloody purpose. It was also rumoured
that, when the clergyman who preached the assize sermon enforced
the duty of mercy, the ferocious mouth of the Judge was distorted
by an ominous grin. These things made men augur ill of what was
to follow.445
More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The work
seemed heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light.
He let it be understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon
or respite was to plead guilty. Twenty-nine persons, who put
themselves on their country and were convicted, were ordered to
be tied up without delay. The remaining prisoners pleaded guilty
by scores. Two hundred and ninety-two received sentence of death.
The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire amounted to seventy-four.
From Dorchester Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had
barely grazed the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore,
comparatively few persons were capitally punished. Somersetshire,
the chief seat of the rebellion, had been reserved for the last
and most fearful vengeance. In this county two hundred and
thirty-three prisoners were in a few days hanged, drawn, and
quartered. At every spot where two roads met, on every
marketplace, on the green of every large village which had
furnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in
the wind, or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air,
and made the traveller sick with horror. In many parishes the
peasantry could not assemble in the house of God without seeing
the ghastly face of a neighbour grinning at them over the porch.
The Chief Justice was all himself. His spirits rose higher and
higher as the work went on. He laughed, shouted, joked, and swore
in such a way that many thought him drunk from morning to night.
But in him it was not easy to distinguish the madness produced by
evil passions from the madness produced by brandy. A prisoner
affirmed that the witnesses who appeared against him were not
entitled to credit. One of them, he said, was a Papist, and
another a prostitute. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed the Judge,
"to reflect on the King's evidence! I see thee, villain, I see
thee already with the halter round thy neck." Another produced
testimony that he was a good Protestant. "Protestant! " said
Jeffreys; "you mean Presbyterian. I'll hold you a wager of it. I
can smell a Presbyterian forty miles." One wretched man moved the
pity even of bitter Tories. "My Lord," they said, "this poor
creature is on the parish." "Do not trouble yourselves," said the
Judge, "I will ease the parish of the burden." It was not only
against the prisoners that his fury broke forth. Gentlemen and
noblemen of high consideration and stainless loyalty, who
ventured to bring to his notice any extenuating circumstance,
were almost sure to receive what he called, in the coarse dialect
which he had learned in the pothouses of Whitechapel, a lick with
the rough side of his tongue. Lord Stawell, a Tory peer, who
could not conceal his horror at the remorseless manner in which
his poor neighbours were butchered, was punished by having a
corpse suspended in chains at his park gate.446 In such
spectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long told
over the cider by the Christmas fires of the farmers of
Somersetshire. Within the last forty years, peasants, in some
districts, well knew the accursed spots, and passed them
unwillingly after sunset.447
Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his
predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the
number of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one
shire, very much exceeded the number of all the political
offenders who have been put to death in our island since the
Revolution. The rebellions of 1715 and 1745 were of longer
duration, of wider extent, and of more formidable aspect than
that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has not been generally
thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or after the
rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of
clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together
will appear to have been few indeed when compared with those
which disgraced the Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom
Jeffreys hanged on this circuit was three hundred and twenty.448
Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had
been generally odious. But they were, for the most part, men of
blameless life, and of high religious profession. They were
regarded by themselves, and by a large proportion of their
neighbours, not as wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with
blood the truth of the Protestant religion. Very few of the
convicts professed any repentance for what they had done. Many,
animated by the old Puritan spirit, met death, not merely with
fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain that the ministers
of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt of rebellion
and on the importance of priestly absolution. The claim of the
King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of
the clergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved
the bitter scorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of them composed
hymns in the dungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge.
Christ, they sang while they were undressing for the butchery,
would soon come to rescue Zion and to make war on Babylon, would
set up his standard, would blow his trumpet, and would requite
his foes tenfold for all the evil which had been inflicted on his
servants. The dying words of these men were noted down: their
farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way, with
the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious
supplement to the Marian martyrology.449
A few eases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, a retired
officer of the parliamentary army, and one of those zealots who
would own no king but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor.
His arm had been frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle;
and, as no surgeon was at hand, the stout old soldier amputated
it himself. He was carried up to London, and examined by the King
in Council, but would make no submission. "I am an aged man," he
said, "and what remains to me of life is not worth a falsehood or
a baseness. I have always been a republican; and I am so still."
He was sent back to the West and hanged. The people remarked with
awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to the
gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted not
that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way
sword in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the
inferior animals. "Stop, gentlemen," he cried: "let me go on
foot. There is more in this than you think. Remember how the ass
saw him whom the prophet could not see." He walked manfully to
the gallows, harangued the people with a smile, prayed fervently
that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist and the
deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology
for mounting so awkwardly. "You see," he said, "I have but one
arm."450
Not less courageously died Christopher Balttiscombe, a young
Templar of good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an
agreeable provincial town proud of its taste and refinement, was
regarded by all as the model of a fine gentleman. Great interest
was made to save him. It was believed through the West of England
that he was engaged to a young lady of gentle blood, the sister
of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at the feet of Jeffreys to
beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her from him with a jest
so hideous that to repeat it would be an offence against decency
and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously and
courageously.451
A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant
brothers, William and Benjamin Hewling. They were young,
handsome, accomplished, and well connected. Their maternal
grandfather was named Kiffin. He was one of the first merchants
in London, and was generally considered as the head of the
Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewling on the
trial with characteristic brutality. "You have a grandfather," he
said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you." The poor lad,
who was only nineteen, suffered death with so much meekness and
fortitude, that an officer of the army who attended the
execution, and who had made himself remarkable by rudeness and
severity, was strangely melted, and said, "I do not believe that
my Lord Chief Justice himself could be proof against this." Hopes
were entertained that Benjamin would be pardoned. One victim of
tender years was surely enough for one house to furnish. Even
Jeffreys was, or pretended to be, inclined to lenity. The truth
was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations,
and whom, therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated
intercessors. pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was
allowed for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner
went to Whitehall with a petition. Many courtiers wished her
success; and Churchill, among whose numerous faults cruelty had
no place, obtained admittance for her. "I wish well to your suit
with all my heart," he said, as they stood together in the
antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes. This
marble,"- and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece,-"is not
harder than the King." The prediction proved true. James was
inexorable. Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst
lamentations in which the soldiers who kept guard round the
gallows could not refrain from joining.452
Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied
than some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys
was unable to bring home the charge of high treason were
convicted of misdemeanours, and were sentenced to scourging not
less terrible than that which Oates had undergone. A woman for
some idle words, such as had been uttered by half the women in
the districts where the war had raged, was condemned to be
whipped through all the market towns in the county of Dorset. She
suffered part of her punishment before Jeffreys returned to
London; but, when he was no longer in the West, the gaolers, with
the humane connivance of the magistrates, took on themselves the
responsibility of sparing her any further torture. A still more
frightful sentence was passed on a lad named Tutchin, who was
tried for seditious words. He was, as usual, interrupted in his
defence by ribaldry and scurrility from the judgment seat. "You
are a rebel; and all your family have been rebels Since Adam.
They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses with you. The
sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned seven years, and
should, during that period, be flogged through every market town
in Dorsetshire every year. The women in the galleries burst into
tears. The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My
Lord," said he, "the prisoner is very young. There are many
market towns in our county. The sentence amounts to whipping once
a fortnight for seven years." "If he is a young man," said
Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue. Ladies, you do not know the
villain as well as I do. The punishment is not half bad enough
for him. All the interest in England shall not alter it." Tutchin
in his despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity, that he
might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at this
conjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it
seemed highly improbable that the sentence would ever be
executed, the Chief Justice consented to remit it, in return for
a bribe which reduced the prisoner to poverty. The temper of
Tutchin, not originally very mild, was exasperated to madness by
what he had undergone. He lived to be known as one of the most
acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of the House of Stuart and
of the Tory party.453
The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight
hundred and forty-one. These men, more wretched than their
associates who suffered death, were distributed into gangs, and
bestowed on persons who enjoyed favour at court. The conditions
of the gift were that the convicts should be carried beyond sea
as slaves, that they should not be emancipated for ten years, and
that the place of their banishment should be some West Indian
island. This last article was studiously framed for the purpose
of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In New England or New
Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to them
and a climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It was
therefore determined that they should be sent to colonies where a
Puritan could hope to inspire little sympathy, and where a
labourer born in the temperate zone could hope to enjoy little
health. Such was the state of the slave market that these
bondmen, long as was the passage, and sickly as they were likely
to prove, were still very valuable. It was estimated by Jeffreys
that, on an average, each of them, after all charges were paid,
would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There was therefore
much angry competition for grants. Some Tories in the West
conceived that they had, by their exertions and sufferings during
the insurrection, earned a right to share in the profits which
had been eagerly snatched up by the sycophants of Whitehall. The
courtiers, however, were victorious.454
The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who
are now carried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from the best
information which is at present accessible that more than one
fifth of those who were shipped were flung to the sharks before
the end of the voyage. The human cargoes were stowed close in the
holds of small vessels. So little space was allowed that the
wretches, many of whom were still tormented by unhealed wounds,
could not all lie down at once without lying on one another. They
were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was constantly
watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses. In the
dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease and
death. Of ninety-nine convicts who were carried out in one
vessel, twenty-two died before they reached Jamaica, although the
voyage was performed with unusual speed. The survivors when they
arrived at their house of bondage were mere skeletons. During
some weeks coarse biscuit and fetid water had been doled out to
them in such scanty measure that any one of them could easily
have consumed the ration which was assigned to five. They were,
therefore, in such a state that the merchant to whom they had
been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before selling
them.455
Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered death,
and of those more unfortunate men who were withering under the
tropical sun, was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of
greedy informers. By law a subject attainted of treason forfeits
all his substance; and this law was enforced after the Bloody
Assizes with a rigour at once cruel and ludicrous. The
brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of the labouring men
whose corpses hung at the cross roads were called upon by the
agents of the Treasury to explain what had become of a basket, of
a goose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg of cider, of a sack of
beans, of a truss of hay.456 While the humbler retainers of the
government were pillaging the families of the slaughtered
peasants, the Chief Justice was fast accumulating a fortune out
of the plunder of a higher class of Whigs. He traded largely in
pardons. His most lucrative transaction of this kind was with a
gentleman named Edmund Prideaux. It is certain that Prideaux had
not been in arms against the government; and it is probable that
his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from his
father, an eminent lawyer who had been high in office under the
Protector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the
crown. Mercy was offered to some prisoners on condition that they
would bear evidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay
long in gaol and at length, overcome by fear of the gallows,
consented to pay fifteen thousand pounds for his liberation. This
great sum was received by Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate,
to which the people gave the name of Aceldama, from that accursed
field which was purchased with the price of innocent blood.457
He was ably assisted in the work of extortion by the crew of
parasites who were in the habit of drinking and laughing with
him. The office of these men was to drive hard bargains with
convicts under the strong terrors of death, and with parents
trembling for the lives of children. A portion of the spoil was
abandoned by Jeffreys to his agents. To one of his boon
companions, it is said. he tossed a pardon for a rich traitor
across the table during a revel. It was not safe to have recourse
to any intercession except that of his creatures, for he guarded
his profitable monopoly of mercy with jealous care. It was even
suspected that he sent some persons to the gibbet solely because
they had applied for the royal clemency through channels
independent of him.458
Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small share of
this traffic. The ladies of the Queen's household distinguished
themselves preeminently by rapacity and hardheartedness. Part of
the disgrace which they incurred falls on their mistress: for it
was solely on account of the relation in which they stood to her
that they were able to enrich themselves by so odious a trade;
and there can be no question that she might with a word or a look
have restrained them. But in truth she encouraged them by her
evil example, if not by her express approbation. She seems to
have been one of that large class of persons who bear adversity
better than prosperity. While her husband was a subject and an
exile, shut out from public employment, and in imminent danger of
being deprived of his birthright, the suavity and humility of her
manners conciliated the kindness even of those who most abhorred
her religion. But when her good fortune came her good nature
disappeared. The meek and affable Duchess turned out an
ungracious and haughty Queen.459 The misfortunes which she
subsequently endured have made her an object of some interest;
but that interest would be not a little heightened if it could be
shown that, in the season of her greatness, she saved, or even
tried to save, one single victim from the most frightful
proscription that England has ever seen. Unhappily the only
request that she is known to have preferred touching the rebels
was that a hundred of those who were sentenced to transportation
might be given to her.460 The profit which she cleared on the
cargo, after making large allowance for those who died of hunger
and fever during the passage, cannot be estimated at less than a
thousand guineas. We cannot wonder that her attendants should
have imitated her unprincely greediness and her unwomanly
cruelty. They exacted a thousand pounds from Roger Hoare, a
merchant of Bridgewater; who had contributed to the military
chest of the rebel army. But the prey on which they pounced most
eagerly was one which it might have been thought that even the
most ungentle natures would have spared. Already some of the
girls who had presented the standard to Monmouth at Taunton had
cruelly expiated their offence. One of them had been thrown into
prison where an infectious malady was raging. She had sickened
and died there. Another had presented herself at the bar before
Jeffreys to beg for mercy. "Take her, gaoler," vociferated the
Judge, with one of those frowns which had often struck terror
into stouter hearts than hers. She burst into tears, drew her
hood over her face, followed the gaoler out of the court, fell
ill of fright, and in a few hours was a corpse. Most of the young
ladies, however, who had walked in the procession were still
alive. Some of them were under ten years of age. All had acted
under the orders of their schoolmistress, without knowing that
they were committing a crime. The Queen's maids of honour asked
the royal permission to wring money out of the parents of the
poor children; and the permission was granted. An order was sent
down to Taunton that all these little girls should be seized and
imprisoned. Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, the Tory member for
Bridgewater, was requested to undertake the office of exacting
the ransom. He was charged to declare in strong language that the
maids of honour would not endure delay, that they were determined
to prosecute to outlawry, unless a reasonable sum were
forthcoming, and that by a reasonable sum was meant seven
thousand pounds. Warre excused himself from taking any part in a
transaction so scandalous. The maids of honour then requested
William Penn to act for them; and Penn accepted the commission.
Yet it should seem that a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity
which he had often shown about taking off his hat would not have
been altogether out of place on this occasion. He probably
silenced the remonstrances of his conscience by repeating to
himself that none of the money which he extorted would go into
his own pocket; that if he refused to be the agent of the ladies
they would find agents less humane; that by complying he should
increase his influence at the court, and that his influence at
the court had already enabled him, and still might enable him, to
render great services to his oppressed brethren. The maids of
honour were at last forced to content themselves with less than a
third part of what they had demanded.461
No English sovereign has ever given stronger proof of a cruel
nature than James the Second. Yet his cruelty was not more odious
than his mercy. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that his
mercy and his cruelty were such that each reflects infamy on the
other. Our horror at the fate of the simple clowns, the young
lads, the delicate women, to whom he was inexorably severe, is
increased when we find to whom and for what considerations he
granted his pardon.
The rule by which a prince ought, after a rebellion, to be guided
in selecting rebels for punishment is perfectly obvious. The
ringleaders, the men of rank, fortune, and education, whose power
and whose artifices have led the multitude into error, are the
proper objects of severity. The deluded populace, when once the
slaughter on the field of battle is over, can scarcely be treated
too leniently. This rule, so evidently agreeable to justice and
humanity, was not only not observed: it was inverted. While those
who ought to have been spared were slaughtered by hundreds, the
few who might with propriety have been left to the utmost rigour
of the law were spared. This eccentric clemency has perplexed
some writers, and has drawn forth ludicrous eulogies from others.
It was neither at all mysterious nor at all praiseworthy. It may
be distinctly traced in every case either to a sordid or to a
malignant motive, either to thirst for money or to thirst for
blood.
In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance. His
parts and knowledge, the rank which he had inherited in the
state, and the high command which he had borne in the rebel army,
would have pointed him out to a just government as a much fitter
object of punishment than Alice Lisle, than William Hewling, than
any of the hundreds of ignorant peasants whose skulls and
quarters were exposed in Somersetshire. But Grey's estate was
large and was strictly entailed. He had only a life interest in
his property; and he could forfeit no more interest than he had.
If he died, his lands at once devolved on the next heir. If he
were pardoned, he would be able to pay a large ransom. He was
therefore suffered to redeem himself by giving a bond for forty
thousand pounds to the Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums to other
courtiers.462
Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the same rank
which had been held by Grey in the West of England. That Cochrane
should be forgiven by a prince vindictive beyond all example,
seemed incredible. But Cochrane was the younger son of a rich
family; it was therefore only by sparing him that money could be
made out of him. His father, Lord Dundonald, offered a bribe of
five thousand pounds to the priests of the royal household; and a
pardon was granted.463
Samuel Storey, a noted sower of sedition, who had been Commissary
to the rebel army, and who had inflamed the ignorant populace of
Somersetshire by vehement harangues in which James had been
described as an incendiary and a poisoner, was admitted to mercy.
For Storey was able to give important assistance to Jeffreys in
wringing fifteen thousand pounds out of Prideaux.464
None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than Wade,
Goodenough, and Ferguson. These three chiefs of the rebellion had
fled together from the field of Sedgemoor, and had reached the
coast in safety. But they had found a frigate cruising near the
spot where they had hoped to embark. They had then separated.
Wade and Goodenough were soon discovered and brought up to
London. Deeply as they had been implicated in the Rye House plot,
conspicuous as they had been among the chiefs of the Western
insurrection, they were suffered to live, because they had it in
their power to give information which enabled the King to
slaughter and plunder some persons whom he hated, but to whom he
had never yet been able to bring home any crime.465
How Ferguson escaped was, and still is, a mystery. Of all the
enemies of the government he was, without doubt, the most deeply
criminal. He was the original author of the plot for
assassinating the royal brothers. He had written that Declaration
which, for insolence, malignity, and mendacity, stands unrivalled
even among the libels of those stormy times. He had instigated
Monmouth first to invade the kingdom, and then to usurp the
crown. It was reasonable to expect that a strict search would be
made for the archtraitor, as he was often called; and such a
search a man of so singular an aspect and dialect could scarcely
have eluded. It was confidently reported in the coffee houses of
London that Ferguson was taken, and this report found credit with
men who had excellent opportunities of knowing the truth. The
next thing that was heard of him was that he was safe on the
Continent. It was strongly suspected that he had been in constant
communication with the government against which he was constantly
plotting, that he had, while urging his associates to every
excess of rashness sent to Whitehall just so much information
about their proceedings as might suffice to save his own neck,
and that therefore orders had been given to let him escape.466
And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim his
reward. He arrived at Windsor from the West, leaving carnage,
mourning, and terror behind him. The hatred with which he was
regarded by the people of Somersetshire has no parallel in our
history. It was not to be quenched by time or by political
changes, was long transmitted from generation to generation, and
raged fiercely against his innocent progeny. When he had been
many years dead, when his name and title were extinct, his
granddaughter, the Countess of Pomfret, travelling along the
western road, was insulted by the populace, and found that she
could not safely venture herself among the descendants of those
who had witnessed the Bloody Assizes.467
But at the Court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge
after his master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with
interest and delight. In his drawingroom and at his table he had
frequently talked of the havoc which was making among his
disaffected subjects with a glee at which the foreign ministers
stood aghast. With his own hand he had penned accounts of what he
facetiously called his Lord Chief Justice's campaign in the West.
Some hundreds of rebels, His Majesty wrote to the Hague, had been
condemned. Some of them had been hanged: more should be hanged:
and the rest should be sent to the plantations. It was to no
purpose that Ken wrote to implore mercy for the misguided people,
and described with pathetic eloquence the frightful state of his
diocese. He complained that it was impossible to walk along the
highways without seeing some terrible spectacle, and that the
whole air of Somersetshire was tainted with death. The King read,
and remained, according to the saying of Churchill, hard as the
marble chimneypieces of Whitehall. At Windsor the great seal of
England was put into the hands of Jeffreys and in the next London
Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honour was the reward
of the many eminent and faithful services which he had rendered
to the crown.468
At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror
of the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked King
attempted to vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each
other. Jeffreys, in the Tower, protested that, in his utmost
cruelty, he had not gone beyond his master's express orders, nay,
that he had fallen short of them. James, at Saint Germain's would
willingly have had it believed that his own inclinations had been
on the side of clemency, and that unmerited obloquy had been
brought on him by the violence of his minister. But neither of
these hardhearted men must be absolved at the expense of the
other. The plea set up for James can be proved under his own hand
to be false in fact. The plea of Jeffreys, even if it be true in
fact, is utterly worthless.
The slaughter in the West was over. The slaughter in London was
about to begin. The government was peculiarly desirous to find
victims among the great Whig merchants of the City. They had, in
the last reign, been a formidable part of the strength of the
opposition. They were wealthy; and their wealth was not, like
that of many noblemen and country gentlemen, protected by entail
against forfeiture. In the case of Grey and of men situated like
him, it was impossible to gratify cruelty and rapacity at once;
but a rich trader might be both hanged and plundered. The
commercial grandees, however, though in general hostile to Popery
and to arbitrary power, had yet been too scrupulous or too timid
to incur the guilt of high treason. One of the most considerable
among them was Henry Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the
old charter of the City, and had filled the office of Sheriff
when the question of the Exclusion Bill occupied the public mind.
In politics he was a Whig: his religious opinions leaned towards
Presbyterianism: but his temper was cautious and moderate. It is
not proved by trustworthy evidence that he ever approached the
verge of treason. He had, indeed, when Sheriff, been very
unwilling to employ as his deputy a man so violent and
unprincipled as Goodenough. When the Rye House plot was
discovered, great hopes were entertained at Whitehall that
Cornish would appear to have been concerned: but these hopes were
disappointed. One of the conspirators, indeed, John Rumsey, was
ready to swear anything: but a single witness was not sufficient;
and no second witness could be found. More than two years had
since elapsed. Cornish thought himself safe; but the eye of the
tyrant was upon him. Goodenough, terrified by the near prospect
of death, and still harbouring malice on account of the
unfavourable opinion which had always been entertained of him by
his old master, consented to supply the testimony which had
hitherto been wanting. Cornish was arrested while transacting
business on the Exchange, was hurried to gaol, was kept there
some days in solitary confinement, and was brought altogether
unprepared to the bar of the Old Bailey. The case against him
rested wholly on the evidence of Rumsey and Goodenough. Both
were, by their own confession accomplices in the plot with which
they charged the prisoner. Both were impelled by the strongest
pressure of hope end fear to criminate him. Evidence was produced
which proved that Goodenough was also under the influence of
personal enmity. Rumsey's story was inconsistent with the story
which he had told when he appeared as a witness against Lord
Russell. But these things were urged in vain. On the bench sate
three judges who had been with Jeffreys in the West; and it was
remarked by those who watched their deportment that they had come
back from the carnage of Taunton in a fierce and excited state.
It is indeed but too true that the taste for blood is a taste
which even men not naturally cruel may, by habit, speedily
acquire. The bar and the bench united to browbeat the unfortunate
Whig. The jury, named by a courtly Sheriff, readily found a
verdict of Guilty; and, in spite of the indignant murmurs of the
public, Cornish suffered death within ten days after he had been
arrested. That no circumstance of degradation might be wanting,
the gibbet was set up where King Street meets Cheapside, in sight
of the house where he had long lived in general respect, of the
Exchange where his credit had always stood high, and of the
Guildhall where he had distinguished himself as a popular leader.
He died with courage and with many pious expressions, but showed,
by look and gesture, such strong resentment at the barbarity and
injustice with which he had been treated, that his enemies spread
a calumnious report concerning him. He was drunk, they said, or
out of his mind, when he was turned off. William Penn, however,
who stood near the gallows, and whose prejudice were all on the
side of the government, afterwards said that he could see in
Cornish's deportment nothing but the natural indignation of an
innocent man slain under the forms of law. The head of the
murdered magistrate was placed over the Guildhall.469
Black as this case was, it was not the blackest which disgraced
the sessions of that autumn at the Old Bailey. Among the persons
concerned in the Rye House plot was a man named James Burton. By
his own confession he had been present when the design of
assassination was discussed by his accomplices. When the
conspiracy was detected, a reward was offered for his
apprehension. He was saved from death by an ancient matron of the
Baptist persuasion, named Elizabeth Gaunt. This woman, with the
peculiar manners and phraseology which then distinguished her
sect, had a large charity. Her life was passed in relieving the
unhappy of all religious denominations, and she was well known as
a constant visitor of the gaols. Her political and theological
opinions, as well as her compassionate disposition, led her to do
everything in her power for Burton. She procured a boat which
took him to Gravesend, where he got on board of a ship bound for
Amsterdam. At the moment of parting she put into his hand a sum
of money which, for her means, was very large. Burton, after
living some time in exile, returned to England with Monmouth,
fought at Sedgemoor, fled to London, and took refuge in the house
of John Fernley, a barber in Whitechapel. Fernley was very poor.
He was besieged by creditors. He knew that a reward of a hundred
pounds had been offered by the government for the apprehension of
Burton. But the honest man was incapable of betraying one who, in
extreme peril, had come under the shadow of his roof. Unhappily
it was soon noised abroad that the anger of James was more
strongly excited against those who harboured rebels than against
the rebels themselves. He had publicly declared that of all forms
of treason the hiding of traitors from his vengeance was the most
unpardonable. Burton knew this. He delivered himself up to the
government; and he gave information against Fernley and Elizabeth
Gaunt. They were brought to trial. The villain whose life they
had preserved had the heart and the forehead to appear as the
principal witness against them. They were convicted. Fernley was
sentenced to the gallows, Elizabeth Gaunt to the stake. Even
after all the horrors of that year, many thought it impossible
that these judgments should be carried into execution. But the
King was without pity. Fernley was hanged. Elizabeth Gaunt was
burned alive at Tyburn on the same day on which Cornish suffered
death in Cheapside. She left a paper written, indeed, in no
graceful style, yet such as was read by many thousands with
compassion and horror. "My fault," she said, "was one which a
prince might well have forgiven. I did but relieve a poor family;
and lo! I must die for it." She complained of the insolence of
the judges, of the ferocity of the gaoler, and of the tyranny of
him, the great one of all, to whose pleasure she and so many
other victims had been sacrificed. In so far as they had injured
herself, she forgave them: but, in that they were implacable
enemies of that good cause which would yet revive and flourish,
she left them to the judgment of the King of Kings. To the last
she preserved a tranquil courage, which reminded the spectators
of the most heroic deaths of which they had read in Fox. William
Penn, for whom exhibitions which humane men generally avoid seem
to have had a strong attraction, hastened from Cheapside, where
he had seen Cornish hanged, to Tyburn, in order to see Elizabeth
Gaunt burned. He afterwards related that, when she calmly
disposed the straw about her in such a manner as to shorten her
sufferings, all the bystanders burst into tears. It was much
noticed that, while the foulest judicial murder which had
disgraced even those times was perpetrating, a tempest burst
forth, such as had not been known since that great hurricane
which had raged round the deathbed of Oliver. The oppressed
Puritans reckoned up, not without a gloomy satisfaction the
houses which had been blown down, and the ships which had been
cast away, and derived some consolation from thinking that heaven
was bearing awful testimony against the iniquity which afflicted
the earth. Since that terrible day no woman has suffered death in
England for any political offence.470
It was not thought that Goodenough had yet earned his pardon. The
government was bent on destroying a victim of no high rank, a
surgeon in the City, named Bateman. He had attended Shaftesbury
professionally, and had been a zealous Exclusionist. He may
possibly have been privy to the Whig plot; but it is certain that
he had not been one of the leading conspirators; for, in the
great mass of depositions published by the government, his name
occurs only once, and then not in connection with any crime
bordering on high treason. From his indictment, and from the
scanty account which remains of his trial, it seems clear that he
was not even accused of participating in the design of murdering
the royal brothers. The malignity with which so obscure a man,
guilty of so slight an offence, was hunted down, while traitors
far more criminal and far more eminent were allowed to ransom
themselves by giving evidence against him, seemed to require
explanation; and a disgraceful explanation was found. When Oates,
after his scourging, was carried into Newgate insensible, and, as
all thought, in the last agony, he had been bled and his wounds
had been dressed by Bateman. This was an offence not to be
forgiven. Bateman was arrested and indicted. The witnesses
against him were men of infamous character, men, too, who were
swearing for their own lives. None of them had yet got his
pardon; and it was a popular saying, that they fished for prey,
like tame cormorants, with ropes round their necks. The prisoner,
stupefied by illness, was unable to articulate, or to understand
what passed. His son and daughter stood by him at the bar. They
read as well as they could some notes which he had set down, and
examined his witnesses. It was to little purpose. He was
convicted, hanged, and quartered.471
Never, not even under the tyranny of Laud, had the condition of
the Puritans been so deplorable as at that time. Never had spies
been so actively employed in detecting congregations. Never had
magistrates, grand jurors, rectors and churchwardens been so much
on the alert. Many Dissenters were cited before the
ecclesiastical courts. Others found it necessary to purchase the
connivance of the agents of the government by presents of
hogsheads of wine, and of gloves stuffed with guineas. It was
impossible for the separatists to pray together without
precautions such as are employed by coiners and receivers of
stolen goods. The places of meeting were frequently changed.
Worship was performed sometimes just before break of day and
sometimes at dead of night. Round the building where the little
flock was gathered sentinels were posted to give the alarm if a
stranger drew near. The minister in disguise was introduced
through the garden and the back yard. In some houses there were
trap doors through which, in case of danger, he might descend.
Where Nonconformists lived next door to each other, the walls
were often broken open, and secret passages were made from
dwelling to dwelling. No psalm was sung; and many contrivances
were used to prevent the voice of the preacher, in his moments of
fervour, from being heard beyond the walls. Yet, with all this
care, it was often found impossible to elude the vigilance of
informers. In the suburbs of London, especially, the law was
enforced with the utmost rigour. Several opulent gentlemen were
accused of holding conventicles. Their houses were strictly
searched, and distresses were levied to the amount of many
thousands of pounds. The fiercer and bolder sectaries, thus
driven from the shelter of roofs, met in the open air, and
determined to repel force by force. A Middlesex justice who had
learned that a nightly prayer meeting was held in a gravel pit
about two miles from London, took with him a strong body of
constables, broke in upon the assembly, and seized the preacher.
But the congregation, which consisted of about two hundred men,
soon rescued their pastor. and put the magistrate and his
officers to flight.472 This, however, was no ordinary occurrence.
In general the Puritan spirit seemed to be more effectually cowed
at this conjuncture than at any moment before or since. The Tory
pamphleteers boasted that not one fanatic dared to move tongue or
pen in defence of his religious opinions. Dissenting ministers,
however blameless in life, however eminent for learning and
abilities, could not venture to walk the streets for fear of
outrages, which were not only not repressed, but encouraged, by
those whose duty it was to preserve the peace. Some divines of
great fame were in prison. Among these was Richard Baxter.
Others, who had, during a quarter of a century, borne up against
oppression, now lost heart, and quitted the kingdom. Among these
was John Howe. Great numbers of persons who had been accustomed
to frequent conventicles repaired to the parish churches. It was
remarked that the schismatics who had been terrified into this
show of conformity might easily be distinguished by the
difficulty which they had in finding out the collect, and by the
awkward manner in which they bowed at the name of Jesus.473
Through many years the autumn of 1685 was remembered by the
Nonconformists as a time of misery and terror. Yet in that autumn
might be discerned the first faint indications of a great turn of
fortune; and before eighteen months had elapsed, the intolerant
King and the intolerant Church were eagerly bidding against each
other for the support of the party which both had so deeply
injured.
END OF VOL. I.
1 In this, and in the next chapter, I have very seldom thought
it necessary to cite authorities: for, in these chapters, I have
not detailed events minutely, or used recondite materials; and
the facts which I mention are for the most part such that a
person tolerably well read in English history, if not already
apprised of them, will at least know where to look for evidence
of them. In the subsequent chapters I shall carefully indicate
the sources of my information.
2 This is excellently put by Mr. Hallam in the first chapter
of his Constitutional History.
3 See a very curious paper which Strype believed to be in
Gardiner's handwriting. Ecclesiastical Memorials, Book 1., Chap.
xvii.
4 These are Cranmer's own words. See the Appendix to Burnet's
History of the Reformation, Part 1. Book III. No. 21. Question 9.
5 The Puritan historian, Neal, after censuring the cruelty
with which she treated the sect to which he belonged, concludes
thus: "However, notwithstanding all these blemishes, Queen
Elizabeth stands upon record as a wise and politic princess, for
delivering her kingdom from the difficulties in which it was
involved at her accession,. for preserving the Protestant
reformation against the potent attempts of the Pope, the Emperor,
and King of Spain abroad, and the Queen of Scots and her Popish
subjects at home.... She was the glory of the age in which she
lived, and will be the admiration of posterity."-History of the
Puritans, Part I. Chap. viii.
6 On this subject, Bishop Cooper's language is remarkably
clear and strong. He maintains, in his Answer to Martin
Marprelate, printed in 1589, that no form of church government is
divinely ordained; that Protestant communities, in establishing
different forms, have only made a legitimate use of their
Christian liberty; and that episcopacy is peculiarly suited to
England, because the English constitution is monarchical." All
those Churches," says the Bishop, "in which the Gospell, in these
daies, after great darknesse, was first renewed, and the learned
men whom God sent to instruct them, I doubt not but have been
directed by the Spirite of God to retaine this liberty, that, in
external government and other outward orders; they might choose
such as they thought in wisedome and godlinesse to be most
convenient for the state of their countrey and disposition of
their people. Why then should this liberty that other countreys
have used under anie colour be wrested from us? I think it
therefore great presumption and boldnesse that some of our
nation, and those, whatever they may think of themselves, not of
the greatest wisedome and skill, should take upon them to
controlle the whole realme, and to binde both prince and people
in respect of conscience to alter the present state, and tie
themselves to a certain platforme devised by some of our
neighbours. which, in the judgment of many wise and godly
persons, is most unfit for the state of a Kingdome."
7 Strype's Life of Grindal, Appendix to Book II. No. xvii.
8 Canon 55, of 1603.
9 Joseph Hall, then dean of Worcester, and afterwards bishop
of Norwich, was one of the commissioners. In his life of himself,
he says: "My unworthiness was named for one of the assistants of
that honourable, grave, and reverend meeting." To high churchmen
this humility will seem not a little out of place.
10 It was by the Act of Uniformity, passed after the
Restoration, that persons not episcopally ordained were, for the
first time, made incapable of holding benefices. No man was more
zealous for this law than Clarendon. Yet he says: "This was new;
for there had been many, and at present there were some, who
possessed benefices with cure of souls and other ecclesiastical
promotions, who had never received orders but in France or
Holland; and these men must now receive new ordination, which had
been always held unlawful in the Church, or by this act of
parliament must be deprived of their livelihood which they
enjoyed in the most flourishing and peaceable time of the
Church."
11 Peckard's Life of Ferrar; The Arminian Nunnery, or a Brief
Description of the late erected monastical Place called the
Arminian Nunnery, at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, 1641.
12 The correspondence of Wentworth seems to me fully to bear
out what I have said in the text. To transcribe all the passages
which have led me to the conclusion at which I have arrived,
would be impossible, nor would it be easy to make a better
selection than has already been made by Mr. Hallam. I may,
however direct the attention of the reader particularly to the
very able paper which Wentworth drew up respecting the affairs of
the Palatinate. The date is March 31, 1637.
13 These are Wentworth's own words. See his letter to Laud,
dated Dec. 16, 1634.
14 See his report to Charles for the year 1639.
15 See his letter to the Earl of Northumberland, dated July 30,
1638.
16 How little compassion for the bear had to do with the matter
is sufficiently proved by the following extract from a paper
entitled A perfect Diurnal of some Passages of Parliament, and
from other Parts of the Kingdom, from Monday July 24th, to Monday
July 31st, 1643. "Upon the Queen's coming from Holland, she
brought with her, besides a company of savage-like ruffians, a
company of savage bears, to what purpose you may judge by the
sequel. Those bears were left about Newark, and were brought into
country towns constantly on the Lord's day to be baited, such is
the religion those here related would settle amongst us; and, if
any went about to hinder or but speak against their damnable
profanations, they were presently noted as Roundheads and
Puritans, and sure to be plundered for it. But some of Colonel
Cromwell's forces coming by accident into Uppingham town, in
Rutland, on the Lord's day, found these bears playing there in
the usual manner, and, in the height of their sport, caused them
to be seized upon, tied to a tree and shot." This was by no means
a solitary instance. Colonel Pride, when Sheriff of Surrey,
ordered the beasts in the bear garden of Southwark to be killed.
He is represented by a loyal satirist as defending the act thus:
"The first thing that is upon my spirits is the killing of the
bears, for which the people hate me, and call me all the names in
the rainbow. But did not David kill a bear? Did not the Lord
Deputy Ireton kill a bear? Did not another lord of ours kill five
bears?"-Last Speech and Dying Words of Thomas pride.
17 See Penn's New Witnesses proved Old Heretics, and
Muggleton's works, passim.
18 I am happy to say, that, since this passage was written, the
territories both of the Rajah of Nagpore and of the King of Oude
have been added to the British dominions. (1857.)
19 The most sensible thing said in the House of Commons, on
this subject, came from Sir William Coventry: "Our ancestors
never did draw a line to circumscribe prerogative and liberty."
20 Halifax was undoubtedly the real author of the Character of
a Trimmer, which, for a time, went under the name of his kinsman,
Sir William Coventry.
21 North's Examen, 231, 574.
22 A peer who was present has described the effect of Halifax's
oratory in words which I will quote, because, though they have
been long in print, they are probably known to few even of the
most curious and diligent readers of history.
"Of powerful eloquence and great parts were the Duke's enemies
who did assert the Bill; but a noble Lord appeared against it
who, that day, in all the force of speech, in reason, in
arguments of what could concern the public or the private
interests of men, in honour, in conscience, in estate, did outdo
himself and every other man; and in fine his conduct and his
parts were both victorious, and by him all the wit and malice of
that party was overthrown."
This passage is taken from a memoir of Henry Earl of
Peterborough, in a volume entitled "Succinct Genealogies, by
Robert Halstead," fol. 1685. The name of Halstead is fictitious.
The real authors were the Earl of Peterborough himself and his
chaplain. The book is extremely rare. Only twenty-four copies
were printed, two of which are now in the British Museum. Of
these two one belonged to George the Fourth, and the other to Mr.
Grenville.
23 This is mentioned in the curious work entitled "Ragguaglio
della solenne Comparsa fatta in Roma gli otto di Gennaio, 1687,
dall' illustrissimo et eccellentissimo signor Conte di
Castlemaine."
24 North's Examen, 69.
25 Lord Preston, who was envoy at Paris, wrote thence to
Halifax as follows: "I find that your Lordship lies still under
the same misfortune of being no favourite to this court; and
Monsieur Barillon dare not do you the honor to shine upon you,
since his master frowneth. They know very well your lordship's
qualifications which make them fear and consequently hate you;
and be assured, my lord, if all their strength can send you to
Rufford, it shall be employed for that end. Two things, I hear,
they particularly object against you, your secrecy, and your
being incapable of being corrupted. Against these two things I
know they have declared." The date of the letter is October 5, N.
S. 1683
26 During the interval which has elapsed since this chapter was
written, England has continued to advance rapidly in material
prosperity, I have left my text nearly as it originally stood;
but I have added a few notes which may enable the reader to form
some notion of the progress which has been made during the last
nine years; and, in general, I would desire him to remember that
there is scarcely a district which is not more populous, or a
source of wealth which is not more productive, at present than in
1848. (1857.)
27 Observations on the Bills of Mortality, by Captain John
Graunt (Sir William Petty), chap. xi.
28 "She doth comprehend
Full fifteen hundred thousand which do spend
Their days within.''
Great Britain's Beauty, 1671.
29 Isaac Vossius, De Magnitudine Urbium Sinarum, 1685. Vossius,
as we learn from Saint Evremond, talked on this subject oftener
and longer than fashionable circles cared to listen.
30 King's Natural and Political Observations, 1696 This
valuable treatise, which ought to be read as the author wrote it,
and not as garbled by Davenant, will be found in some editions of
Chalmers's Estimate.
31 Dalrymple's Appendix to Part II. Book I, The practice of
reckoning the population by sects was long fashionable. Gulliver
says of the King of Brobdignag; "He laughed at my odd arithmetic,
as he was pleased to call it, in reckoning the numbers of our
people by a computation drawn from the several sects among us in
religion and politics."
32 Preface to the Population Returns of 1831.
33 Statutes 14 Car. II. c. 22.; 18 & 19 Car. II. c. 3., 29 & 30
Car. II. c. 2.
34 Nicholson and Bourne, Discourse on the Ancient State of the
Border, 1777.
35 Gray's Journal of a Tour in the Lakes, Oct. 3, 1769.
36 North's Life of Guildford; Hutchinson's History of
Cumberland, Parish of Brampton.
37 See Sir Walter Scott's Journal, Oct. 7, 1827, in his Life by
Mr. Lockhart.
38 Dalrymple, Appendix to Part II. Book I. The returns of the
hearth money lead to nearly the same conclusion. The hearths in
the province of York were not a sixth of the hearths of England.
39 I do not, of course, pretend to strict accuracy here; but I
believe that whoever will take the trouble to compare the last
returns of hearth money in the reign of William the Third with
the census of 1841, will come to a conclusion not very different
from mine.
40 There are in the Pepysian Library some ballads of that age
on the chimney money. I will give a specimen or two:
"The good old dames whenever they the chimney man espied,
Unto their nooks they haste away, their pots and pipkins hide.
There is not one old dame in ten, and search the nation through,
But, if you talk of chimney men, will spare a curse or two."
Again:
"Like plundering soldiers they'd enter the door,
And make a distress on the goods of the poor.
While frighted poor children distractedly cried;
This nothing abated their insolent pride."
In the British Museum there are doggrel verses composed on the
same subject and in the same spirit:
"Or, if through poverty it be not paid
For cruelty to tear away the single bed,
On which the poor man rests his weary head,
At once deprives him of his rest and bread."
I take this opportunity the first which occurs, of acknowledging
most grateful the kind and liberal manner in which the Master and
Vicemaster of Magdalei College, Cambridge, gave me access to the
valuable collections of Pepys.
41 My chief authorities for this financial statement will be
found in the Commons' Journal, March 1, and March 20, 1688-9.
42 See, for example, the picture of the mound at Marlborough,
in Stukeley's Dinerarium Curiosum.
43 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.
44 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 3; 15 Car. II. c. 4. Chamberlayne's
State of England, 1684.
45 Dryden, in his Cymon and Iphigenia, expressed, with his
usual keenness and energy, the sentiments which had been
fashionable among the sycophants of James the Second:-
"The country rings around with loud alarms,
And raw in fields the rude militia swarms;
Mouths without hands, maintained at vast expense,
Stout once a month they march, a blustering band,
And ever, but in time of need at hand.
This was the morn when, issuing on the guard,
Drawn up in rank and file, they stood prepared
Of seeming arms to make a short essay.
Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day."
46 Most of the materials which I have used for this account of
the regular army will be found in the Historical Records of
Regiments, published by command of King William the Fourth, and
under the direction of the Adjutant General. See also
Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Abridgment of the English
Military Discipline, printed by especial command, 1688; Exercise
of Foot, by their Majesties' command, 1690.
47 I refer to a despatch of Bonrepaux to Seignelay, dated Feb.
8/18.1686. It was transcribed for Mr. Fox from the French
archives, during the peace of Amiens, and, with the other
materials brought together by that great man, was entrusted to me
by the kindness of the late Lady Holland, and of the present Lord
Holland. I ought to add that, even in the midst of the troubles
which have lately agitated Paris, I found no difficulty in
obtaining, from the liberality of the functionaries there,
extracts supplying some chasms in Mr. Fox's collection. (1848.)
48 My information respecting the condition of the navy, at this
time, is chiefly derived from Pepys. His report, presented to
Charles the Second in May, 1684, has never, I believe, been
printed. The manuscript is at Magdalene College Cambridge. At
Magdalene College is also a valuable manuscript containing a
detailed account of the maritime establishments of the country in
December 1684. Pepys's "Memoirs relating to the State of the
Royal Navy for Ten Years determined December, 1688," and his
diary and correspondence during his mission to Tangier, are in
print. I have made large use of them. See also Sheffield's
Memoirs, Teonge's Diary, Aubrey's Life of Monk, the Life of Sir
Cloudesley Shovel, 1708, Commons' Journals, March 1 and March 20.
1688-9.
49 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Commons' Journals,
March 1, and March 20, 1688-9. In 1833, it was determined, after
full enquiry, that a hundred and seventy thousand barrels of
gunpowder should constantly be kept in store.
50 It appears from the records of the Admiralty, that Flag
officers were allowed half pay in 1668, Captains of first and
second rates not till 1674.
51 Warrant in the War Office Records; dated March 26, 1678.
52 Evelyn's Diary. Jan. 27, 1682. I have seen a privy seal,
dated May 17. 1683, which confirms Evelyn's testimony.
53 James the Second sent Envoys to Spain, Sweden, and Denmark;
yet in his reign the diplomatic expenditure was little more than
30,000£. a year. See the Commons' Journals, March 20, 1688-9.
Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.
54 Carte's Life of Ormond.
55 Pepys's Diary, Feb. 14, 1668-9.
56 See the Report of the Bath and Montague case, which was
decided by Lord Keeper Somers, in December, 1693.
57 During three quarters of a year, beginning from Christmas,
1689, the revenues of the see of Canterbury were received by an
officer appointed by the crown. That officer's accounts are now
in the British Museum. (Lansdowne MSS. 885.) The gross revenue
for the three quarters was not quite four thousand pounds; and
the difference between the gross and the net revenue was
evidently something considerable.
58 King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the
Balance of Trade. Sir W. Temple says, "The revenues of a House of
Commons have seldom exceeded four hundred thousand pounds."
Memoirs, Third Part.
59 Langton's Conversations with Chief Justice Hale, 1672.
60 Commons' Journals, April 27,1689; Chamberlayne's State of
England, 1684.
61 See the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.
62 King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the
Balance of Trade.
63 See the Itinerarium Angliae, 1675, by John Ogilby,
Cosmographer Royal. He describes great part of the land as wood,
fen, heath on both sides, marsh on both sides. In some of his
maps the roads through enclosed country are marked by lines, and
the roads through unenclosed country by dots. The proportion of
unenclosed country, which, if cultivated, must have been
wretchedly cultivated, seems to have been very great. From
Abingdon to Gloucester, for example, a distance of forty or fifty
miles, there was not a single enclosure, and scarcely one
enclosure between Biggleswade and Lincoln.
64 Large copies of these highly interesting drawings are in the
noble collection bequeathed by Mr. Grenville to the British
Museum. See particularly the drawings of Exeter and Northampton.
65 Evelyn's Diary, June 2, 1675.
66 See White's Selborne; Bell's History of British Quadrupeds,
Gentleman's Recreation, 1686; Aubrey's Natural History of
Wiltshire, 1685; Morton's History of Northamptonshire, 1712;
Willoughby's Ornithology, by Ray, 1678; Latham's General Synopsis
of Birds; and Sir Thomas Browne's Account of Birds found in
Norfolk.
67 King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the
Balance of Trade.
68 See the Almanacks of 1684 and 1685.
69 See Mr. M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British
Empire, Part III. chap. i. sec. 6.
70 King and Davenant as before The Duke of Newcastle on
Horsemanship; Gentleman's Recreation, 1686. The "dappled Flanders
mares" were marks of greatness in the time of Pope, and even
later.
The vulgar proverb, that the grey mare is the better horse,
originated, I suspect, in the preference generally given to the
grey mares of Flanders over the finest coach horses of England.
71 See a curious note by Tonkin, in Lord De Dunstanville's
edition of Carew's Survey of Cornwall.
72 Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall, 1758. The quantity of
copper now produced, I have taken from parliamentary returns.
Davenant, in 1700, estimated the annual produce of all the mines
of England at between seven and eight hundred thousand pounds
73 Philosophical Transactions, No. 53. Nov. 1669, No. 66. Dec.
1670, No. 103. May 1674, No 156. Feb. 1683-4
74 Yarranton, England's Improvement by Sea and Land, 1677;
Porter's Progress of the Nation. See also a remarkably
perspicnous history, in small compass of the English iron works,
in Mr. M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire.
75 See Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684, 1687, Angliae,
Metropolis, 1691; M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British
Empire Part III. chap. ii. (edition of 1847). In 1845 the
quantity of coal brought into London appeared, by the
Parliamentary returns, to be 3,460,000 tons. (1848.) In 1854 the
quantity of coal brought into London amounted to 4,378,000 tons.
(1857.)
76 My notion of the country gentleman of the seventeenth
century has been derived from sources too numerous to be
recapitulated. I must leave my description to the judgment of
those who have studied the history and the lighter literature of
that age.
77 In the eighteenth century the great increase in the value of
benefices produced a change. The younger sons of the nobility
were allured back to the clerical profession. Warburton in a
letter to Hurd, dated the 6th of July, 1762, mentions this
change. which was then recent. "Our grandees have at last found
their way back into the Church. I only wonder they have been so
long about it. But be assured that nothing but a new religious
revolution, to sweep away the fragments that Henry the Eighth
left after banqueting his courtiers, will drive them out again."
78 See Heylin's Cyprianus Anglicus.
79 Eachard, Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy; Oldham,
Satire addressed to a Friend about to leave the University;
Tatler, 255, 258. That the English clergy were a lowborn class,
is remarked in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo, Appendix A.
80 "A causidico, medicastro, ipsaque artificum farragine,
ecclesiae rector aut vicarius contemnitur et fit ludibrio.
Gentis et familiae nitor sacris ordinibus pollutus censetur:
foeminisque natalitio insignibus unicum inculcatur saepius
praeceptum, ne modestiae naufragium faciant, aut, (quod idem
auribus tam delicatulis sonat,) ne clerico se nuptas dari
patiantur."-Angliae Notitia, by T. Wood, of New College Oxford
1686.
81 Clarendon's Life, ii. 21.
82 See the injunctions of 1559, In Bishop Sparrow's Collection.
Jeremy Collier, in his Essay on Pride, speaks of this injunction
with a bitterness which proves that his own pride had not been
effectually tamed.
83 Roger and Abigail in Fletcher's Scornful Lady, Bull and the
Nurse in Vanbrugh's Relapse, Smirk and Susan in Shadwell's
Lancashire Witches, are instances.
84 Swift's Directions to Servants. In Swift's Remarks on the
Clerical Residence Bill, he describes the family of an English
vicar thus: "His wife is little better than a Goody, in her
birth, education, or dress. . . . . His daughters shall go to
service, or be sent apprentice to the sempstress of the next
town."
85 Even in Tom Jones, published two generations later. Mrs.
Seagrim, the wife of a gamekeeper, and Mrs. Honour, a
waitingwoman, boast of their descent from clergymen, "It is to be
hoped," says Fielding, "such instances will in future ages, when
some provision is made for the families of the inferior clergy,
appear stranger than they can be thought at present.
86 This distinction between country clergy and town clergy is
strongly marked by Eachard, and cannot but be observed by every
person who has studied the ecclesiastical history of that age.
87 Nelson's Life of Bull. As to the extreme difficulty which
the country clergy found in procuring books, see the Life of
Thomas Bray, the founder of the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel.
88 "I have frequently heard him (Dryden) own with pleasure,
that if he had any talent for English prose it was owing to his
having often read the writings of the great Archbishop
Tillotson."-Congreve's Dedication of Dryden's Plays.
89 I have taken Davenant's estimate, which is a little lower
than King's.
90 Evelvn's Diary, June 27. 1654; Pepys's Diary, June 13. 1668;
Roger North's Lives of Lord Keeper Guildford, and of Sir Dudley
North; Petty's Political Arithmetic. I have taken Petty's facts,
but, in drawing inferences from them, I have been guided by King
and Davenant, who, though not abler men than he, had the
advantage of coming after him. As to the kidnapping for which
Bristol was infamous, see North's Life of Guildford, 121, 216,
and the harangue of Jeffreys on the subject, in the Impartial
History of his Life and Death, printed with the Bloody Assizes.
His style was, as usual, coarse, but I cannot reckon the
reprimand which he gave to the magistrates of Bristol among his
crimes.
91 Fuller's Worthies; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 17,1671; Journal of
T. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, Jan. 1663-4; Blomefield's
History of Norfolk; History of the City and County of Norwich, 2
vols. 1768.
92 The population of York appears, from the return of baptisms
and burials in Drake's History, to have been about 13,000 in
1730. Exeter had only 17,000 inhabitants in 1801. The population
of Worcester was numbered just before the siege in 1646. See
Nash's History of Worcestershire. I have made allowance for the
increase which must be supposed to have taken place in forty
years. In 1740, the population of Nottingham was found, by
enumeration, to be just 10,000. See Dering's History. The
population of Gloucester may readily be inferred from the number
of houses which King found in the returns of hearth money, and
from the number of births and burials which is given in Atkyns's
History. The population of Derby was 4,000 in 1712. See Wolley's
MS. History, quoted in Lyson's Magna Britannia. The population of
Shrewsbury was ascertained, in 1695, by actual enumeration. As to
the gaieties of Shrewsbury, see Farquhar's Recruiting Officer.
Farquhar's description is borne out by a ballad in the Pepysian
Library, of which the burden is "Shrewsbury for me."
93 Blome's Britannia, 1673; Aikin's Country round Manchester;
Manchester Directory, 1845: Baines, History of the Cotton
Manufacture. The best information which I have been able to find,
touching the population of Manchester in the seventeenth century
is contained in a paper drawn up by the Reverend R. Parkinson,
and published in the Journal of the Statistical Society for
October 1842.
94 Thoresby's Ducatus Leodensis; Whitaker's Loidis and Elmete;
Wardell's Municipal History of the Borough of Leeds. (1848.) In
1851 Leeds had 172,000 Inhabitants. (1857.)
95 Hunter's History of Hallamshire. (1848.) In 1851 the
population of Sheffield had increased to 135,000. (1857.)
96 Blome's Britannia, 1673; Dugdale's Warwickshire, North's
Examen, 321; Preface to Absalom and Achitophel; Hutton's History
of Birmingham; Boswell's Life of Johnson. In 1690 the burials at
Birmingham were 150, the baptisms 125. I think it probable that
the annual mortality was little less than one in twenty-five. In
London it was considerably greater. A historian of Nottingham,
half a century later, boasted of the extraordinary salubrity of
his town, where the annual mortality was one in thirty. See
Doring's History of Nottingham. (1848.) In 1851 the population of
Birmingham had increased to 222,000. (1857.)
97 Blome's Britannia; Gregson's Antiquities of the County
Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Part II.; Petition from
Liverpool in the Privy Council Book, May 10, 1686. In 1690 the
burials at Liverpool were 151, the baptisms 120. In 1844 the net
receipt of the customs at Liverpool was 4,366,526£. 1s. 8d.
(1848.) In 1851 Liverpool contained 375,000 inhabitants, (1857.)
98 Atkyne's Gloucestershire.
99 Magna Britannia; Grose's Antiquities; New Brighthelmstone
Directory.
100 Tour in Derbyshire, by Thomas Browne, son of Sir Thomas.
101 Memoires de Grammont; Hasted's History of Kent; Tunbridge
Wells, a Comedy, 1678; Causton's Tunbridgialia, 1688; Metellus, a
poem on Tunbridge Wells, 1693.
102 See Wood's History of Bath, 1719; Evelyn's Diary, June
27,1654; Pepys's Diary, June 12, 1668; Stukeley's Itinerarium
Curiosum; Collinson's Somersetshire; Dr. Peirce's History and
Memoirs of the Bath, 1713, Book I. chap. viii. obs. 2, 1684. I
have consulted several old maps and pictures of Bath,
particularly one curious map which is surrounded by views of the
principal buildings. It Dears the date of 1717.
103 According to King 530,000. (1848.) In 1851 the population of
London exceeded, 2,300,000. (1857.)
104 Macpherson's History of Commerce; Chalmers's Estimate;
Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. The tonnage of the
steamers belonging to the port of London was, at the end of 1847,
about 60,000 tons. The customs of the port, from 1842 to 1845,
very nearly averaged 11,000,000£. (1848.) In 1854 the tonnage of
the steamers of the port of London amounted to 138,000 tons,
without reckoning vessels of less than fifty tons. (1857.)
105 Lyson's Environs of London. The baptisms at Chelsea, between
1680 and 1690, were only 42 a year.
106 Cowley, Discourse of Solitude.
107 The fullest and most trustworthy information about the state
of the buildings of London at this time is to be derived from the
maps and drawings in the British Museum and in the Pepysian
Library. The badness of the bricks in the old buildings of London
is particularly mentioned in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.
There is an account of the works at Saint Paul's in Ward's London
Spy. I am almost ashamed to quote such nauseous balderdash; but I
have been forced to descend even lower, if possible, in search of
materials.
108 Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 20. 1672.
109 Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North.
110 North's Examen. This amusing writer has preserved a specimen
of the sublime raptures in which the Pindar of the City indulged:
-
"The worshipful sir John Moor!
After age that name adore!
111 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Anglie Metropolis,
1690; Seymour's London, 1734.
112 North's Examen, 116; Wood, Ath. Ox. Shaftesbury; The Duke of
B.'s Litany.
113 Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.
114 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Pennant's London;
Smith's Life of Nollekens.
115 Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 10, 1683, Jan. 19, 1685-6.
116 Stat. 1 Jac. II. c. 22; Evelyn's Diary, Dec, 7, 1684.
117 Old General Oglethorpe, who died in 1785, used to boast that
he had shot birds here in Anne's reign. See Pennant's London, and
the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1785.
118 The pest field will be seen in maps of London as late as the
end of George the First's reign.
119 See a very curious plan of Covent Garden made about 1690,
and engraved for Smith's History of Westminster. See also
Hogarth's Morning, painted while some of the houses in the Piazza
were still occupied by people of fashion.
120 London Spy, Tom Brown's comical View of London and
Westminster; Turner's Propositions for the employing of the Poor,
1678; Daily Courant and Daily Journal of June 7, 1733; Case of
Michael v. Allestree, in 1676, 2 Levinz, p. 172. Michael had been
run over by two horses which Allestree was breaking in Lincoln's
Inn Fields. The declaration set forth that the defendant "porta
deux chivals ungovernable en un coach, et improvide, incante, et
absque debita consideratione ineptitudinis loci la eux drive pur
eux faire tractable et apt pur an coach, quels chivals, pur ceo
que, per leur ferocite, ne poientestre rule, curre sur le
plaintiff et le noie."
121 Stat. 12 Geo. I. c. 25; Commons' Journals, Feb. 25, March 2,
1725-6; London Gardener, 1712; Evening Post, March, 23, 1731. I
have not been able to find this number of the Evening Post; I
therefore quote it on the faith of Mr. Malcolm, who mentions it
in his History of London.
122 Lettres sur les Anglois, written early in the reign of
William the Third; Swift's City Shower; Gay's Trivia. Johnson
used to relate a curious conversation which ho had with his
mother about giving and taking the wall.
123 Oldham's Imitation of the 3d Satire of Juvenal, 1682;
Shadwell's Scourers, 1690. Many other authorities will readily
occur to all who are acquainted with the popular literature of
that and the succeeding generation. It may be suspected that some
of the Tityre Tus, like good Cavaliers, broke Milton's windows
shortly after the Restoration. I am confident that he was
thinking of those pests of London when he dictated the noble
lines:
"And in luxurious cities, when the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage, and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown With innocence and wine."
124 Seymour's London.
125 Angliae Metropolis, 1690, Sect. 17, entitled, "Of the new
lights"; Seymour's London.
126 Stowe's Survey of London; Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia;
Ward's London Spy; Stat. 8 & 9 Gul. III. cap. 27.
127 See Sir Roger North's account of the way in which Wright was
made a judge, and Clarendon's account of the way in which Sir
George Savile was made a peer.
128 The sources from which I have drawn my information about the
state of the Court are too numerous to recapitulate. Among them
are the Despatches of Barillon, Van Citters, Ronquillo, and Adda,
the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo, the works of Roger North,
the Diares of Pepys, Evelyn, and Teonge, and the Memoirs of
Grammont and Reresby.
129 The chief peculiarity of this dialect was that, in a large
class of words, the O was pronounced like A. Thus Lord was
pronounced Lard. See Vanbrugh's Relapse. Lord Sunderland was a
great master of this court tune, as Roger North calls it; and
Titus Oates affected it in the hope of passing for a fine
gentleman. Examen, 77, 254.
130 Lettres sur les Anglois; Tom Brown's Tour; Ward's London
Spy; The Character of a Coffee House, 1673; Rules and Orders of
the Coffee House, 1674; Coffee Houses vindicated, 1675; A Satyr
against Coffee; North's Examen, 138; Life of Guildford, 152; Life
of Sir Dudley North, 149; Life of Dr. Radcliffe, published by
Curll in 1715. The liveliest description of Will's is in the City
and Country Mouse. There is a remarkable passage about the
influence of the coffee house orators in Halstead's Succinct
Genealogies, printed in 1685.
131 Century of inventions, 1663, No. 68.
132 North's Life of Guildford, 136.
133 Thoresby's Diary Oct. 21,1680, Aug. 3, 1712.
134 Pepys's Diary, June 12 and 16,1668.
135 Ibid. Feb. 28, 1660.
136 Thoresby's Diary, May 17,1695.
137 Ibid. Dec. 27,1708.
138 Tour in Derbyshire, by J. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne,
1662; Cotton's Angler, 1676.
139 Correspondence of Henry Earl of Clarendon, Dec. 30, 1685,
Jan. 1, 1686.
140 Postlethwaite's Dictionary, Roads; History of Hawkhurst, in
the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica.
141 Annals of Queen Anne, 1703, Appendix, No. 3.
142 15 Car. II. c. 1.
143 The evils of the old system are strikingly set forth in many
petitions which appear in the Commons' Journal of 172 5/6. How
fierce an opposition was offered to the new system may be learned
from the Gentleman's Magazine of 1749.
144 Postlethwaite's Dict., Roads.
145 Loidis and Elmete; Marshall's Rural Economy of England, In
1739 Roderic Random came from Scotland to Newcastle on a
packhorse.
146 Cotton's Epistle to J. Bradshaw.
147 Anthony a Wood's Life of himself.
148 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. See also the list of
stage coaches and waggons at the end of the book, entitled
Angliae Metropolis, 1690.
149 John Cresset's Reasons for suppressing Stage Coaches, 1672.
These reason. were afterwards inserted in a tract, entitled "The
Grand Concern of England explained, 1673." Cresset's attack on
stage coaches called forth some answers which I have consulted.
150 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; North's Examen, 105;
Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 9,10, 1671.
151 See the London Gazette, May 14, 1677, August 4, 1687, Dec.
5, 1687. The last confession of Augustin King, who was the son of
an eminent divine, and had been educated at Cambridge but was
hanged at Colchester in March, 1688, is highly curious.
152 Aimwell. Pray sir, han't I seen your face at Will's
coffeehouse? Gibbet. Yes. sir, and at White's too.-Beaux'
Stratagem.
153 Gent's History of York. Another marauder of the same
description, named Biss, was hanged at Salisbury in 1695. In a
ballad which is in the Pepysian Library, he is represented as
defending himself thus before the Judge:
"What say you now, my honoured Lord
What harm was there in this?
Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred
By brave, freehearted Biss."
154 Pope's Memoirs of Duval, published immediately after the
execution. Oates's Eikwg basilikh, Part I.
155 See the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison's
Historical Description of the Island of Great Britain, and
Pepys's account of his tour in the summer of 1668. The excellence
of the English inns is noticed in the Travels of the Grand Duke
Cosmo.
156 Stat. 12 Car. II. c. 36; Chamberlayne's State of England,
1684; Angliae Metropolis, 1690; London Gazette, June 22, 1685,
August 15, 1687.
157 Lond. Gaz., Sept. 14, 1685.
158 Smith's Current intelligence, March 30, and April 3, 1680.
159 Anglias Metropolis, 1690.
160 Commons' Journals, Sept. 4, 1660, March 1, 1688-9;
Chamberlayne, 1684; Davenant on the Public Revenue, Discourse IV.
161 I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year 1856
the gross receipt of the Post Office was more than 2,800,000£.;
and the net receipt was about 1,200,000£. The number of letters
conveyed by post was 478,000,000. (1857).
162 London Gazette, May 5, and 17, 1680.
163 There is a very curious, and, I should think, unique
collection of these papers in the British Museum.
164 For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about the
important parliamentary proceedings of November, 1685, or about
the trial and acquittal of the Seven Bishops.
165 Roger North's Life of Dr. John North. On the subject of
newsletters, see the Examen, 133.
166 I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitude to
the family of my dear and honoured friend sir James Mackintosh
for confiding to me the materials collected by him at a time when
he meditated a work similar to that which I have undertaken. I
have never seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists,
within the same compass, so noble a collection of extracts from
public and private archives The judgment with which sir James in
great masses of the rudest ore of history, selected what was
valuable, and rejected what was worthless, can be fully
appreciated only by one who has toiled after him in the same
mine.
167 Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing houses
in 1724 will be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotae of the
eighteenth century. There had then been a great increase within a
few years in the number of presses, and yet there were
thirty-four counties in which there was no printer, one of those
counties being Lancashire.
168 Observator, Jan. 29, and 31, 1685; Calamy's Life of Baxter;
Nonconformist Memorial.
169 Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his
whole library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of
letters. Even when Franklin first visited London in 1724,
circulating libraries were unknown there. The crowd at the
booksellers' shops in Little Britain is mentioned by Roger North
in his life of his brother John.
170 One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daughter of
James, had excellent natural abilities, had been educated by a
Bishop, was fond of history and poetry and was regarded by very
eminent men as a superior woman. There is, in the library at the
Hague, a superb English Bible which was delivered to her when she
was crowned in Westminster Abbey. In the titlepage are these
words in her own hand, " This book was given the King and I, at
our crownation. Marie R."
171 Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greek
professor at Cambridge, complained bitterly of the general
neglect of the Greek tongue among the academical clergy.
172 Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says,
"For, though to smelter words of Greek
And Latin be the rhetorique
Of pedants counted, and vainglorious,
To smatter French is meritorious."
173 The most offensive instance which I remember is in a poem on
the coronation of Charles the Second by Dryden, who certainly
could not plead poverty as an excuse for borrowing words from any
foreign tongue:-
"Hither in summer evenings you repair
To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air."
174 Jeremy Collier has censured this odious practice with his
usual force and keenness.
175 The contrast will be found in Sir Walter Scott's edition of
Dryden.
176 See the Life of Southern. by Shiels.
177 See Rochester's Trial of the Poets.
178 Some Account of the English Stage.
179 Life of Southern, by Shiels.
180 If any reader thinks my expressions too severe, I would
advise him to read Dryden's Epilogue to the Duke of Guise, and to
observe that it was spoken by a woman.
181 See particularly Harrington's Oceana.
182 See Sprat's History of the Royal Society.
183 Cowley's Ode to the Royal Society.
184 "Then we upon the globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky;
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world secretly pry.'
Annus Mirabilis, 164
185 North's Life of Guildford.
186 Pepys's Diary, May 30, 1667.
187 Butler was, I think, the only man of real genius who,
between the Restoration and the Revolution showed a bitter enmity
to the new philosophy, as it was then called. See the Satire on
the Royal Society, and the Elephant in the Moon.
188 The eagerness with which the agriculturists of that age
tried experiments and introduced improvements is well described
by Aubrey. See the Natural history of Wiltshire, 1685.
189 Sprat's History of the Royal Society.
190 Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, London Gazette, May 31,
1683; North's Life of Guildford.
191 The great prices paid to Varelst and Verrio are mentioned in
Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting.
192 Petty's Political Arithmetic.
193 Stat 5 Eliz. c. 4; Archaeologia, vol. xi.
194 Plain and easy Method showing how the office of Overseer of
the Poor may be managed, by Richard Dunning; 1st edition, 1685;
2d edition, 1686.
195 Cullum's History of Hawsted.
196 Ruggles on the Poor.
197 See, in Thurloe's State Papers, the memorandum of the Dutch
Deputies dated August 2-12, 1653.
198 The orator was Mr. John Basset, member for Barnstaple. See
Smith's Memoirs of Wool, chapter lxviii.
199 This ballad is in the British Museum. The precise year is
not given; but the Imprimatur of Roger Lestrange fixes the date
sufficiently for my purpose. I will quote some of the lines. The
master clothier is introduced speaking as follows:
"In former ages we used to give,
So that our workfolks like farmers did live;
But the times are changed, we will make them know.
* * * * * * * * * *
"We will make them to work hard for sixpence a day,
Though a shilling they deserve if they kind their just pay;
If at all they murmur and say 'tis too small,
We bid them choose whether they'll work at all.
And thus we forgain all our wealth and estate,
By many poor men that work early and late.
Then hey for the clothing trade! It goes on brave;
We scorn for to toyl and moyl, nor yet to slave.
Our workmen do work hard, but we live at ease,
We go when we will, and we come when we please."
200 Chamberlayne's State of England; Petty's Political
Arithmetic, chapter viii.; Dunning's Plain and Easy Method;
Firmin's Proposition for the Employing of the Poor. It ought to
be observed that Firmin was an eminent philanthropist.
201 King in his Natural and Political Conclusions roughly
estimated the common people of England at 880,0O0 families. Of
these families 440,000, according to him ate animal food twice a
week. The remaining 440,000, ate it not at all, or at most not
oftener than once a week.
202 Fourteenth Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, Appendix B.
No. 2, Appendix C. No 1, 1848. Of the two estimates of the poor
rate mentioned in the text one was formed by Arthur Moore, the
other, some years later, by Richard Dunning. Moore's estimate
will be found in Davenant's Essay on Ways and Means; Dunning's in
Sir Frederic Eden's valuable work on the poor. King and Davenant
estimate the paupers and beggars in 1696, at the incredible
number of 1,330,000 out of a population of 5,500,000. In 1846 the
number of persons who received relief appears from the official
returns to have been only 1,332,089 out of a population of about
17,000,000. It ought also to be observed that, in those returns,
a pauper must very often be reckoned more than once.
I would advise the reader to consult De Foe's pamphlet entitled
"Giving Alms no Charity," and the Greenwich tables which will be
found in Mr. M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary under the head
Prices.
203 The deaths were 23,222. Petty's Political Arithmetic.
204 Burnet, i. 560.
205 Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit.
206 Tom Brown describes such a scene in lines which I do not
venture to quote.
207 Ward's London Spy.
208 Pepys's Diary, Dec. 28, 1663, Sept. 2, 1667.
209 Burnet, i, 606; Spectator, No. 462; Lords' Journals, October
28, 1678; Cibber's Apology.
210 Burnet, i. 605, 606, Welwood, North's Life of Guildford,
251.
211 I may take this opportunity of mentioning that whenever I
give only one date, I follow the old style, which was, in the
seventeenth century, the style of England; but I reckon the year
from the first of January.
212 Saint Everemond, passim; Saint Real, Memoires de la Duchesse
de Mazarin; Rochester's Farewell; Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 6, 1676,
June 11, 1699.
213 Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 28, 1684-5, Saint Evremond's Letter to
Dery.
214 Id., February 4, 1684-5.
215 Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North, 170; The true
Patriot vindicated, or a Justification of his Excellency the E-of
R-; Burnet, i. 605. The Treasury Books prove that Burnet had good
intelligence.
216 Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24, 1681-2, Oct. 4, 1683.
217 Dugdale's Correspondence.
218 Hawkins's Life of Ken, 1713.
219 See the London Gazette of Nov. 21, 1678. Barillon and Burnet
say that Huddleston was excepted out of all the Acts of
Parliament made against priests; but this is a mistake.
220 Clark's Life of James the Second, i, 746. Orig. Mem.;
Barillon's Despatch of Feb. 1-18, 1685; Van Citters's Despatches
of Feb. 3-13 and Feb. 1-16. Huddleston's Narrative; Letters of
Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield, 277; Sir H. Ellis's Original
Letters, First Series. iii. 333: Second Series, iv 74; Chaillot
MS.; Burnet, i. 606: Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4. 1684-5: Welwood's
Memoires 140; North's Life of Guildford. 252; Examen, 648;
Hawkins's Life of Ken; Dryden's Threnodia Augustalis; Sir H.
Halford's Essay on Deaths of Eminent Persons. See also a fragment
of a letter written by the Earl of Ailesbury, which is printed in
the European Magazine for April, 1795. Ailesbury calls Burnet an
impostor. Yet his own narrative and Burnet's will not, to any
candid and sensible reader, appear to contradict each other. I
have seen in the British Museum, and also in the Library of the
Royal Institution, a curious broadside containing an account of
the death of Charles. It will be found in the Somers Collections.
The author was evidently a zealous Roman Catholic, and must have
had access to good sources of information. I strongly suspect
that he had been in communication, directly or indirectly, with
James himself. No name is given at length; but the initials are
perfectly intelligible, except in one place. It is said that the
D. of Y. was reminded of the duty which he owed to his brother by
P.M.A.C.F. I must own myself quite unable to decipher the last
five letters. It is some consolation that Sir Walter Scott was
equally unsuccessful. (1848.) Since the first edition of this
work was published, several ingenious conjectures touching these
mysterious letters have been communicated to me, but I am
convinced that the true solution has not yet been suggested.
(1850.) I still greatly doubt whether the riddle has been solved.
But the most plausible interpretation is one which, with some
variations, occurred, almost at the same time, to myself and to
several other persons; I am inclined to read "Pere Mansuete A
Cordelier Friar." Mansuete, a Cordelier, was then James's
confessor. To Mansuete therefore it peculiarly belonged to remind
James of a sacred duty which had been culpably neglected. The
writer of the broadside must have been unwilling to inform the
world that a soul which many devout Roman Catholics had left to
perish had been snatched from destruction by the courageous
charity of a woman of loose character. It is therefore not
unlikely that he would prefer a fiction, at once probable and
edifying, to a truth which could not fail to give scandal.
(1856.)
It should seem that no transactions in history ought to be more
accurately known to us than those which took place round the
deathbed of Charles the Second. We have several relations written
by persons who were actually in his room. We have several
relations written by persons who, though not themselves
eyewitnesses, had the best opportunity of obtaining information
from eyewitnesses. Yet whoever attempts to digest this vast mass
of materials into a consistent narrative will find the task a
difficult one. Indeed James and his wife, when they told the
story to the nuns of Chaillot, could not agree as to some
circumstances. The Queen said that, after Charles had received
the last sacraments the Protestant Bishops renewed their
exhortations. The King said that nothing of the kind took place.
"Surely," said the Queen, "you told me so yourself." "It is
impossible that I have told you so," said the King, "for nothing
of the sort happened."
It is much to be regretted that Sir Henry Halford should have
taken so little trouble ascertain the facts on which he
pronounced judgment. He does not seem to have been aware of the
existence of the narrative of James, Barillon, and Huddleston.
As this is the first occasion on which I cite the correspondence
of the Dutch ministers at the English court, I ought here to
mention that a series of their despatches, from the accession of
James the Second to his flight, forms one of the most valuable
parts of the Mackintosh collection. The subsequent despatches,
down to the settlement of the government in February, 1689, I
procured from the Hague. The Dutch archives have been far too
little explored. They abound with information interesting in the
highest degree to every Englishman. They are admirably arranged
and they are in the charge of gentlemen whose courtesy,
liberality and zeal for the interests of literature, cannot be
too highly praised. I wish to acknowledge, in the strongest
manner, my own obligations to Mr. De Jonge and to Mr. Van Zwanne.
221 Clarendon mentions this calumny with just scorn. "According
to the charity of the time towards Cromwell, very many would have
it believed to be by poison, of which there was no appearance,
nor any proof ever after made."-Book xiv.
222 Welwood, 139 Burnet, i. 609; Sheffield's Character of
Charles the Second; North's Life of Guildford, 252; Examen, 648;
Revolution Politics; Higgons on Burnet. What North says of the
embarrassment and vacillation of the physicians is confirmed by
the despatches of Van Citters. I have been much perplexed by the
strange story about Short's suspicions. I was, at one time,
inclined to adopt North's solution. But, though I attach little
weight to the authority of Welwood and Burnet in such a case, I
cannot reject the testimony of so well informed and so unwilling
a witness as Sheffield.
223 London Gazette, Feb. 9. 1684-5; Clarke's Life of James the
Second, ii. 3; Barillon, Feb. 9-19: Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 6.
224 See the authorities cited in the last note. See also the
Examen, 647; Burnet, i. 620; Higgons on Burnet.
225 London Gazette, Feb. 14, 1684-5; Evelyn's Diary of the same
day; Burnet, i. 610: The Hind let loose.
226 Burnet, i. 628; Lestrange, Observator, Feb. 11, 1684.
227 The letters which passed between Rochester and Ormond on
this subject will be found in the Clarendon Correspondence.
228 The ministerial changes are announced in the London Gazette,
Feb. 19, 1684-5. See Burnet, i. 621; Barillon, Feb. 9-19, 16-26;
and Feb. 19,/Mar. 1.
229 Carte's Life of Ormond; Secret Consults of the Romish Party
in Ireland, 1690; Memoirs of Ireland, 1716.
230 Christmas Sessions Paper of 1678.
231 The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit, part v chapter v.
In this work Lodowick, after his fashion, revenges himself on the
"bawling devil," as he calls Jeffreys, by a string of curses
which Ernulphus, or Jeffreys himself, might have envied. The
trial was in January, 1677.
232 This saying is to be found in many contemporary pamphlets.
Titus Oates was never tired of quoting it. See his Eikwg
Basilikh.
233 The chief sources of information concerning Jeffreys are the
State Trials and North's Life of Lord Guildford. Some touches of
minor importance I owe to contemporary pamphlets in verse and
prose. Such are the Bloody Assizes the life and Death of George
Lord Jeffreys, the Panegyric on the late Lord Jeffreys, the
Letter to the Lord Chancellor, Jeffreys's Elegy. See also
Evelyn's Diary, Dec. 5, 1683, Oct. 31. 1685. I scarcely need
advise every reader to consult Lord Campbell's excellent Life of
Jeffreys.
234 London Gazette, Feb. 12, 1684-5. North's Life of Guildford,
254.
235 The chief authority for these transactions is Barillon's
despatch of February 9-19, 1685. It will he found in the Appendix
to Mr. Fox's History. See also Preston's Letter to James, dated
April 18-28, 1685, in Dalrymple.
236 Lewis to Barillon, Feb. 16-26, 1685.
237 Barillon, Feb. 16-26, 1685.
238 Barillon, Feb. 18-28, 1685.
239 Swift who hated Marlborough, and who was little disposed to
allow any merit to those whom he hated, says, in the famous
letter to Crassus, "You are no ill orator in the Senate."
240 Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i. 264. Chesterfleld's Letters,
Nov., 18, 1748. Chesterfield is an unexceptional witness; for the
annuity was a charge on the estate of his grandfather, Halifax. I
believe that there is no foundation for a disgraceful addition to
the story which may be found in Pope:
"The gallant too, to whom she paid it down,
Lived to refuse his mistress half a crown."
Curll calls this a piece of travelling scandal.
241 Pope in Spence's Anecdotes.
242 See the Historical Records of the first or Royal Dragoons.
The appointment of Churchill to the command of this regiment was
ridiculed as an instance of absurd partiality. One lampoon of
that time which I do not remember to have seen in print, but of
which a manuscript copy is in the British Museum, contains these
lines:
"Let's cut our meat with spoons:
The sense is as good
As that Churchill should
Be put to command the dragoons."
243 Barillon, Feb. 16-26, 1685.
244 Barillon, April 6-16; Lewis to Barillon, April 14-24.
245 I might transcribe half Barillon's correspondence in proof
of this proposition, but I will quote only one passage, in which
the policy of the French government towards England is exhibited
concisely and with perfect clearness.
"On peut tenir pour un maxime indubitable que l'accord du Roy
d'Angleterre avec son parlement, en quelque maniere qu'il se
fasse, n'est pas conforme aux interets de V. M. Je me contente de
penser cela sane m'en ouvrir a personne, et je cache avec soin
mes sentimens a cet egard."-Barillon to Lewis, Feb. 28,/Mar.
1687. That this was the real secret of the whole policy of Lewis
towards our country was perfectly understood at Vienna. The
Emperor Leopold wrote thus to James, March 30,/April 9, 1689:
"Galli id unum agebant, ut, perpetuas inter Serenitatem vestram
et ejusdem populos fovendo simultates, reliquæ Christianæ Europe
tanto securius insultarent."
246 "Que sea unido con su reyno, yen todo buena intelligencia
con el parlamenyo." Despatch from the King of Spain to Don
Pedro Ronquillo, March 16-26, 1685. This despatch is in the
archives of Samancas, which contain a great mass of papers
relating to English affairs. Copies of the most interesting of
those papers are in the possession of M. Guizot, and were by him
lent to me. It is with peculiar pleasure that at this time, I
acknowledge this mark of the friendship of so great a man.
(1848.)
247 Few English readers will be desirous to go deep into the
history of this quarrel. Summaries will be found in Cardinal
Bausset's Life of Bossuet, and in Voltaire's Age of Lewis XIV.
248 Burnet, i. 661, and Letter from Rome, Dodd's Church History,
part viii. book i. art. 1.
249 Consultations of the Spanish Council of State on April 2-12
and April 16-26, In the Archives of Simancas.
250 Lewis to Barillon, May 22,/June 1, 1685; Burnet, i. 623.
251 Life of James the Second, i. 5. Barillon, Feb. 19,/Mar. 1,
1685; Evelyn's Diary, March 5, 1685.
252 "To those that ask boons
He swears by God's oons
And chides them as if they came there to steal spoons."
Lamentable Lory, a ballad, 1684.
253 Barillon, April 20-30. 1685.
254 From Adda's despatch of Jan. 22,/Feb. 1, 1686, and from the
expressions of the Pere d'Orleans (Histoire des Revolutions
d'Angleterre, liv. xi.), it is clear that rigid Catholics thought
the King's conduct indefensible.
255 London Gazette, Gazette de France; Life of James the Second,
ii. 10; History of the Coronation of King James the Second and
Queen Mary, by Francis Sandford, Lancaster Herald, fol. 1687;
Evelyn's Diary, May, 21, 1685; Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors,
April 10-20, 1685; Burnet, i. 628; Eachard, iii. 734; A sermon
preached before their Majesties King James the Second and Queen
Mary at their Coronation in Westminster Abbey, April 23, 1695, by
Francis Lord Bishop of Ely, and Lord Almoner. I have seen an
Italian account of the Coronation which was published at Modena,
and which is chiefly remarkable for the skill with which the
writer sinks the fact that the prayers and psalms were in
English, and that the Bishops were heretics.
256 See the London Gazette during the months of February, March,
and April, 1685.
257 It would be easy to fill a volume with what Whig historians
and pamphleteers have written on this subject. I will cite only
one witness, a churchman and a Tory. "Elections," says Evelyn,
"were thought to be very indecently carried on in most places.
God give a better issue of it than some expect!" May 10, 1685.
Again he says, "The truth is there were many of the new members
whose elections and returns were universally condemned." May 22.
258 This fact I learned from a newsletter in the library of the
Royal Institution. Van Citters mentions the strength of the Whig
party in Bedfordshire.
259 Bramston's Memoirs.
260 Reflections on a Remonstrance and Protestation of all the
good Protestants of this Kingdom, 1689; Dialogue between Two
Friends, 1689.
261 Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Marquess of Wharton, 1715.
262 See the Guardian, No. 67; an exquisite specimen of Addison's
peculiar manner. It would be difficult to find in the works of
any other writer such an instance of benevolence delicately
flavoured with contempt.
263 The Observator, April 4, 1685.
264 Despatch of the Dutch Ambasadors, April 10-20, 1685.
265 Burnet, i. 626.
266 A faithful account of the Sickness, Death, and Burial of
Captain Bedlow, 1680; Narrative of Lord Chief Justice North.
267 Smith's Intrigues of the Popish Plot, 1685.
268 Burnet, i. 439.
269 See the proceedings in the Collection of State Trials.
270 Evelyn's Diary, May 7, 1685.
271 There remain many pictures of Oates. The most striking
descriptions of his person are in North's Examen, 225, in
Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, and In a broadside entitled, A
Hue and Cry after T. O.
272 The proceedings will be found at length in the Collection of
State Trials.
273 Gazette de France May 29,/June 9, 1685.
274 Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors, May 19-29, 1685.
275 Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1685; Eachard, iii. 741; Burnet, i.
637; Observator, May 27, 1685; Oates's Eikvn, 89; Eikwn
Brotoloigon, 1697; Commons' Journals of May, June, and July,
1689; Tom Brown's advice to Dr. Oates. Some interesting
circumstances are mentioned in a broadside, printed for A.
Brooks, Charing Cross, 1685. I have seen contemporary French and
Italian pamphlets containing the history of the trial and
execution. A print of Titus in the pillory was published at
Milan, with the following curious inscription: "Questo e il
naturale ritratto di Tito Otez, o vero Oatz, Inglese, posto in
berlina, uno de' principali professor della religion protestante,
acerrimo persecutore de' Cattolici, e gran spergiuro." I have
also seen a Dutch engraving of his punishment, with some Latin
verses, of which the following are a specimen:
"At Doctor fictus non fictos pertulit ictus
A tortore datos haud molli in corpore gratos,
Disceret ut vere scelera ob commissa rubere."
The anagram of his name, "Testis Ovat," may be found on many
prints published in different countries.
276 Blackstone's Commentaries, Chapter of Homicide.
277 According to Roger North the judges decided that
Dangerfield, having been previously convicted of perjury, was
incompetent to be a witness of the plot. But this is one among
many instances of Roger's inaccuracy. It appears, from the report
of the trial of Lord Castlemaine in June 1680, that, after much
altercation between counsel, and much consultation among the
judges of the different courts in Westminster Hall, Dangerfield
was sworn and suffered to tell his story; but the jury very
properly gave no credit to his testimony.
278 Dangerfield's trial was not reported; but I have seen a
concise account of it in a contemporary broadside. An abstract of
the evidence against Francis, and his dying speech, will be found
in the Collection of State Trials. See Eachard, iii. 741.
Burnet's narrative contains more mistakes than lines. See also
North's Examen, 256, the sketch of Dangerfield's life in the
Bloody Assizes, the Observator of July 29, 1685, and the poem
entitled "Dangerfield's Ghost to Jeffreys." In the very rare
volume entitled "Succinct Genealogies, by Robert Halstead," Lord
Peterbough says that Dangerfield, with whom he had had some
intercourse, was "a young man who appeared under a decent figure,
a serious behaviour, and with words that did not seem to proceed
from a common understanding."
279 Baxter's preface to Sir Mathew Hale's Judgment of the Nature
of True Religion, 1684.
280 See the Observator of February 28, 1685, the information in
the Collection of State Trials, the account of what passed in
court given by Calamy, Life of Baxter, chap. xiv., and the very
curious extracts from the Baxter MSS. in the Life, by Orme,
published in 1830.
281 Baxter MS. cited by Orme.
282 Act Parl. Car. II. March 29,1661, Jac. VII. April 28, 1685,
and May 13, 1685.
283 Act Parl. Jac. VII. May 8, 1685, Observator, June 20, 1685;
Lestrange evidently wished to see the precedent followed in
England.
284 His own words reported by himself. Life of James the Second,
i. 666. Orig. Mem.
285 Act Parl. Car. II. August 31, 1681.
286 Burnet, i. 583; Wodrow, III. v. 2. Unfortunately the Acta of
the Scottish Privy Council during almost the whole administration
of the Duke of York are wanting. (1848.) This assertion has been
met by a direct contradiction. But the fact is exactly as I have
stated it. There is in he Acta of the Scottish Privy Council a
hiatus extending from August 1678 to August 1682. The Duke of
York began to reside in Scotland in December 1679. He left
Scotland, never to return in May 1682. (1857.)
287 Wodrow, III. ix. 6.
288 Wodrow, III. ix. 6. The editor of the Oxford edition of
Burnet attempts to excuse this act by alleging that Claverhouse
was then employed to intercept all communication between Argyle
and Monmouth, and by supposing that John Brown may have been
detected in conveying intelligence between the rebel camps.
Unfortunately for this hypothesis John Brown was shot on the
first of May, when both Argyle and Monmouth were in Holland, and
when there was no insurrection in any part of our island.
289 Wodrow, III. ix, 6.
290 Wodrow, III. ix. 6. It has been confidently asserted, by
persons who have not taken the trouble to look at the authority
to which I have referred, that I have grossly calumniated these
unfortunate men; that I do not understand the Calvinistic
theology; and that it is impossible that members of the Church of
Scotland can have refused to pray for any man on the ground that
he was not one of the elect.
I can only refer to the narrative which Wodrow has inserted in
his history, and which he justly calls plain and natural. That
narrative is signed by two eyewitnesses, and Wodrow, before he
published it, submitted it to a third eyewitness, who pronounced
it strictly accurate. From that narrative I will extract the only
words which bear on the point in question: "When all the three
were taken, the officers consulted among themselves, and,
withdrawing to the west side of the town, questioned the
prisoners, particularly if they would pray for King James VII.
They answered, they would pray for all within the election of
grace. Balfour said Do you question the King's election? They
answered, sometimes they questioned their own. Upon which he
swore dreadfully, and said they should die presently, because
they would not pray for Christ's vicegerent, and so without one
word more, commanded Thomas Cook to go to his prayers, for he
should die.
In this narrative Wodrow saw nothing improbable; and I shall not
easily be convinced that any writer now living understands the
feelings and opinions of the Covenanters better than Wodrow did.
(1857.)
291 Wodrow, III. ix. 6. Cloud of Witnesses.
292 Wodrow, III. ix. 6. The epitaph of Margaret Wilson, in the
churchyard at Wigton, is printed in the Appendix to the Cloud of
Witnesses;
"Murdered for owning Christ supreme
Head of his church, and no more crime,
But her not owning Prelacy.
And not abjuring Presbytery,
Within the sea, tied to a stake,
She suffered for Christ Jesus' sake."
293 See the letter to King Charles II. prefixed to Barclay's
Apology.
294 Sewel's History of the Quakers, book x.
295 Minutes of Yearly Meetings, 1689, 1690.
296 Clarkson on Quakerism; Peculiar Customs, chapter v.
297 After this passage was written, I found in the British
Museum, a manuscript (Harl. MS. 7506) entitled, "An Account of
the Seizures, Sequestrations, great Spoil and Havock made upon
the Estates of the several Protestant Dissenters called Quakers,
upon Prosecution of old Statutes made against Papist and Popish
Recusants." The manuscript is marked as having belonged to James,
and appears to have been given by his confidential servant,
Colonel Graham, to Lord Oxford. This circumstance appears to me
to confirm the view which I have taken of the King's conduct
towards the Quakers.
298 Penn's visits to Whitehall, and levees at Kensington, are
described with great vivacity, though in very bad Latin, by
Gerard Croese. "Sumebat," he says, "rex sæpe secretum, non
horarium, vero horarum plurium, in quo de variis rebus cum Penno
serio sermonem conferebat, et interim differebat audire
præcipuorum nobilium ordinem, qui hoc interim spatio in
proc¦tone, in proximo, regem conventum præsto erant." Of the
crowd of suitors at Penn's house. Croese says, "Visi quandoquo de
hoc genere hominum non minus bis centum."-Historia Quakeriana,
lib. ii. 1695.
299 "Twenty thousand into my pocket; and a hundred thousand into
my province." Penn's Letter to Popple."
300 These orders, signed by Sunderland, will be found in Sewel's
History. They bear date April 18, 1685. They are written in a
style singularly obscure and intricate: but I think that I have
exhibited the meaning correctly. I have not been able to find any
proof that any person, not a Roman Catholic or a Quaker, regained
his freedom under these orders. See Neal's History of the
Puritans, vol. ii. chap. ii.; Gerard Croese, lib. ii. Croese
estimates the number of Quakers liberated at fourteen hundred and
sixty.
301 Barillon, May 28,/June 7, 1685. Observator, May 27, 1685;
Sir J. Reresby's Memoirs.
302 Lewis wrote to Barillon about this class of Exclusionists as
follows: "L'interet qu'ils auront a effacer cette tache par des
services considerables les portera, aelon toutes les apparences,
a le servir plus utilement que ne pourraient faire ceux qui ont
toujours ete les plus attaches a sa personne." May 15-25,1685.
303 Barillon, May 4-14, 1685; Sir John Reresby's Memoirs.
304 Burnet, i. 626; Evelyn's Diary, May, 22, 1685.
305 Roger North's Life of Guildford, 218; Bramston's Memoirs.
306 North's Life of Guildford, 228; News from Westminster.
307 Burnet, i. 382; Letter from Lord Conway to Sir George
Rawdon, Dec. 28, 1677. in the Rawdon Papers.
308 London Gazette, May 25, 1685; Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1685.
309 North's Life of Guildford, 256.
310 Burnet, i. 639; Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1685; Barillon, May
23,/June 2, and May 25,/June 4, 1685 The silence of the journals
perplexed Mr. Fox ; but it is explained by the circumstance that
Seymour's motion was not seconded.
311 Journals, May 22. Stat. Jac. II. i. 1.
312 Journals, May 26, 27. Sir J. Reresby's Memoirs.
313 Commons' Journals, May 27, 1685.
314 Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North; Life of Lord
GuiIford, 166; Mr M'Cullough's Literature of Political Economy.
315 Life of Dudley North, 176, Lonsdale's Memoirs, Van Citters,
June 12-22, 1685.
316 Commons' Journals, March 1, 1689.
317 Lords' Journals, March 18, 19, 1679, May 22, 1685.
318 Stat. 5 Geo. IV. c. 46.
319 Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, book xiv.; Burnet's
Own Times, i. 546, 625; Wade's and Ireton's Narratives, Lansdowne
MS. 1152; West's information in the Appendix to Sprat's True
Account.
320 London Gazette, January, 4, 1684-5; Ferguson MS. in
Eachard's History, iii. 764; Grey's Narratives; Sprat's True
Account, Danvers's Treatise on Baptism; Danvers's Innocency and
Truth vindicated; Crosby's History of the English Baptists.
321 Sprat's True Account; Burnet, i. 634; Wade's Confession,
Earl. MS. 6845.
Lord Howard of Escrick accused Ayloffe of proposing to
assassinate the Duke of York; but Lord Howard was an abject liar;
and this story was not part of his original confession, but was
added afterwards by way of supplement, and therefore deserves no
credit whatever.
322 Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845; Lansdowne MS. 1152;
Holloway's narrative in the Appendix to Sprat's True Account.
Wade owned that Holloway had told nothing but truth.
323 Sprat's True Account and Appendix, passim.
324 Sprat's True Account and Appendix, Proceedings against
Rumbold in the Collection of State Trials; Burnet's Own Times, i.
633; Appendix to Fox's History, No. IV.
325 Grey's narrative; his trial in the Collection of State
Trials; Sprat's True Account.
326 In the Pepysian Collection is a print representing one of
the balls which About this time William and Mary gave in the
Oranje Zaal.
327 Avaux Neg. January 25, 1685. Letter from James to the
Princess of Orange dated January 1684-5, among Birch's Extracts
in the British Museum.
328 Grey's Narrative; Wade's Confession, Lansdowne MS. 1152.
329 Burnet, i. 542; Wood, Ath. Ox. under the name of Owen;
Absalom and Achtophel, part ii.; Eachard, iii. 682, 697; Sprat's
True Account, passim; Lond. Gaz. Aug. 6,1683; Nonconformist's
Memorial; North's Examen, 399.
330 Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845.
331 Avaux Neg. Feb. 20, 22, 1685; Monmouth's letter to James
from Ringwood.
332 Boyer's History of King William the Third, 2d edition, 1703,
vol. i 160.
333 Welwood's Memoirs, App. xv.; Burnet, i. 530. Grey told a
somewhat different story, but he told it to save his life. The
Spanish ambassador at the English court, Don Pedro de Ronquillo,
in a letter to the governor of the Low Countries written about
this time, sneers at Monmouth for living on the bounty of a fond
woman, and hints a very unfounded suspicion that the Duke's
passion was altogether interested. "HaIIandose hoy tan falto de
medios que ha menester trasformarse en Amor con Miledi en vista
de la ecesidad de poder subsistir."-Ronquillo to Grana. Mar.
30,/Apr. 9, 1685.
334 Proceedings against Argyle in the Collection of State
Trials, Burnet, i 521; A True and Plain Account of the
Discoveries made in Scotland, 1684, The Scotch Mist Cleared; Sir
George Mackenzie's Vindication, Lord Fountainhall's Chronological
Notes.
335 Information of Robert Smith in the Appendix to Sprat's True
Account.
336 True and Plain Account of the Discoveries made in Scotland.
337 Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio, lib. ii. cap.
33.
338 See Sir Patrick Hume's Narrative, passim.
339 Grey's Narrative; Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845.
340 Burnet, i. 631.
341 Grey's Narrative.
342 Le Clerc's Life of Locke; Lord King's Life of Locke; Lord
Grenville's Oxford and Locke. Locke must not be confounded with
the Anabapist Nicholas Look, whose name was spelled Locke in
Grey's Confession, and who is mentioned in the Lansdowne MS.
1152, and in the Buccleuch narrative appended to Mr. Rose's
dissertation. I should hardly think it necessary to make this
remark, but that the similarity of the two names appears to have
misled a man so well acquainted with the history of those times
as Speaker Onslow. See his note on Burnet, i, 629.
343 Wodrow, book iii. chap. ix; London Gazette, May 11, 1685;
Barillon, May 11-21.
344 Register of the Proceedings of the States General, May 5-15,
1685.
345 This is mentioned in his credentials, dated on the 16th of
March, 1684-5.
346 Bonrepaux to Seignelay, February 4-14, 1686.
347 Avaux Neg. April 30,/May 10, May 1-11, May 5-15, 1685; Sir
Patrick Hume's Narrative; Letter from The Admiralty of Amsterdam
to the States General, dated June 20, 1685; Memorial of Skelton,
delivered to the States General, May 10, 1685.
348 If any person is inclined to suspect that I have exaggerated
the absurdity and ferocity of these men, I would advise him to
read two books, which will convince him that I have rather
softened than overcharged the portrait, the Hind Let Loose, and
Faithful Contendings Displayed.
349 A few words which were in the first five editions have been
omitted in this place. Here and in another passage I had, as Mr.
Aytoun has observed, mistaken the City Guards, which were
commanded by an officer named Graham, for the Dragoons of Graham
of Claverhouse.
350 The authors from whom I have taken the history of Argyle's
expedition are Sir Patrick Hume, who was an eyewitness of what he
related, and Wodrow, who had access to materials of the greatest
value, among which were the Earl's own papers. Wherever there is
a question of veracity between Argyle and Hume, I have no doubt
that Argyle's narrative ought to be followed.
See also Burnet, i. 631, and the life of Bresson, published by
Dr. Mac Crie. The account of the Scotch rebellion in the Life of
James the Second, is a ridiculous romance, not written by the
King himself, nor derived from his papers, but composed by a
Jacobite who did not even take the trouble to look at a map of
the seat of war.
351 Wodrow, III. ix 10; Western Martyrology; Burnet, i. 633;
Fox's History, Appendix iv. I can find no way, except that
indicated in the text, of reconciling Rumbold's denial that he
had ever admitted into his mind the thought of assassination with
his confession that he had himself mentioned his own house as a
convenient place for an attack on the royal brothers. The
distinction which I suppose him to have taken was certainly taken
by another Rye House conspirator, who was, like him, an old
soldier of the Commonwealth, Captain Walcot. On Walcot's trial,
West, the witness for the crown, said, "Captain, you did agree to
be one of those that were to fight the Guards." "What, then, was
the reason." asked Chief Justice Pemberton, "that he would not
kill the King?" "He said," answered West, "that it was a base
thing to kill a naked man, and he would not do it."
352 Wodrow, III. ix. 9.
353 Wade's narrative, Harl, MS. 6845; Burnet, i. 634; Van
Citters's Despatch of Oct. 30,/Nov. 9, 1685; Luttrell's Diary of
the same date.
354 Wodrow, III, ix. 4, and III. ix. 10. Wodrow gives from the
Acts of Council the names of all the prisoners who were
transported, mutilated or branded.
355 Skelton's letter is dated the 7-17th of May 1686. It will be
found, together with a letter of the Schout or High Bailiff of
Amsterdam, in a little volume published a few months later, and
entitled, "Histoire des Evenemens Tragiques d'Angleterre." The
documents inserted in that work are, as far as I have examined
them, given exactly from the Dutch archives, except that
Skelton's French, which was not the purest, is slightly
corrected. See also Grey's Narrative.
Goodenough, on his examination after the battle of Sedgemoor,
said, "The Schout of Amsterdam was a particular friend to this
last design." Lansdowne MS. 1152.
It is not worth while to refute those writers who represent the
Prince of Orange as an accomplice in Monmouth's enterprise. The
circumstance on which they chiefly rely is that the authorities
of Amsterdam took no effectual steps for preventing the
expedition from sailing. This circumstance is in truth the
strongest proof that the expedition was not favoured by William.
No person, not profoundly ignorant of the institutions and
politics of Holland, would hold the Stadtholder answerable for
the proceedings of the heads of the Loevestein party.
356 Avaux Neg. June 7-17, 8-18, 14-24, 1685, Letter of the
Prince of Orange to Lord Rochester, June 9, 1685.
357 Van Citters, June 9-19, June 12-22,1685. The correspondence
of Skelton with the States General and with the Admiralty of
Amsterdam is in the archives at the Hague. Some pieces will be
found in the Evenemens Tragiques d'Angleterre. See also Burnet,
i. 640.
358 Wade's Confession in the Hardwicke Papers; Harl. MS. 6845.
359 See Buyse's evidence against Monmouth and Fletcher in the
Collection of State Trials.
360 Journals of the House of Commons, June 13, 1685; Harl. MS.
6845; Lansdowne MS. 1152.
361 Burnet, i. 641, Goodenough's confession in the Lansdowne MS.
1152. Copies of the Declaration, as originally printed, are very
rare; but there is one in the British Museum.
362 Historical Account of the Life and magnanimous Actions of
the most illustrious Protestant Prince James, Duke of Monmouth,
1683.
363 Wade's Confession, Hardwicke Papers; Axe Papers; Harl. MS.
6845.
364 Harl. MS. 6845.
365 Buyse's evidence in the Collection of State Trials; Burnet i
642; Ferguson's MS. quoted by Eachard.
366 London Gazette, June 18, 1685; Wade's Confession, Hardwicke
Papers.
367 Lords' Journals, June 13,1685.
368 Wade's Confession; Ferguson MS.; Axe Papers, Harl. MS. 6845,
Oldmixon, 701, 702. Oldmixon, who was then a boy, lived very near
the scene of these events.
369 London Gazette, June 18, 1685; Lords' and Commons' Journals,
June 13 and 15; Dutch Despatch, 16-26.
370 Oldmixon is wrong in saying that Fenwick carried up the
bill. It was carried up, as appears from the Journals, by Lord
Ancram. See Delamere's Observations on the Attainder of the Late
Duke of Monmouth.
371 Commons' Journals of June 17, 18, and 19, 1685; Reresby's
Memoirs.
372 Commons' Journals, June 19, 29, 1685; Lord Lonsdale's
Memoirs, 8, 9, Burnet, i. 639. The bill, as amended by the
committee, will be found in Mr. Fox's historical work. Appendix
iii. If Burnet's account be correct, the offences which, by the
amended bill, were made punishable only with civil incapacities
were, by the original bill, made capital.
373 1 Jac. II. c. 7; Lords' Journals, July 2, 1685.
374 Lords' and Commons' Journals, July 2, 1685.
375 Savage's edition of Toulmin's History of Taunton.
376 Sprat's true Account; Toulmin's History of Taunton.
377 Life and Death of Joseph Alleine, 1672; Nonconformists'
Memorial.
378 Harl. MS. 7006; Oldmixon. 702; Eachard, iii. 763.
379 Wade's Confession; Goodenough's Confession, Harl. MS. 1152,
Oldmixon, 702. Ferguson's denial is quite undeserving of credit.
A copy of the proclamation is in the Harl. MS. 7006.
380 Copies of the last three proclamations are in the British
Museum; Harl. MS. 7006. The first I have never seen; but it is
mentioned by Wado.
381 Grey's Narrative; Ferguson's MS., Eachard, iii. 754.
382 Persecution Exposed, by John Whiting.
383 Harl. MS. 6845.
384 One of these weapons may still be seen in the tower.
385 Grey's Narrative; Paschall's Narrative in the Appendix to
Heywood's Vindication.
386 Oldmixon, 702.
387 North's Life of Guildford, 132. Accounts of Beaufort's
progress through Wales and the neighbouring counties are in the
London Gazettes of July 1684. Letter of Beaufort to Clarendon,
June 19, 1685.
388 Bishop Fell to Clarendon, June 20; Abingdon to Clarendon,
June 20, 25, 26, 1685; Lansdowne MS. 846.
389 Avaux, July 5-15, 6-16, 1685.
390 Van Citters, June 30,/July 10, July 3-13, 21-31,1685; Avaux
Neg. July 5-15, London Gazette, July 6.
391 Barillon, July 6-16, 1685; Scott's preface to Albion and
Albanius.
392 Abingdon to Clarendon, June 29,1685; Life of Philip Henry,
by Bates.
393 London Gazette, June 22, and June 25,1685; Wade's
Confession; Oldmixon, 703; Harl. MS. 6845.
394 Wade's Confession.
395 Wade's Confession; Oldmixon, 703; Harl. MS. 6845; Charge of
Jeffreys to the grand jury of Bristol, Sept. 21, 1685.
396 London Gazette, June 29, 1685; Wade's Confession.
397 Wade's Confession.
398 London Gazette, July 2,1685; Barillon, July 6-16; Wade's
Confession.
399 London Gazette, June 29,1685; Van Citters, June 30,/July 10,
400 Harl. MS. 6845; Wade's Confession.
401 Wade's Confession; Eachard, iii. 766.
402 Wade's Confession.
403 London Gazette, July 6, 1685; Van Citters, July 3-13,
Oldmixon, 703.
404 Wade's Confession.
405 Matt. West. Flor. Hist., A. D. 788; MS. Chronicle quoted by
Mr. Sharon Turner in the History of the Anglo-Saxons, book IV.
chap. xix; Drayton's Polyolbion, iii; Leland's Itinerary;
Oldmixon, 703. Oldmixon was then at Bridgewater, and probably saw
the Duke on the church tower. The dish mentioned in the text is
the property of Mr. Stradling, who has taken laudable pain's to
preserve the relics and traditions of the Western insurrection.
406 Oldmixon, 703.
407 Churchill to Clarendon, July 4, 1685.
408 Oldmixon, 703; Observator, Aug. 1, 1685.
409 Paschall's Narrative in Heywood's Appendix.
410 Kennet, ed. 1719, iii. 432. I am forced to believe that this
lamentable story is true. The Bishop declares that it was
communicated to him in the year 1718 by a brave officer of the
Blues, who had fought at Sedgemoor, and who had himself seen the
poor girl depart in an agony of distress.
411 Narrative of an officer of the Horse Guards in Kennet, ed.
1718, iii. 432; MS. Journal of the Western Rebellion, kept by Mr.
Edward Dummer, Dryden's Hind and Panther, part II. The lines of
Dryden are remarkable:
"Such were the pleasing triumphs of the sky
For James's late nocturnal victory.
The fireworks which his angels made above.
The pledge of his almighty patron's love,
I saw myself the lambent easy light
Gild the brown horror and dispel the night.
The messenger with speed the tidings bore.
News which three labouring nations did restore;
But heaven's own Nuntius was arrived before.'
412 It has been said by several writers, and among them by
Pennant, that the district in London called Soho derived its name
from the watchword of Monmouth's army at Sedgemoor. Mention of
Soho Fields will be found in many books printed before the
Western insurrection; for example, in Chamberlayne's State of
England, 1684.
413 There is a warrant of James directing that forty pounds
should be paid to Sergeant Weems, of Dumbarton's regiment, "for
good service in the action at Sedgemoor in firing the great guns
against the rebels." Historical Record of the First or Royal
Regiment of Foot.
414 James the Second's account of the battle of Sedgemoor in
Lord Hardwicke's State Papers; Wade's Confession; Ferguson's MS.
Narrative in Eachard, iii. 768; Narrative of an Officer of the
Horse Guards in Kennet, ed. 1719, iii. 432, London Gazette, July
9, 1685; Oldmixon, 703; Paschall's Narrative; Burnet, i. 643;
Evelyn's Diary, July 8; Van Citters, .July 7-17; Barillon, July
9-19; Reresby's Memoirs; the Duke of Buckingham's battle of
Sedgemoor, a Farce; MS. Journal of the Western Rebellion, kept by
Mr. Edward Dummer, then serving in the train of artillery
employed by His Majesty for the suppression of the same. The last
mentioned manuscript is in the Pepysian library, and is of the
greatest value, not on account of the narrative, which contains
little that is remarkable, but on account of the plans, which
exhibit the battle in four or five different stages.
"The history of a battle," says the greatest of living generals,
"is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may
recollect all the little events of which the great result is the
battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in
which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes
all the difference as to their value or importance . . . . .
Just to show you how little reliance can be placed even on what
are supposed the best accounts of a battle, I mention that there
are some circumstances mentioned in General-'s account which did
not occur as he relates them. It is impossible to say when each
important occurrence took place, or in what order."-Wellington
Papers, Aug. 8, and 17, 1815.
The battle concerning which the Duke of Wellington wrote thus was
that of Waterloo, fought only a few weeks before, by broad day,
under his own vigilant and experienced eye. What then must be the
difficulty of compiling from twelve or thirteen narratives an
account of a battle fought more than a hundred and sixty years
ago in such darkness that not a man of those engaged could see
fifty paces before him? The difficulty is aggravated by the
circumstance that those witnesses who had the best opportunity of
knowing the truth were by no means inclined to tell it. The Paper
which I have placed at the head of my list of authorities was
evidently drawn up with extreme partiality to Feversham. Wade was
writing under the dread of the halter. Ferguson, who was seldom
scrupulous about the truth of his assertions, lied on this
occasion like Bobadil or Parolles. Oldmixon, who was a boy at
Bridgewater when the battle was fought, and passed a great part
of his subsequent life there, was so much under the influence of
local passions that his local information was useless to him. His
desire to magnify the valour of the Somersetshire peasants, a
valour which their enemies acknowledged and which did not need to
be set off by exaggeration and fiction, led him to compose an
absurd romance. The eulogy which Barillon, a Frenchman accustomed
to despise raw levies, pronounced on the vanquished army, is of
much more value, "Son infanterie fit fort bien. On eut de la
peine a les rompre, et les soldats combattoient avec les crosses
de mousquet et les scies qu'ils avoient au bout de grands bastons
au lieu de picques."
Little is now to be learned by visiting the field of battle for
the face of the country has been greatly changed; and the old
Bussex Rhine on the banks of which the great struggle took place,
has long disappeared. The rhine now called by that name is of
later date, and takes a different course.
I have derived much assistance from Mr. Roberts's account of the
battle. Life of Monmouth, chap. xxii. His narrative is in the
main confirmed by Dummer's plans.
415 I learned these things from persons living close to
Sedgemoor.
416 Oldmixon, 704.
417 Locke's Western Rebellion Stradling's Chilton Priory.
418 Locke's Western Rebellion Stradling's Chilton Priory;
Oldmixon, 704.
419 Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire, 1691.
420 Account of the manner of taking the late Duke of Monmouth,
published by his Majesty's command; Gazette de France, July
18-28, 1688; Eachard, iii. 770; Burnet, i. 664, and Dartmouth's
note: Van Citters, July 10-20,1688.
421 The letter to the King was printed at the time by authority;
that to the Queen Dowager will be found in Sir H. Ellis's
Original Letters; that to Rochester in the Clarendon
Correspondence.
422 "On trouve," he wrote, "fort a redire icy qu'il ayt fait une
chose si peu ordinaire aux Anglois." July 13-23, 1685.
423 Account of the manner of taking the Duke of Monmouth;
Gazette, July 16, 1685; Van Citters, July 14-24,
424 Barillon was evidently much shocked. "Ill se vient," he
says, "de passer icy, une chose bien extraordinaire et fort
opposee a l'usage ordinaire des autres nations" 13-23, 1685.
425 Burnet. i. 644; Evelyn's Diary, July 15; Sir J. Bramston's
Memoirs; Reresby's Memoirs; James to the Prince of Orange, July
14, 1685; Barillon, July 16-26; Bucclench MS.
426 James to the Prince of Orange, July 14, 1685, Dutch Despatch
of the same date, Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i. 646; Narcissus
Luttrell's Diary, (1848) a copy of this diary, from July 1685 to
Sept. 1690, is among the Mackintosh papers. To the rest I was
allowed access by the kindness of the Warden of All Souls'
College, where the original MS. is deposited. The delegates of
the Press of the University of Oxford have since published the
whole in six substantial volumes, which will, I am afraid, find
little favour with readers who seek only for amusement, but which
will always be useful as materials for history. (1857.)
427 Buccleuch MS; Life of James the Second, ii. 37, Orig. Mem.,
Van Citters, July 14-24, 1685; Gazette de France, August 1-11.
428 Buccleuch MS.; Life of James the Second, ii. 37, 38, Orig.
Mem., Burnet, i. 645; Tenison's account in Kennet, iii. 432, ed.
1719.
429 Buccleuch MS.
430 The name of Ketch was often associated with that of Jeffreys
in the lampoons of those days.
"While Jeffreys on the bench, Ketch on the gibbet sits,''
says one poet. In the year which followed Monmouth's execution
Ketch was turned out of his office for insulting one of the
Sheriffs, and was succeeded by a butcher named Rose. But in four
months Rose himself was hanged at Tyburn, and Ketch was
reinstated. Luttrell's Diary, January 20, and May 28, 1686. See a
curious note by Dr, Grey, on Hudibras, part iii. canto ii. line
1534.
431 Account of the execution of Monmouth, signed by the divines
who attended him; Buccleuch MS; Burnet, i. 646; Van Citters, July
17-27,1685, Luttrell's Diary; Evelyn's Diary, July 15; Barillon,
July 19-29.
432 I cannot refrain from expressing my disgust at the barbarous
stupidity which has transformed this most interesting little
church into the likeness of a meetinghouse in a manufacturing
town.
433 Observator, August 1, 1685; Gazette de France, Nov. 2, 1686;
Letter from Humphrey Wanley, dated Aug. 25, 1698, in the Aubrey
Collection; Voltaire, Dict. Phil. There are, in the Pepysian
Collection, several ballads written after Monmouth's death which
represent him as living, and predict his speedy return. I will
give two specimens.
"Though this is a dismal story
Of the fall of my design,
Yet I'll come again in glory,
If I live till eighty-nine:
For I'll have a stronger army
And of ammunition store."
Again;
"Then shall Monmouth in his glories
Unto his English friends appear,
And will stifle all such stories
As are vended everywhere.
"They'll see I was not so degraded,
To be taken gathering pease,
Or in a cock of hay up braided.
What strange stories now are these!"
434 London Gazette, August 3, 1685; the Battle of Sedgemoor, a
Farce.
435 Pepys's Diary, kept at Tangier; Historical Records of the
Second or Queen's Royal Regiment of Foot.
436 Bloody Assizes, Burnet, i. 647; Luttrell's Diary, July 15,
1685; Locke's Western Rebellion; Toulmin's History of Taunton,
edited by Savage.
437 Luttrell's Diary, July 15, 1685; Toulmin's Hist. of Taunton.
438 Oldmixon, 705; Life and Errors of John Dunton, chap. vii.
439 The silence of Whig writers so credulous and so malevolent
as Oldmixon and the compilers of the Western Martyrology would
alone seem to me to settle the question. It also deserves to be
remarked that the story of Rhynsault is told by Steele in the
Spectator, No. 491. Surely it is hardly possible to believe that,
if a crime exactly resembling that of Rhynsault had been
committed within living memory in England by an officer of James
the Second, Steele, who was indiscreetly and unseasonably forward
to display his Whiggism, would have made no allusion to that
fact. For the case of Lebon, see the Moniteur, 4 Messidor, l'an
3.
440 Sunderland to Kirke, July 14 and 28, 1685. "His Majesty,"
says Sunderland, "commands me to signify to you his dislike of
these proceedings, and desires you to take care that no person
concerned in the rebellion be at large." It is but just to add
that, in the same letter, Kirke is blamed for allowing his
soldiers to live at free quarter.
441 I should be very glad if I could give credit to the popular
story that Ken, immediately after the battle of Sedgemoor,
represented to the chiefs of the royal army the illegality of
military executions. He would, I doubt not, have exerted all his
influence on the side of law and of mercy, if he had been
present. But there is no trustworthy evidence that he was then in
the West at all. Indeed what we know about his proceedings at
this time amounts very nearly to proof of an alibi. It is certain
from the Journals of the House of Lords that, on the Thursday
before the battle, he was at Westminster, it is equally certain
that, on the Monday after the battle, he was with Monmouth in the
Tower; and, in that age, a journey from London to Bridgewater and
back again was no light thing.
442 North's Life of Guildford, 260, 263, 273; Mackintosh's View
of the Reign of James the Second, page 16, note; Letter of
Jeffreys to Sunderland, Sept. 5, 1685.
443 See the preamble of the Act of Parliament reversing her
attainder.
444 Trial of Alice Lisle in the Collection of State Trials; Act
of the First of William and Mary for annulling and making void
the Attainder of Alice Lisle widow; Burnet, i. 649; Caveat
against the Whigs.
445 Bloody Assizes.
446 Locke's Western Rebellion.
447 This I can attest from my own childish recollections.
448 Lord Lonsdale says seven hundred; Burnet six hundred. I have
followed the list which the Judges sent to the Treasury, and
which may still be seen there in the letter book of 1685. See the
Bloody Assizes, Locke's Western Rebellion; the Panegyric on Lord
Jeffreys; Burnet, i. 648; Eachard, iii. 775; Oldmixon, 705.
449 Some of the prayers, exhortations, and hymns of the
sufferers will be found in the Bloody Assizes.
450 Bloody Assizes; Locke's Western Rebellion; Lord Lonsdale's
Memoirs; Account of the Battle of Sedgemoor in the Hardwicke
Papers. The story in the Life of James the Second, ii. 43; is not
taken from the King's manuscripts, and sufficiently refutes
itself.
451 Bloody Assizes; Locke's Western Rebellion, Humble Petition
of Widows and Fatherless Children in the West of England;
Panegyric on Lord Jeffreys.
452 As to the Hewlings, I have followed Kiffin's Memoirs, and
Mr. Hewling Luson's narrative, which will be found in the second
edition of the Hughes Correspondence, vol. ii. Appendix. The
accounts in Locke's Western Rebellion and in the Panegyric on
Jeffreys are full of errors. Great part of the account in the
Bloody Assizes was written by Kiffin, and agrees word for word
with his Memoirs.
453 See Tutchin's account of his own case in the Bloody Assizes.
454 Sunderland to Jeffreys, Sept. 14, 1685; Jeffreys to the
King, Sept. 19, 1685, in the State Paper Office.
455 The best account of the sufferings of those rebels who were
sentenced to transportation is to be found in a very curious
narrative written by John Coad, an honest, Godfearing carpenter
who joined Monmouth, was badly wounded at Philip's Norton, was
tried by Jeffreys, and was sent to Jamaica. The original
manuscript was kindly lent to me by Mr. Phippard, to whom it
belongs.
456 In the Treasury records of the autumn of 1685 are several
letters directing search to be made for trifles of this sort.
457 Commons' Journals, Oct. 9, Nov. 10, Dec 26, 1690; Oldmixon,
706. Panegyrie on Jeffreys.
458 Life and Death of Lord Jeffreys; Panegyric on Jeffreys;
Kiffin's Memoirs.
459 Burnet, i 368; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4, 1684-5, July 13,
1686. In one of the satires of that time are these lines:
"When Duchess, she was gentle, mild, and civil;
When Queen, she proved a raging furious devil."
460 Sunderland to Jeffreys, Sept. 14, 1685.
461 Locke's Western Rebellion; Toulmin's History of Taunton,
edited by Savage, Letter of the Duke of Somerset to Sir F. Warre;
Letter of Sunderland to Penn, Feb. 13, 1685-6, from the State
Paper Office, in the Mackintosh Collection. (1848.)
The letter of Sunderland is as follows:-
"Whitehall, Feb. 13, 1685-6.
"Mr. Penne,
"Her Majesty's Maids of Honour having acquainted me that they
design to employ you and Mr. Walden in making a composition with
the Relations of the Maids of Taunton for the high Misdemeanour
they have been guilty of, I do at their request hereby let you
know that His Majesty has been pleased to give their Fines to the
said Maids of Honour, and therefore recommend it to Mr. Walden
and you to make the most advantageous composition you can in
their behalf."
I am, Sir,
"Your humble servant,
"SUNDERLAND."
That the person to whom this letter was addressed was William
Penn the Quaker was not doubted by Sir James Mackintosh who first
brought it to light, or, as far as I am aware, by any other
person, till after the publication of the first part of this
History. It has since been confidently asserted that the letter
was addressed to a certain George Penne, who appears from an old
accountbook lately discovered to have been concerned in a
negotiation for the ransom of one of Monmouth's followers, named
Azariah Pinney.
If I thought that I had committed an error, I should, I hope,
have the honesty to acknowledge it. But, after full
consideration, I am satisfied that Sunderland's letter was
addressed to William Penn.
Much has been said about the way in which the name is spelt. The
Quaker, we are told, was not Mr. Penne, but Mr. Penn. I feel
assured that no person conversant with the books and manuscripts
of the seventeenth century will attach any importance to this
argument. It is notorious that a proper name was then thought to
be well spelt if the sound were preserved. To go no further than
the persons, who, in Penn's time, held the Great Seal, one of
them is sometimes Hyde and sometimes Hide: another is Jefferies,
Jeffries, Jeffereys, and Jeffreys: a third is Somers, Sommers,
and Summers: a fourth is Wright and Wrighte; and a fifth is
Cowper and Cooper. The Quaker's name was spelt in three ways. He,
and his father the Admiral before him, invariably, as far as I
have observed, spelt it Penn; but most people spelt it Pen; and
there were some who adhered to the ancient form, Penne. For
example. William the father is Penne in a letter from Disbrowe to
Thurloe, dated on the 7th of December, 1654; and William the son
is Penne in a newsletter of the 22nd of September, 1688, printed
in the Ellis Correspondence. In Richard Ward's Life and Letters
of Henry More, printed in 1710, the name of the Quaker will be
found spelt in all the three ways, Penn in the index, Pen in page
197, and Penne in page 311. The name is Penne in the Commission
which the Admiral carried out with him on his expedition to the
West Indies. Burchett, who became Secretary to the Admiralty soon
after the Revolution, and remained in office long after the
accession of the House of Hannover, always, in his Naval History,
wrote the name Penne. Surely it cannot be thought strange that an
old-fashioned spelling, in which the Secretary of the Admiralty
persisted so late as 1720, should have been used at the office of
the Secretary of State in 1686. I am quite confident that, if the
letter which we are considering had been of a different kind, if
Mr. Penne had been informed that, in consequence of his earnest
intercession, the King had been graciously pleased to grant a
free pardon to the Taunton girls, and if I had attempted to
deprive the Quaker of the credit of that intercession on the
ground that his name was not Penne, the very persons who now
complain so bitterly that I am unjust to his memory would have
complained quite as bitterly, and, I must say, with much more
reason.
I think myself, therefore perfectly justified in considering the
names, Penn and Penne, as the same. To which, then, of the two
persons who bore that name George or William, is it probable that
the letter of the Secretary of State was addressed?
George was evidently an adventurer of a very low class. All that
we learn about him from the papers of the Pinney family is that
he was employed in the purchase of a pardon for the younger son
of a dissenting minister. The whole sum which appears to have
passed through George's hands on this occasion was sixty-five
pounds. His commission on the transaction must therefore have
been small. The only other information which we have about him,
is that he, some time later, applied to the government for a
favour which was very far from being an honour. In England the
Groom Porter of the Palace had a jurisdiction over games of
chance, and made some very dirty gain by issuing lottery tickets
and licensing hazard tables. George appears to have petitioned
for a similar privilege in the American colonies.
William Penn was, during the reign of James the Second, the most
active and powerful solicitor about the Court. I will quote the
words of his admirer Crose. "Quum autem Pennus tanta gratia
plurinum apud regem valeret, et per id perplures sibi amicos
acquireret, illum omnes, etiam qui modo aliqua notitia erant
conjuncti, quoties aliquid a rege postulandum agendumve apud
regem esset, adire, ambire, orare, ut eos apud regem adjuvaret."
He was overwhelmed by business of this kind, "obrutus
negotiationibus curationibusque." His house and the approaches to
it were every day blocked up by crowds of persons who came to
request his good offices; "domus ac vestibula quotidie referta
clientium et suppliccantium." From the Fountainhall papers it
appears that his influence was felt even in the highlands of
Scotland. We learn from himself that, at this time, he was always
toiling for others, that he was a daily suitor at Whitehall, and
that, if he had chosen to sell his influence, he could, in little
more than three, years, have put twenty thousand pounds into his
pocket, and obtained a hundred thousand more for the improvement
of the colony of which he was proprietor.
Such was the position of these two men. Which of them, then, was
the more likely to be employed in the matter to which
Sunderland's letter related? Was it George or William, an agent
of the lowest or of the highest class? The persons interested
were ladies of rank and fashion, resident at the palace. where
George would hardly have been admitted into an outer room, but
where William was every day in the presence chamber and was
frequently called into the closet. The greatest nobles in the
kingdom were zealous and active in the cause of their fair
friends, nobles with whom William lived in habits of familiar
intercourse, but who would hardly have thought George fit company
for their grooms. The sum in question was seven thousand pounds,
a sum not large when compared with the masses of wealth with
which William had constantly to deal, but more than a hundred
times as large as the only ransom which is known to have passed
through the hands of George. These considerations would suffice
to raise a strong presumption that Sunderland's letter was
addressed to William, and not to George: but there is a still
stronger argument behind.
It is most important to observe that the person to whom this
letter was addressed was not the first person whom the Maids of
Honour had requested to act for them. They applied to him because
another person to whom they had previously applied, had, after
some correspondence, declined the office. From their first
application we learn with certainty what sort of person they
wished to employ. If their first application had been made to
some obscure pettifogger or needy gambler, we should be warranted
in believing that the Penne to whom their second application was
made was George. If, on the other hand, their first application
was made to a gentleman of the highest consideration, we can
hardly be wrong in saying that the Penne to whom their second
application was made must have been William. To whom, then, was
their first application made? It was to Sir Francis Warre of
Hestercombe, a Baronet and a Member of Parliament. The letters
are still extant in which the Duke of Somerset, the proud Duke,
not a man very likely to have corresponded with George Penne,
pressed Sir Francis to undertake the commission. The latest of
those letters is dated about three weeks before Sunderland's
letter to Mr. Penne. Somerset tells Sir Francis that the town
clerk of Bridgewater, whose name, I may remark in passing, is
spelt sometimes Bird and sometimes Birde, had offered his
services, but that those services had been declined. It is clear,
therefore, that the Maids of Honour were desirous to have an
agent of high station and character. And they were right. For the
sum which they demanded was so large that no ordinary jobber
could safely be entrusted with the care of their interests.
As Sir Francis Warre excused himself from undertaking the
negotiation, it became necessary for the Maids of Honour and
their advisers to choose somebody who might supply his place; and
they chose Penne. Which of the two Pennes, then, must have been
their choice, George, a petty broker to whom a percentage on
sixty-five pounds was an object, and whose highest ambition was
to derive an infamous livelihood from cards and dice, or William,
not inferior in social position to any commoner in the kingdom?
Is it possible to believe that the ladies, who, in January,
employed the Duke of Somerset to procure for them an agent in the
first rank of the English gentry, and who did not think an
attorney, though occupying a respectable post in a respectable
corporation, good enough for their purpose, would, in February,
have resolved to trust everything to a fellow who was as much
below Bird as Bird was below Warre?
But, it is said, Sunderland's letter is dry and distant; and he
never would have written in such a style to William Penn with
whom he was on friendly terms. Can it be necessary for me to
reply that the official communications which a Minister of State
makes to his dearest friends and nearest relations are as cold
and formal as those which he makes to strangers? Will it be
contended that the General Wellesley to whom the Marquis
Wellesley, when Governor of India, addressed so many letters
beginning with "Sir," and ending with "I have the honour to be
your obedient servant,'' cannot possibly have been his Lordship's
brother Arthur?
But, it is said, Oldmixon tells a different story. According to
him, a Popish lawyer named Brent, and a subordinate jobber, named
Crane, were the agents in the matter of the Taunton girls. Now it
is notorious that of all our historians Oldmixon is the least
trustworthy. His most positive assertion would be of no value
when opposed to such evidence as is furnished by Sunderland's
letter, But Oldmixon asserts nothing positively. Not only does he
not assert positively that Brent and Crane acted for the Maids of
Honour; but he does not even assert positively that the Maids of
Honour were at all concerned. He goes no further than "It was
said," and "It was reported." It is plain, therefore, that he was
very imperfectly informed. I do not think it impossible, however,
that there may have been some foundation for the rumour which he
mentions. We have seen that one busy lawyer, named Bird,
volunteered to look after the interest of the Maids of Honour,
and that they were forced to tell him that they did not want his
services. Other persons, and among them the two whom Oldmixon
names, may have tried to thrust themselves into so lucrative a
job, and may, by pretending to interest at Court, have succeeded
in obtaining a little money from terrified families. But nothing
can be more clear than that the authorised agent of the Maids of
Honour was the Mr. Penne, to whom the Secretary of State wrote;
and I firmly believe that Mr. Penne to have been William the
Quaker
If it be said that it is incredible that so good a man would have
been concerned in so bad an affair, I can only answer that this
affair was very far indeed from being the worst in which he was
concerned.
For those reasons I leave the text, and shall leave it exactly as
it originally stood. (1857.)
462 Burnet, i. 646, and Speaker Onslow's note; Clarendon to
Rochester, May 8, 1686.
463 Burnet, i. 634.
464 Calamy's Memoirs; Commons' Journals, December 26,1690;
Sunderland to Jeffreys, September 14, 1685; Privy Council Book,
February 26, 1685-6.
465 Lansdowne MS. 1152; Harl. MS. 6845; London Gazette, July 20,
1685.
466 Many writers have asserted, without the slightest
foundation, that a pardon was granted to Ferguson by James. Some
have been so absurd as to cite this imaginary pardon, which, if
it were real would prove only that Ferguson was a court spy, in
proof of the magnanimity and benignity of the prince who beheaded
Alice Lisle and burned Elizabeth Gaunt. Ferguson was not only not
specially pardoned, but was excluded by name from the general
pardon published in the following spring. (London Gazette, March
15, 1685-6.) If, as the public suspected and as seems probable,
indulgence was shown to him; it was indulgence of which James
was, not without reason, ashamed, and which was, as far as
possible, kept secret. The reports which were current in London
at the time are mentioned in the Observator, Aug. 1,1685.
Sir John Reresby, who ought to have been well informed,
positively affirms that Ferguson was taken three days after the
battle of Sedgemoor. But Sir John was certainly wrong as to the
date, and may therefore have been wrong as to the whole story.
From the London Gazette, and from Goodenough's confession
(Lansdowne MS. 1152), it is clear that, a fortnight after the
battle, Ferguson had not been caught, and was supposed to be
still lurking in England.
467 Granger's Biographical History.
468 Burnet, i. 648; James to the Prince of Orange, Sept. 10, and
24, 1685; Lord Lonadale's Memoirs; London Gazette, Oct. 1, 1685.
469 Trial of Cornish in the Collection of State Trials, Sir J.
Hawles's Remarks on Mr. Cornish's Trial; Burnet, i. 651; Bloody
Assizes; Stat. 1 Gul. and Mar.
470 Trials of Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt, in the Collection of
State Trials Burnet, i. 649; Bloody Assizes; Sir J. Bramston's
Memoirs; Luttrell's Diary, Oct. 23, 1685.
471 Bateman's Trial in the Collection of State Trials; Sir John
Hawles's Remarks. It is worth while to compare Thomas Lee's
evidence on this occasion with his confession previously
published by authority.
472 Van Citters, Oct. 13-23, 1685.
473 Neal's History of the Puritans, Calamy's Account of the
ejected Ministers and the Nonconformists' Memorial contain
abundant proofs of the severity of this persecution. Howe's
farewell letter to his flock will be found in the interesting
life of that great man, by Mr. Rogers. Howe complains that he
could not venture to show himself in the streets of London, and
that his health had suffered from want of air and exercise. But
the most vivid picture of the distress of the Nonconformists is
furnished by their deadly enemy, Lestrange, in the Observators of
September and October, 1685.
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