Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon Part 11

When Clarendon House was destroyed, the collection went to his country house, at Cornbury, in Oxfords.h.i.+re. On the death of Lord Rochester, in 1753, they were divided between his daughters, Jane, Countess of Ess.e.x and Catherine (the famous "Kitty" of Pope and Gay), d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry.

The first moiety is that now at the Grove, Watford; the second is that which descended to the Douglas family, and is now at Bothwell Castle.] If Clarendon's very natural ambition to bequeath a dignified home to his family and to make it a treasure-house of portraits which represented a great page in English history, was any weakness, it was one for which he may well be pardoned, and for which he paid heavily. He lived to regret the error into which a very human pride had led him. We must leave it to sterner moralists to deal out censure upon a weakness which he shared with other men of genius, who have found a solace in raising a stately monument which they may bequeath to posterity, and which may preserve another memory of them than that of their toils and their struggles and their own personal ambitions. But in the case of Clarendon this weakness--of which he himself clearly saw the error--had this additional disadvantage, that it spread the belief that he had acquired wealth proportionate to such architectural expenditure. Like many another man, Clarendon overbuilt himself; and his miscalculation made his contemporaries suppose him the possessor of a superfluity of ill-gotten wealth.

CHAPTER XXIV

INCREASING BITTERNESS OF HIS FOES

In the midst of thickening troubles at home and abroad, in Court, in the city, and in the provinces, Parliament met on the 2lst September, 1666.

The new session was destined to bring sharply to an issue more than one of the questions in regard to which long-drawn friction had vexed the soul of Clarendon, and as it proceeded it was to reveal more clearly the designs of those who had striven so persistently to fret irritations and sow new seeds of dissension between him and the King. Their success, ign.o.ble as it was, and little profitable either to the Crown, the kingdom, or themselves, was soon to be achieved.

Parliament met under the oppression of gloom caused by the Fire. Whitehall and Westminster were safe, but scarcely a mile distant the smoke which rose from the desolated city had hardly died away. "They saw," said the King in his opening address, "the dismal ruins the Fire had made; and nothing but a miracle of G.o.d's mercy could have preserved what was left from the same destruction." He was forced once more to apply for their a.s.sistance to meet the vast expense of the war, to which no end could be foreseen. The disasters of the kingdom had doubled the insolence of their enemies; and nothing could save the country but a vigorous effort to show the world that, in spite of these disasters, it was still equal to its own defence. It was a crisis which sorely needed all the energy of firm and united statesmans.h.i.+p; and very scantily was that need supplied. The interruption of credit; the bankruptcy of many of the leading citizens; the general paralysis that had fallen upon commerce--all these made it hard to say how money could be raised, and Clarendon notes, with none of the satisfaction that the truth of his prophecy might have brought, that the Appropriation Proviso had resulted in the check, rather than in the boasted increase, of the supply of funds. There was, indeed, "a faint vote procured," that they would give a supply proportionate to the wants of the Crown; but no sum was fixed, and after this first vague resolution the matter hung in suspense, and even a Parliament that was so strongly loyalist found it needful to delay and insist upon conditions before any new supply was voted. Their loyalty had now a strong vein of stubbornness.

The country gentlemen could no longer blind themselves to the scandals of the Court, and the intractable mood bred by these scandals could be skilfully turned to their own purposes by Clarendon's enemies. What had at first been only dilatoriness soon developed into sharp criticism and angry remonstrance, for which Clarendon knew that there was only too good ground. It was an ill time to press for new supplies when the national resources were drained to the dregs. If the King needed more after the lavish grants of recent years, there must have been mischief afoot which should be probed to the bottom. All those through whose hands the money had pa.s.sed must give a strict account of it.

A Bill was introduced for the appointment of Audit Commissioners, who were to examine all accounts and report to Parliament any defaulters, whose punishment Parliament was to determine. So strongly was the country party bent upon this financial inquest that it was difficult to withstand their zeal in the hunt for malpractices. The naval administration was chiefly in their view, and their threats caused much searching of heart amongst those whose consciences told them that their methods could hardly meet the perilous light of day. A certain amount of corruption was an ordinary incident of all administrative dealings. Pepys had no wish to be dishonest, and was, indeed, a fairly incorrupt official, according to the ideas of the day. Many times he had withstood flagrant waste, and he was vigilant in promoting sound economies. But a barefaced system of secret commissions, which he honestly records in the faithful pages of his _Diary_, was universally practised, and the only admitted scruple was that such commissions should not be allowed to operate so as to permit a flagrantly dishonest contract. Subject to this, he evidently thought himself neglectful of his rightful interests if he did not make the most out of every transaction, and he piously invokes the blessing of Heaven upon the unsavoury business, as, with unctuous complacency, he counts up his gains. But, however such things may be condoned by the prevailing practice they have an ugly appearance when exposed to the public gaze, and Pepys was sorely alarmed both for himself and his princ.i.p.als at the prospect of a strict investigation. Others besides Pepys were involved.

Ashley's administration of the prize-money had been expressly set free from any auditing authority except that of the King; and under the protection of this proviso he had expended the proceeds not only with the sanction, but at the instigation of Charles, on objects which could not be made public without exposing the Crown to the contempt of the nation, and making the resistance of the country party more obstinate and more outspoken. Charles took alarm, and consulted the secret committee of the Privy Council on the subject. He was determined, he said, to defend his Ministers against an inquiry conducted on methods for which there was no precedent, and under which no man would be safe. He trusted that the Bill would receive no support in the Commons; that if it pa.s.sed the Commons it would be rejected by the Lords; but in any case, he was resolved never to give it his a.s.sent. The committee appeared to a.s.sent to these bold words, and to see in the proposal a dangerous menace to the prerogative of the Crown; and Clarendon, obeying his natural dislike of such encroachments, confirmed the view of the King, hoped that he would abide by his resolution, and promised his own vigorous opposition to any such Bill in the Lords.

It is hard to find any adequate ground, either in policy or in justice, for Clarendon's resistance to this proposal. He had himself nothing to fear from it. He had no part in the details of naval administration, and those who were chiefly threatened had no claim to his protection. He had been strongly opposed to Ashley's appointment to administer the prize- money, and he could not but know that the investigation would ruin Ashley's reputation. Had he boldly placed himself at the head of the country party and made himself the foremost champion of financial purity, he might have established a firm hold upon the affections of all that was best in the nation, and he might have trusted to their loyalty and his own to prevent any serious blow to the prerogative of the Crown and the respect due to the King. As a fact, he did a.s.sent, subsequently, to the nomination by the Crown of an audit commission, and it does not seem as if a simple alteration of procedure would have seriously affected the substance of the matter. Of his failure to act thus, his increasing age, his infirmities of health, the anxieties by which he was oppressed, and the lack of powerful and confidential allies may have largely been the cause. But we must remember also the ruling principles in Clarendon's conception of the const.i.tution, and his own deep-seated prejudices. He was unwilling to stoop to injure an enemy by a weapon which might diminish the prerogative of the Crown. He never sought the position of leader of a party, which would thus have been forced upon him, and he felt that position to be incompatible with his own loyalty as servant of the Crown.

He disliked the idea of Parliamentary tactics; and all his past experience identified such tactics, in his mind, with the beginnings of rebellion. It was not given to him to see so far into the future as to conceive that an independent Minister might be the strongest b.u.t.tress of the Crown.

But the tactics from which he recoiled were put into practice, with less than his honesty, but with much more skill in stratagem, by those who sought to accomplish his fall. The very courtiers whose influence was accountable for the scandals which stirred the indignation of the country party, made themselves the trusted friends of the parliamentary opposition, and carefully nursed it for their own purposes. The irresponsible and flighty genius of Buckingham made him, for the moment, the chosen patron of those who were murmuring against the abuses of the Court, stimulated him to organize and conciliate the Parliamentary faction that grumbled against the waste of the national resources, and induced him to cast aside for the time the habits of a profligate voluptuary, and throw himself with ardour into the labours of Parliamentary debate.

Rivalry in debauchery had made him, for a season, the object of the King's personal dislike, and had involved him in a bitter contest with Lady Castlemaine; and this tempted him to adopt the uncongenial part of a moralist, who found it convenient to cultivate the friends.h.i.+p of the strictest sectaries, and to pose as the saviour of the kingdom. It was not the first, nor the only, antic by which he made himself, as Zimri, the easy b.u.t.t of Dryden's satire. He became the prime favourite of the people, and his power with the mob seemed to make him the rival of the King. It added to the zest with which he pursued this new freak, that it helped him to satisfy private and personal piques. In particular the Duke of Ormonde had become the object of his almost insane jealousy. Ormonde's lofty character, his consistent loyalty, his influence in the counsels of the King, above all, his vast power as a great territorial magnate, had wounded the vanity of Buckingham; and he was able to evoke against Ormonde, as an Irish peer, the jealousy of those English n.o.bles who thought themselves unduly eclipsed by the great possessions, and high official rank, of a peer of a lower order--that of the Irish n.o.bility.

It was largely in obedience to this personal jealousy, that Buckingham had made himself the prominent promoter of a Bill of singular injustice to the sister kingdom. It was conceived that the importation of Irish cattle was a serious injury to the English agricultural interest, and was enriching the Irish at the expense of the English proprietors; and it was therefore proposed to forbid any such importation. That it involved practical ruin to Ireland, and promised to lay the seeds of deep-rooted hatred, mattered nothing to those who had their own selfish objects to pursue, or who had private grudges to satisfy. It was only natural that the Bill found ready a.s.sent amongst some honest men, who were earnestly desirous to relieve the agricultural interest, suffering heavily under the pressure of taxation, and who had something else than private venom to indulge. The bitter complaints of Ireland could not be expected to weigh for much. It remained to be seen whether the short-sighted selfishness, which was sedulously fostered in order to gratify personal spleen, would be allowed to inflict upon a nation, united under the same Crown, this scandalous injustice. At first it was proposed that the embargo should extend to Scotland also; but at a later stage this was dropped.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES BUTLER, DUKE OF ORMONDE. (_From the original by Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller._)]

The King was not deceived as to the injustice of the Bill, and in its earliest stages he professed that his conscience would never allow him to give it his a.s.sent. He urged the Council "to give such a stop to this Bill that it might never be presented to him; for if it were, he must positively reject it." It was not the first, nor the last, p.r.o.nouncement of the King that was to turn out an empty threat.

The Council did not unanimously accept the opinion of the King. Those whom he consulted took diverse views of the Bill, and some even who doubted its policy were not prepared to face the opposition of the English agricultural interest. Amongst the members of both Houses of the English Parliament there was a deeply-seated jealousy of Ireland, inherited from the days of her resistance to English power, and sharpened by fervent opposition to her Roman Catholic predilections. The promoters of the Bill soon found themselves backed up by a solid phalanx of English prejudice, which held the Commons staunch to their support of its provisions.

Buckingham and Ashley learned that their champions.h.i.+p added to their hold upon the nation, and gave them a new chance of inflicting a defeat at once upon the King, and upon his older Minister. Clarendon fully recognized the iniquity of the Bill, and welcomed the stalwart resistance which the King avowed that he would give to it. [Footnote: It is odd to remark how the incurable prejudice of Whig historians blinds them to the real bearing of the Bill, and forces them, in their desire to avoid any agreement with Clarendon, to find some excuse for it. "It is by no means clear," writes Mr. Christie, the biographer of Ashley, "that special circ.u.mstances did not counsel an exception to the general rules of political economy." So easily are fundamental principles made to bend to the exigencies of personal advocacy!] But the result was to prove to him once more how little reliance could be placed on any apparently settled conviction of the King.

The House of Commons had now become too stubborn to yield to any arguments of justice; and that the King and his Ministers opposed the Bill only added to the obstinacy with which it was pressed. There was now a deliberate opposition to the Crown, and of the two Bills--that about Irish cattle, and that for a commission of audit--the first was "driven on with more fury, and the other more pa.s.sionately spoken of." Any support which the party of the Court could reckon on, rapidly diminished; and even its adherents applied to the King for permission to record their votes in favour of the Bill. [Footnote: _Life_, iii. 141.] Again Sir William Coventry, who, to Clarendon's mind, was the evil genius in every plot, appeared upon the scene. He persuaded the King of the strength of the supporters of the Bill, and the small prospect of any supply until the House was satisfied that it would pa.s.s. Perhaps, he added, if the friends of the Court withdrew their opposition to the Irish Bill, they might thus be able to elude the threatening provisions of the Bill for the audit of accounts. [Footnote: _Ibid._, p. 142.]

Under such inducements, Charles's conscientious opposition to the Bill soon disappeared. His henchmen in the House received new orders, and amidst the plaudits of Buckingham's sycophants, this iniquitous Bill pa.s.sed through the House of Commons. The triumph only made the Commons insist with the more vigour upon the Bill for the audit of accounts. Again the King yielded to pressure, to the alluring prophecies of abundant supplies as the reward of surrender, and to the dire threats of exposure of Court scandals if the will of the House were thwarted. The result was a new surrender, and the Accounts Bill followed the other to the House of Lords.

The scene of the struggle was now changed, but it was evident that the persistence of opposition was in no way checked, and that a fierce struggle between Parliamentary power and the royal prerogative was threatened in the immediate future. To Clarendon, the opposition in the House of Commons centred in these two Bills. Taken together, they roused his unrelenting hostility, the one because it was founded upon no const.i.tutional precedent, and was dangerous to the royal prerogative, the other because it was conceived in a spirit of reckless animosity, and was flagrantly unjust to Ireland. Up to a certain point, the King had cordially agreed with that view; but once more that fickle support went for nothing; a few threats and allurements disposed of Charles's conscience as well as of his judgment. For him precedent did not count; the royal prerogative meant only what secured for himself an easy life, and the prospect of supply; and as for injustice to Ireland, the burden of conscientious scruples was easily transferred to other shoulders. A strong will and a scrupulous conscience were inconvenient equipments for a Minister of Charles II.

But it was still Clarendon's duty to do his best to save the King from treacherous plotters, as well as from the consequences of his own fickle waywardness. There was one way which occurred to Clarendon, and which he seems to have urged upon the King without success. The Parliament had now sat for six years, and perhaps contact with the const.i.tuencies might prove a solvent of their irksome obstinacy, and also of those dangerous combinations which were threatening to foil all schemes of sound policy.

Might it not be that the sound loyalty of the nation would send to Westminster a Parliament, not servile or subservient, but less truculent and intractable, than the present? Whatever the soundness of his opinion-- and it may perhaps be doubted if a new election would have been a safe expedient for the King--it obtained scanty support. The little clique of intriguing courtiers thought that it portended danger to their own influence. Some who had proved ineffective a.s.serters of the views of the country party were alarmed for their seats; the King was easily persuaded that many of his own most obedient placemen might disappear. Buckingham and his friends managed even to

alarm the bishops, by predicting a majority for the enemies of the Church.

Clarendon never found that the ecclesiastical mind was one upon which, as a statesman, he could place any reliance. They judged now as far from the mark as usual, and yielded to the persuasions of his foes. Clarendon was fain to be content with the existing House of Commons; and the fight was now to be how far the Lords would bow to the imperious demands of that House, and allow themselves to be managed by the little band of malcontents, whose main object was to make the present administration impossible.

In the House of Lords the leading part in pus.h.i.+ng forward the Irish Cattle Bill was taken by the Duke of Buckingham. His new-found ardour for political intrigue had changed for the moment his habits of life as a voluptuary. Under the impulse of his present irritation, his usual haunts were abandoned, and he spent laborious days in the House, the first to be present, and the last to disappear. [Footnote: The usual hour for the meeting of Parliament was early, and Clarendon complains of the laxity which, of recent years, had made the hour as late as ten o'clock A.M. The House of Lords had of late shown so little zeal for work that they frequently adjourned after a few minutes. But now, in the excitement of the discussion on the Irish Bill, they again sat early, and did not adjourn till four o'clock, or even "till the candles were brought in."] He had the eager support of Ashley, inspired like him, by jealousy of Clarendon and Ormonde, and bringing to the unholy partners.h.i.+p a lack of principle equal to that of Buckingham, and far greater powers of concentration, and of persistent strategy. With two such protagonists, the debates in the House of Lords lost their usual repose and dignity, and became scenes of turmoil and almost of personal violence. [Footnote: Clarendon tells us an amusing story of a fracas which occurred between Buckingham and Lord Dorchester, during a conference between the Houses.

The two peers, who were avowed enemies, chanced to sit together, and each endeavoured, it would seem, to claim more s.p.a.ce than was convenient to the other. From hustling they came to blows, and Lord Dorchester had the misfortune to lose his wig in the shuffle. But "the Marquis had much of the Duke's hair in his hands to recompense for the pulling off his periwig, which he could not reach high enough to do to the other"

(_Life_, iii. 154). The matter was settled without bloodshed, and both peers were sent to cool their tempers by a short detention in the Tower. We are apt, on doubtful grounds, to think that the debaucheries of Charles's Court were redeemed by elegance of manners. As a fact, the morals which Dr. Johnson ascribes to Lord Chesterfield's Letters were often joined, in that Court, to manners which would have shocked the dancing master of his apothegm.] Buckingham on one occasion provoked a scene by insolently stating "that whoever was against that Bill had either an Irish interest or an Irish understanding." The remark, as well as Buckingham's habitual arrogance, aroused the wrath of Lord Ossory, Ormonde's eldest son, and a challenge was the consequence. Buckingham, who did not, to the other attributes of finished courtier, add that of personal courage, contrived to miss the rendezvous, and, with a lack of spirit which men of less bravado could hardly have equalled, and which might have made him blush before his own swashbucklers, he proceeded to lay before the House a narrative of the case. Both parties, it was held, had been to blame, and both were, as usual, to pa.s.s a short period of penance in the Tower. But Buckingham's enemies contrived, under the rules of the House, to inflict an insult upon him, which might have stirred the blood of a Quaker, not to speak of that which flowed in the veins of this model gentleman. It was unjust, they urged, that any punishment should fall upon the Duke. He had done his best to prevent the encounter, and had prudently mistaken the rendezvous. His friends, not unnaturally, thought "that it would be more for his honour to undergo the censure of the House than the penalty of such a vindication."

But apart from these comic accompaniments, the debate upon the Bill in the Lords raised grave const.i.tutional questions. Clarendon opposed the Bill as radically unjust, and economically wrong. But he found in it also much that encroached upon the prerogative. Cases might easily occur where a remission of the Act was imperatively required in the public interest, and in special exigencies, and the usual course was to give such dispensing power to the Crown, just as it is now given under many statutes, by the machinery of an Order in Council. But the prejudices of the promoters of the Bill were too virulent to be satisfied with anything less than the strict and universal application of the embargo; nor did they scruple to suggest that new restraints were required upon the power of the Crown. All that Clarendon and his friends in the House of Lords could do, was to insist that some of the clauses most offensive to the prerogative, and most opposed to precedent, should be expunged from the Bill before it was returned to the House of Commons.

The struggle then entered upon a new phase, involving another const.i.tutional principle. The Commons were prepared to agree to the omission of Scotland from the Bill;

but in regard to all else, they refused to accept the amendments of the Lords. The two Houses were in sharp conflict, and for a time it appeared as if the disagreement could result only in the loss of the Bill. Its friends had no wish to see this catastrophe, and a conference between the Houses was therefore arranged. The result was not such as to encourage those who wished for the settlement of a vexed question, or who hoped that prudent counsels would be brought to bear on a const.i.tutional difficulty.

To the irritation which the country party had conceived against the Court, and to the obstinate determination that the royal prerogative should yield to the will of Parliament, there was now added a bitter fight between the two Houses; and here again Clarendon's long-cherished opinions forced him to take the unpopular side. Once more the habits of a lifetime refused to disappear before an unwarranted, and, as he thought, dangerous innovation.

We may doubt whether he duly estimated the forces to which he was opposing himself, or rightly gauged the direction in which men's minds were moving.

We may say, with full confidence, that he chose his part with singular indifference to what was politically or personally expedient. Neither now nor at any other time did Clarendon yield to anything but his own conscientious convictions. Nature had not so framed him as to give him the faculty of making these convictions any more palatable by his methods of enforcing them. He recognized this fully himself.

"In all the debate upon this Bill, and upon the other of accounts, the Chancellor had the misfortune to lose much credit in the House of Commons, not only by a very strong and cordial opposition to what they desired, but by taking all occasions which were offered by the frequent arguments which were urged of the opinion and authority of the House of Commons, and that it was fit and necessary to concur with them, to mention them with less reverence than they expected. It is very true he had always used in such provocations to desire the Lords to be more solicitous in preserving their own unquestionable rights, and most important privileges, and less tender in restraining the excess and new encroachments of the House of Commons."

[Footnote: _Life_, iii. 163.]

He listened with ill-concealed irritation to a.s.sertions of supreme power on the part of the Commons, which aroused echoes of the old days of the Long Parliament. His cherished hope was not for an absolute monarchy, but for such maintenance of the royal prerogative as might a.s.sure the delicate balance of the const.i.tution; and he saw that the degradation of the Lords to a mere chamber for registering the determination of the House of Commons was a first step in throwing that delicate balance out of gear.

"His opinion was that the late rebellion could never be extirpated and pulled up by the roots, till the King's regal and inherent power and prerogative should be fully awarded and vindicated;" and that prerogative to his mind was a.s.sociated with the maintenance of adequate authority in the House of Lords. It was not given to him to recognize how deeply that rebellion had struck its roots, and how sure it was that from these roots would grow a strong plant of Parliamentary power, and of predominance of the Representative House, which it was now too late to extirpate. He saw that the irregularities of administration, and the p.r.o.neness of irresponsible men "to meddle and interpose in matters out of their own sphere, to give their advice in matters of peace and war, to hold conferences with the King, and offer their advices to him," were inevitably breaking down that scheme of the Const.i.tution to which his life had bound him. He was by no means inclined to flatter the House of Lords, or to exempt them from blame for much that he thought mischievous. They had neglected their business, their discharge of their functions had been careless and perfunctory, their meetings had been short, and their intervention in public affairs scanty, "while the other House sat, and drew the eyes of the kingdom upon them, as the only vigilant people for their good." Clarendon's const.i.tutional ideals might be mistaken; but he was under no mistake as to the process by which they were being undermined. He saw how fatal was the error by which the peers insisted upon special personal privileges which lessened the esteem of their order.

He protested against that claim of exemption from arrest for debt, which they sought to extend to their menial servants, and which led to such exemptions being often sold by these servants to bankrupt citizens, to the scandal of the law. It was this petty personal arrogance of the peers which gave the House of Commons their opportunity, of which they were not slow to make use, and in doing so they were encouraged even by those members of the House of Peers who found their personal aims advanced by fostering the obstinacy of the House of Commons opposition. It was his misfortune thus to offend the sticklers for privilege in the House of Lords, while the House of Commons were coming to consider him as the prime obstacle in the way of their newly a.s.serted independence. His enemies rejoiced in such clumsy tactics, while his friends vainly desired him "to use less fervour in these argumentations." In describing these contentions, he uses of himself almost the very words which he had applied to Laud in the old days when Clarendon had urged his patron to be more careful how he gave unnecessary occasion of offence. [Footnote: Clarendon himself remarks "that he was guilty of that himself of which he used to accuse Archbishop Laud, that he was too proud of a good conscience"

(_Life_, iii. 266).]

"He was in that, as in many things of that kind, that related to the offending other men, for his own sake un-counsellable; [Footnote: _i.e._ according to Clarendon's idiom, less amenable to advice than it would have been in his own interest to be.] not that he did not know that it exposed him to the censure of some men who lay in wait to do him hurt, but because he neglected those censures, nor valued the persons who promoted them."

It was a st.u.r.dy att.i.tude no doubt; but the Court of Charles was hardly a scene in which it could be a.s.sumed with safety. In that tainted atmosphere blunt-spoken sincerity could scarcely breathe.

Clarendon had attempted to make the House of Lords a b.u.t.tress to the royal prerogative. A sardonic fate taught him that the weakest support upon which he could rely was the King, for whose power he was ready to sacrifice his own popularity, and hazard his fortune and even his life.

His enemies could always appeal to the King's love of ease, and to his dread of troublesome interference with his pleasures and his lavish expense. It was on these ign.o.ble motives that they now relied. The Irish Bill must be pa.s.sed, or supplies would not be forthcoming, the threatening murmurs of the people would take shape in action, and the luxuries and the debaucheries of Whitehall would no longer be left in peace. So Charles's conscientious objections again disappeared. The Lords who were in the confidence of the King were bidden to abate their opposition; the Commons had their way, the injustice to Ireland was forgotten, and the Bill was pa.s.sed. Charles and his flatterers persuaded themselves that the surrender was the fruit of sagacious policy; they gave full rein to their sarcastic humour in the ridicule of Clarendon and the belated obstinacy of his loyalty to the const.i.tution.

Charles gave his a.s.sent to the Irish Bill on January 18th, and in his Speech on that occasion he announced to Parliament their speedy prorogation, and recalled to their minds with some emphasis the forgotten business of supply. This appeal had a good effect, and for very shame the House placed the King in the position to discharge some of his seamen's arrears of pay, and to put some portion of his fleet in fighting trim.

[Footnote: In the speech of thanks for this grant the Chancellor persuaded the King to express his hope that provisos like that of the Appropriation Bill would in future be dropped. It was a reflection on Sir W. Coventry's plan, and as such was taken by Coventry himself. (See Pepys, April 1, 1667.)] Parliament was prorogued on February 8th, and the King had the satisfaction of reminding the Commons that the Bill for the audit of accounts had never been presented to him, and that he proposed himself to issue a commission for the purpose. We can scarcely doubt that this last resolution was adopted by the advice of Clarendon himself. He disliked the encroachment of the Commons, but it was no part of his desire to keep the light of day from the scandals of financial administration. Such a commission, not extorted from the King as an insult, but resting upon his own authority, might perform a necessary and useful work, and care was taken in the selection of commissioners to give no suspicion of weakness or partiality. Before it could do effective work, Clarendon had ceased to guide the nation's policy.

The pressure of Parliamentary opposition was for the time removed. But the troubles of the King's Minister were by no means at an end. The war dragged on its course, our resources were nearly drained, the navy was reduced to inefficiency, our foes were encouraged to new efforts by our disasters. We have already [Footnote: Chapter XXI.] seen the insults which England was yet to undergo before the relief of a not very creditable peace was won, and to what dire necessities the Treasury was reduced for lack of funds. We have learned how, at that juncture, [Footnote: Chapter XXI.] Clarendon differed from the other advisers of the King, was adverse to convoking Parliament, and suggested the unwelcome device of a loan to tide over the emergency. Peace came at last. But it brought no satisfaction to the nation, and no recompense for her vast expenditure. It left the relations between Clarendon and the King sadly strained, and it did not soften the growing unpopularity of the Minister with the country party, or bring oblivion of his sharp pa.s.sages with the House of Commons.

On the contrary, it is precisely from this moment that Clarendon dated the rise of that storm that was to "destroy all his prosperity, and s.h.i.+pwreck all his hopes." The cloud had indeed been thickening, and the waves had been gathering new force, for months and even years. Clarendon professes his knowledge of the plots that had long been undermining his power.

All that he means by dating the storm from this period, is that the long threatened tempest now burst in its full force. But the struggle was to be maintained, not without hopes, for a few months more.

Clarendon had the satisfaction of finding that the summoning of Parliament, in the spring of 1667, to which he had been strongly opposed, and the legality of which he doubted, [Footnote: See _ante_, p. 206.]

was after all rendered unnecessary by the near prospect of peace. But Clarendon's opposition to the proposal had increased, if possible, his unpopularity with the Commons, and suspicions had been rife that he desired to raise revenue without Parliamentary consent. The disasters which attended the last stages of the war did not allay the general discontent, and when the peace was at last signed on July 2lst, 1667, it found Court and Ministers alike under the cloud of popular jealousy. Only two months before Clarendon had lost the stay and support of that colleague, whose sympathies were closest to his own, the loyalty of whose friends.h.i.+p was most untainted, and upon whose character and high rank Clarendon could rely to balance the jealousy of his own promotion--too sudden not to offend the pride of the older n.o.bility. With touching anxiety, Clarendon had sought to defend his old friend, now enfeebled by age and ill-health, from the unseemly efforts that had been made to remove him by those who sought to fill his place, but it may be doubted whether in doing so he acted in the real interests of Southampton's reputation.

His desire to keep his old friend at his side was only natural. Both had pa.s.sed through hard straits, and both--because Southampton was only the Chancellor's senior by a year--were now prematurely aged. Clarendon and he were the last of the old band who had rallied to the King in 1640, and a true instinct taught him that they must stand or fall together. All the most cherished memories of his life, all that was most sacred in his loyal devotion to his first master, all the vicissitudes of his fortunes, were a.s.sociated in Clarendon's mind with the friends.h.i.+p which began when they were students together at Magdalen, and was cemented when they had been forced together, by the excesses of the party with which they had at first been in sympathy, to attach themselves to the Royalist side, at a time when that side had ceased to have any means of attracting the support of selfish ambition. They had alike been averse to the proceedings of the Court during the days when Parliamentary Government was suspended, [Footnote: Southampton had suffered severely in purse from the claims put forward by the Crown on his estates in Hamps.h.i.+re; and we have already seen how little Hyde sympathized with the rigour with which such claims were pressed.

This Thomas Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, was the son of the second Earl, whose name is immortalized as the patron and the friend of Shakespeare. It is interesting to remember that one of his daughters (he left no male heir) was the wife of William, Lord Russell, condemned and executed in 1683.] and had welcomed what they hoped would be a return to sounder methods when Parliament was again summoned. Both had seen much amiss in the government of Strafford, and had been glad to think that what they deemed his innovations would receive a check. Both had revolted against the proceedings of the Parliament, when these transgressed the law, and both resented the flagrant injustice which procured the judicial murder of Strafford. Southampton brought to the service of the King the prestige of high rank, the respect earned by a character which scorned intrigue, and a judgment too sound to be led astray by any violence of partisan pa.s.sion. His loyalty was untainted and unswerving. [Footnote: Southampton is said to have kept watch over the body of the murdered King, during the night when it lay in Whitehall. It was he who told of the mysterious m.u.f.fled figure that stole into the Hall during the night, and muttered the words, "Imperious necessity," and whom he always believed to have been Cromwell. After his master's death he compounded with the new Government for his delinquency, and lived in retirement. But he sent encouragement to Charles when a fugitive after the battle of Worcester, and continued, according to his abilities, to minister to his needs during the long exile.] Save to those who knew him intimately, his character was tinged with melancholy, and its impression was not lessened by the habitual gloom which his outward aspect wore. In the inner circle of his friends, he could indulge in a quaint humour, and was no unkindly companion. He was not the only one of Clarendon's contemporaries whose temperament was not proof against the depression born of the troubles of the time. Alike from the ungrudging admiration which Clarendon expresses for his life-long friend, from the captious criticism of those to whom his long tarrying on the stage was irksome, and from the irresponsible gossip of Pepys, we have a vivid picture of the veteran statesman as he appeared to his contemporaries. In outward carriage grave and distant, girt with that ample ceremony of manner which repelled familiarity; easy and prompt in debate, with that sense of self-confidence which permits a man to think on his feet, and to dispense with any niceties of diction; ready to rouse himself to prolonged and earnest labour, but by habit and preference indolent and a lover of his ease--they all present the same features in their portraits. He was a loyal friend, save when a nice sense of the respect due to his rank and character, provoked him to resentment against any fancied neglect; prudent and adroit in counsel, but perhaps lacking in the energy which was required to translate that counsel into action; steadfast, rather than alert, in vindicating the primary duty of sound finance. Clarendon is compelled to admit that "he was naturally lazy, and indulged over much ease to himself;" but he can tell us of the unwonted exertion of which Southampton showed himself capable during the treating at Uxbridge, when he worked continuously for twenty days on end, and curtailed his habitual ten hours of sleep to a maximum of five. His pride involved him in a pa.s.sing quarrel with Prince Rupert, whose extravagant a.s.sertion of precedence provoked him, and whose challenge he accepted; but his sound judgment, and his well-tried rect.i.tude were enough, after friends had interfered, to prevent the untoward meeting, and to bind him and the Prince in the bonds of an enduring friends.h.i.+p. Like Clarendon, a sound friend to the Church, he was, also like him, essentially a layman, not without distrust of the wisdom of political ecclesiastics. Because he was not disposed to underrate the force of the Presbyterian party, and was disinclined to provoke them to open revolt, the Bishops, according to Clarendon, were wont to impute to him disloyalty to the Church. Clarendon himself, confirmed enemy of Presbyterianism as he was, knew by experience on how flimsy grounds such charges might be brought. [Footnote: Pepys, in many lively pa.s.sages, adds new touches to the portraiture of the Treasurer. On November 19, 1663, he is summoned to the Lord Treasurer's house, and finds him "a very ready man and certainly a brave subject to the King." Pepys is troubled only with the "long nails, which he lets grow upon a pretty short white hand." On September 9, 1665, he recounts the story of one of his gossips--how "the Lord Treasurer minds his ease, and lets things go how they will; if he can have his 8000 per annum, and a game at _l'ombre,_ he is well." When the end comes, Pepys--while he admits that "the slowness and remissness of that great man" have done much harm--yet discerns that the prospect for the future is far gloomier by his loss. Even Coventry, when he was gone, could recall the Lord Treasurer whom he had so often thwarted as "a wise and solid though infirm man."]

Southampton was not one of those personalities that stand out strongly upon the page of history. Born to great station, he accepted and fulfilled its responsibilities; but he was without initiative, and without that secret of personal force which dominates a generation and leads a party.

As in the case of many a Minister, before and since, it is to be feared that what his enemies said was true--that Sir Philip Warwick, his secretary, was Treasurer in all but name. Pepys tells us of his own long interviews with Warwick, and it is clear that it was at these interviews, and not at formal conferences with the Lord Treasurer, that the finance of the navy was arranged. He pictures [Footnote: _Diary_, April 12, 1665.] in a few graphic words, the scene at one of these formal conferences.

"Strange to see how they hold up their hands crying, What shall we do?

Says my Lord Treasurer, 'Why, what means all this, Mr. Pepys? This is all true, you say; but what would you have me to do? I have given all I can for my life. Why will not people lend their money? Why will they not trust the King as well as Oliver?'"

It is true comedy. But the flux of Pepys's gossippy confidences is a hard ordeal even for a Minister so worthy as Southampton to pa.s.s. Perhaps Pepys also gives us the best picture of his death, quaintly as it is expressed.

[Footnote: _Diary_, May 19, 1667.]

"Great talk of the good end that my Lord Treasurer made; closing his own eyes, and setting his mouth, and bidding adieu with the greatest content and freedom in the world, and is said to die with the cleanest hands that ever Lord Treasurer did."