The New World: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume II (The Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading Series)

THE MEETING OF PARLIAMENT IN FEBRUARY OF 1673 HAD APPRISED Charles of his subjects’ loathing for the war against the Dutch Protestant Republic, in which he had allowed himself to become engaged, not as the champion of English commerce, but as the lackey of Louis XIV. Resentment of the Dutch affronts at sea and jealousy of their trade were overridden by the fear and hatred of Papist France and her ever-growing dominance in Europe. Whispers ran afoot through London that the King and his Ministers had been bribed by France to betray the freedom and the faith of the Island. The secret article in the Dover Treaty had only to be known to create a political explosion of measureless violence. Shaftesbury, though not privy to it, must have had his suspicions. Early in 1673 Arlington seems to have confessed the facts to him. With dexterity and promptitude Shaftesbury withdrew himself from the Government, and became the leader of an Opposition which was ultimately as violent as that of Pym. The growing antagonism of the Commons to France, the fear of the returning tides of Popery, the King’s “laxity towards Papists,” the conversion of the Duke of York to Rome, all stirred a deep and dangerous agitation throughout the whole country, in which the dominant Anglican forces were in full accord with Presbyterian and Puritan feeling. Everywhere there was the hum of political excitement. Coffee-houses buzzed; pamphlets circulated; by-elections were scenes of uproar. A Bill was forced upon the King for a Test. No man could hold office or a King’s commission afloat or ashore who would not solemnly declare his disbelief in the doctrine of Transubstantiation. This purge destroyed the Cabal. Clifford, a Catholic, refused to forswear himself; Arlington was dismissed because of his unpopularity; Buckingham had a personal quarrel with the King. Shaftesbury had already voted for the Test Act, and was the leader of the Opposition. Lauderdale alone remained, cynical, cruel, and servile, master of Scotland.

All eyes were now fixed upon James, Duke of York. His marriage, after the death of his first wife, Anne Hyde, to the Catholic princess Mary of Modena had rendered him suspect. Would he dissemble or would he give up his offices? Very soon it was known that the heir to the throne had laid down his post of Lord High Admiral rather than submit to the Test. This event staggered the nation. The Queen was unlikely to give King Charles an heir. The crown would therefore pass to a Papist King, who showed that for conscience sake he would not hesitate to sacrifice every material advantage. The strength of the forces now moving against the King and his policy rose from the virtual unanimity which prevailed between the Anglicans and the Dissenters, between the swords which had followed Rupert and the swords which had followed Cromwell. All the armed forces were in the hands of the Royalist gentry, and there were many thousands of Cromwell’s old soldiers in London alone. They were all on the same side now, and at their head was the second great Parliamentary tactician of the century, Shaftesbury. This was of all combinations the most menacing to the King.

For close designs and crooked counsels fit,

Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,

Restless, unfixed in principles and place,

In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;

A fiery soul which, working out its way,

Fretted the pigmy body to decay

And o’er-informed the tenement of clay.

A daring pilot in extremity,

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high,

He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

The power of the Cavalier Parliament had been made plain in every dispute with the Crown. It had exerted itself in foreign policy, had completely controlled domestic affairs, and had compelled the King to change his advisers by the hard instruments of the Test Act or Impeachment. A new departure was now made. Sir Thomas Osborne, a Yorkshire landowner, had gathered great influence in the Commons, and was to a large extent forced upon the King for his own salvation. His policy was the union into one strong party with a popular programme of all those elements which had stood by the monarchy in the Civil War and were now deeply angered with the Court. Economy, Anglicanism, and independence from France were the principal ideals of this party, and Osborne now carried them to the King’s Council. He was very soon raised to the peerage as Earl of Danby, and began an administration which was based on a party organisation possessing a small but effective majority in the House of Commons. In order to rally his followers to the Crown and to break with the Opposition, Danby proposed in 1675 that no person should hold any office or sit in either House without first declaring on oath that resistance to the royal power was in all cases criminal. This was deliberately intended to draw a hard line against the Puritan elements and traditions. The plan was to vest the whole Government, national and local, in the Court party and fight the rest. In this design, which Danby pursued by corrupt party management and in unprecedented by-election activity, he was countered in the Lords by Shaftesbury and Buckingham; and so vigorous was the opposition of these two ex-Ministers that Danby had to abandon his new retaliatory Test.

In foreign affairs the new Minister publicly differed from his master. He opposed French ascendancy and interference, and gained general support thereby; but he was forced to become privy to the King’s secret intrigues with Louis XIV, and, holding strongly to the Cavalier idea that the King should have considerable personal power, he was lured into asking the French monarch for money on Charles’s behalf. The height of his precarious popularity was reached when he contrived a marriage between Mary, the Duke of York’s daughter by his first wife, and the now famous Protestant hero, William of Orange. This match was of the highest consequence. Dread of a Papist King had already turned all eyes to the formidable, gleaming figure of the Stadtholder of Holland, Charles I’s grandson by his daughter. William’s inflexible Protestantism, grave demeanour, high gifts, and noble ancestry had raised him already to a position of eminence in Europe. Married now to the daughter of the Duke of York, the English heir presumptive, he seemed to offer an alternative succession to the Crown. This was by no means the outlook of King Charles II, still less of his brother, James. They did not regard the danger as serious. Charles was led to believe that Shaftesbury’s opposition might be diminished by such a marriage, and the Duke of York’s self-confidence was proof against so remote a menace to his title. Thus the marriage was made, and the two maritime nations, which had recently contended in fierce, memorable battles in the Narrow Seas, became united by this remarkable tie. Since then the Dutch and English peoples have seldom been severed in the broad course of European events.

It was at this moment that Louis XIV, dissatisfied with his English investments and indignant at a marriage which threatened to carry England into the Dutch system and was a strong assertion of Protestant interests, resolved to ruin Danby. He revealed to the Opposition, most of whom took his bribes while opposing his interests, that the English Minister had been asking for French money. The revelation was made in the House of Commons with careful preparation, and in the most dramatic fashion. It exploded at a frightful moment. The tale of dark designs to subjugate Protestant England to Rome was on every lip. Rumours about a secret treaty with the French king and the bugbear of the Duke of York’s seemingly inevitable succession were now inflamed and fanned by what was called the “Popish Plot.”

A renegade priest of disreputable character, Dr Titus Oates, presented himself as the Protestant champion. He had acquired letters written by Catholics and Jesuits in England to their co-religionists in St. Omer and other French Catholic centres. From these materials he accused the Duchess of York’s private secretary, Coleman, of a conspiracy to murder the King, bring about a French invasion, and cause a general massacre of Protestants. Many responsible men in both Houses of Parliament believed Oates’s accusations, or pretended that they did. An order was issued for Coleman’s arrest. It is certain that he had no intent against Charles, but he was a centre of Catholic activity and correspondence. He succeeded in burning the bulk of his papers; but those that were seized contained indiscreet references to the restoration of the Old Faith, and to the Catholic disappointment at Charles’s attitude, which in the rage of the hour gave colour to Oates’s accusations. Coleman was examined in October 1678 before a magistrate, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, and while the case was proceeding Godfrey was found dead one night at the foot of Greenberry Hill, now Primrose Hill. Although three men, whose names by odd coincidence were Green, Berry, and Hill, were hanged for the reputed murder, the mystery of his death has never been solved. This cumulative sensation drove English society into madness. Anglicans and Puritans alike armed themselves with swords or life preservers, and in London everyone talked about expecting a Papist dagger. Oates rose in a few months to be a popular hero; and being as wicked as any man who ever lived, he exploited his advantage to the full. Meanwhile Shaftesbury, long versed in revolutions, saw his opportunity to ride the storm.

Montagu, a former Ambassador to France, in collusion with the Whig and Puritan leaders, had exposed letters written by Danby in which there was mention of six million livres as the price of English assent to the proposed Treaty of Nimwegen between the French and the Dutch, and also the King’s desire to be independent of Parliamentary grants. By this treaty the French were to make considerable gains. Danby, in reply, read other letters which mitigated but did not overturn the crude facts. His impeachment was resolved. Even Strafford had not been in a more perilous plight. Indeed, it seemed hardly possible that he could save his head. Charles, wishing to stay the capital proceedings instituted against his Minister, partly unjustly, and anyhow for actions which Danby had taken only to please the King, at length, in December 1678, dissolved the Cavalier Parliament.

This Parliament had sat, with a number of intervals, for eighteen years. It had been born in the Cavalier fervour of the Restoration; it ended when the King was convinced it would reduce him to the status of a Venetian Doge. In length of life it had surpassed the Long Parliament. In fidelity to the Constitution as against the Crown it had rivalled over a long period the early vigour of its predecessor. It had confirmed in a Royalist victory all the gains made by the Great Rebellion. It had restored within limits, and under fictions which were henceforward understood, the repute of the Royal Prerogative and the monarchical system. It had also established Parliamentary control of finance and brought nearer the responsibility of Ministers to the Lords and Commons. It was founded upon a rock—the Parliamentary and Protestant character of the English Constitution. It presents us with the massing of those forces, themselves so bitterly estranged, which upon the main issue produced the Revolution of 1688.

Charles, in breaking this prop which had so long sustained him, did not intend to put his trust in a different party. He hoped that the new set of Members would be less rigid, less grooved and opinionated than the old. He supposed that the country was more friendly to him than the London hive in which Shaftesbury was now supreme. But all this was illusion. The country was more adverse than the capital. Everywhere the voters enjoyed the election. They ate, drank, and argued with gusto at the expense of the candidates. As happened after the Short Parliament of Charles I, all the prominent opponents of the King were returned. The trusty followers of the Court, who hitherto had mustered a hundred and fifty, now returned barely thirty. The situation was not unlike that of 1640; but with one decisive difference. Both the King and the country had gone through an experience which neither wished to repeat. Over England hung the dread of civil war, and all the Cromwellian atrocities that might spring therefrom. The shadow of his father’s fate fell ever upon the King’s footsteps. And by now the idea of saving the Kingship and of saving himself at all costs was dominant. Charles II yielded to the wish of the nation; he bowed to the hostile Parliament. Danby, threatened by attainder, was glad to be forgotten for five years in the Tower. He had still a part to play.

The brunt fell upon James, Duke of York. The King had already asked him not to attend the Privy Council, and now advised him to leave the country. The Duke retired to the Low Countries, carrying with him on his staff the very young captain in the British and colonel in the French Army, John Churchill, his trusted aide-decamp and man of business. Charles, thus relieved at home, faced the fury of the anti-Popish hurricane. Oates and other perjurers who followed in his train instituted a reign of terror against the English Catholic notables. By perjury and suborned evidence they sent a number of blameless Catholics to the scaffold. The King made every effort in his power to protect them. When this was in vain he resigned himself to letting the bloody work go on. His cynical but profound knowledge of men and the vicissitudes of his years of exile served him well. Not for mean motives he endured the horrible ordeal which his subjects imposed upon him, of signing the death warrants of men he knew were guiltless. But there was a great change in his conduct. He abandoned his easy, indolent detachment from politics. He saw that his life and dynasty were at stake; he set himself with all his resources and with all the statecraft which modern research increasingly exalts to recover the ground that had been lost. The last five years of his reign are those most honourable to his memory. His mortal duel with Shaftesbury was a stirring episode. It was diamond cut diamond. At the beginning the King seemed at the mercy of this terrible subject; but by using time and letting passions find their vent, as well as by strokes of dæmonic ingenuity, Charles II emerged the victor, and the merciless Shaftesbury, stained with innocent blood, eventually died in exile.

The struggle centred upon the Exclusion Bill. To keep the Papist heir from the throne was the main object of the majority of the nation. Anything rather than that. But who then should succeed? Shaftesbury looked to William of Orange; but he also looked, with more favour, upon the Duke of Monmouth, Charles’s illegitimate son by Lucy Waters. Here was a young man, charming, romantic, brave, gleaming, our beloved Protestant Duke—was he born in wedlock or was he a bastard? Some form of marriage it was widely believed had been solemnised between the King and Lucy. There was a “black box” in which the marriage lines were said to repose. It had been spirited away by emissaries of the Pope. What had now become the more powerful party in England longed to establish Monmouth’s legitimacy. They wanted a King, a Protestant King, an Anglican King bred in constitutional ways, with a strain of common blood to give him sense, and a clear-cut policy of organising Protestantism against the Catholic overlordship of Europe which Louis XIV was trying to achieve. Only one man could decide this issue. Charles had only to recognise Monmouth as his heir to free himself from every trouble and assure the future of his country. Nothing would induce the King to betray the succession. Sensualist, libertine, agnostic, dilettante, he had one loyalty—the royal blood, the legitimate succession. However painful it might be for himself and his realm, he conceived it his sacred duty to pass the crown to a brother whose virtues and whose vices alike rendered him of all others the man, as he knew well, least fitted to wear it. Nevertheless the legend of the “black box” has persisted, and in our own time we have been told how a Duke of Buccleuch, descended from the unfortunate Monmouth, discovered and destroyed, as dangerous to the monarchy, the marriage certificate of Lucy Waters.

The new House of Commons met more fierce than the old one had parted. There was an overwhelming anti-Catholic majority. It proceeded immediately to impeach, and, when this lagged, to attaint Danby. It concentrated its efforts upon the Exclusion Bill. There was grave logic behind this measure. When Papists were excluded by law from every post in the realm, how should the kingly power and prerogative be wielded by one of the proscribed faith? Charles laboured to present a compromise. He could not admit that Parliament should alter the lineal succession to the Crown. Out of such courses had sprung the Wars of the Roses. But he offered remarkable limitations which, were they accepted, and could they be enforced, would create a narrowly limited constitutional monarchy in England. All ecclesiastical patronage would be withdrawn from a Popish sovereign. No Papist should sit in either House of Parliament, or hold any office or place of trust. The Parliament sitting at the King’s death should remain sitting for a certain time, or reassemble without further summons if it was not in session. The judges should only be appointed with the consent of Parliament. Finally, he formally abandoned the claim for which his father had fought so long—the power of the sword. Lord-Lieutenants who controlled the militia, their deputies, and the officers of the Navy would be nominated by Parliament. But in the prevailing temper no one would believe that any restrictions could be imposed upon a Popish King. The Exclusion Bill passed its second reading by an overwhelming vote, and the King descended upon the Parliament with another dissolution.

Nevertheless this short-lived legislature left behind it a monument. It passed a Habeas Corpus Act which confirmed and strengthened the freedom of the individual against arbitrary arrest by the executive Government. No Englishman, however great or however humble, could be imprisoned for more than a few days without grounds being shown against him in open court according to the settled law of the land. The King did not object to this. The balance of forces in the country at this time seemed so equal that his own courtiers, servants, or former Ministers might well have need of this protection. He pronounced the traditional words in Norman French, “Le Roi le veult,” and wherever the English language is spoken in any part of the world, wherever the authority of the British Imperial Crown or of the Government of the United States prevails, all law-abiding men breathe freely. The descent into despotism which has engulfed so many leading nations in the present age has made the virtue of this enactment, sprung from English political genius, apparent even to the most thoughtless, the most ignorant, the most base.

The Protestant tide again swept the country, and in all parts men voted against the Duke of York becoming King. Earnest and venerable divines tried to induce James to return to the Church of his fathers and his future subjects. He remained obdurate. To the warrior quality of his nature was added the zeal of a convert. Not for him the worldly wise compliances to which Henry of Navarre had stooped to gain an earthly crown. Better exile, poverty, death, for himself; better the ruin of the land by civil war. The dominant motives of both sides deserve a high respect, and led inexorably to vast and long distresses. In these days, when the Catholic Church raises her immemorial authority against secular tyranny, it is hard to realise how different was the aspect which she wore to the England of 1679, with lively recollection of the fires of Smithfield, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Spanish Armada, and the Gunpowder Plot.