Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon Part 6

Concessions might be right or wrong; but once a policy was decided, concessions wrung from the weakness of a vacillating and indolent nature were fatal. Anything that love of ease did not accomplish, the flattery of the defeated Nonconformists achieved. The King was their only hope; in his mercy they looked for a recompense for that loyalty which was none the less sincere because they shrank from straining their consciences by compliance with minute points of order and of discipline. At least, let three months pa.s.s before the blow fell that was to strip them of their livelihood and separate them from their flocks. Such an act of mercy would vindicate the royal prerogative. Whether the King "thought it would do them no good," in other words, that he was giving a worthless concession, or that he thought the delay "no prejudice to the Church," or, as was more likely, that it would rid him of painful importunity, the desired promise was given. That it proceeded from any inclination to the Roman Catholic faith, and any hope that, by its means, easier terms might be obtained for that faith, was a supposition that Clarendon would have deemed derogatory to the King's honesty. Clarendon would gladly have seen terms more merciful granted by the Act of Uniformity. But once the Bill was pa.s.sed he saw how fatal vacillation was, and would fain have persuaded his master against it. But the promise had been given; and once again he had to remind that master that it was for his honour that a promise given should be redeemed. Such a position was no unusual experience to any one who served Charles II. "It was no new thing to the Chancellor to be reproached for opposing the resolving to do such or such a thing, and then to be reproached again for pursuing the resolution."

A new conference was hastily summoned at Hampton Court. Archbishop Juxon, Sheldon and Duppa were to represent the Church, while the Chancellor, Monk, and Ormonde, with the Secretaries Nicholas and Morrice, were there as lay politicians, and the Chief Justice Bridgeman, with the Attorney General, were to advise as to the law. The Bishops did not conceal their vexation, and resolutely demanded "to be excused for not conniving at any breach of the law." Clarendon attempted to maintain the pledge given by the King, as but a small matter, which could not harm the Church. But the opinion of the lawyers was clear and decided. The King had no power to suspend the law, nor to interfere with the rights of patrons. Once more that vacillating temper yielded. The poor fragment of the royal honour which Clarendon would fain have saved had to be abandoned. The Church had to resent a threatened danger; the Nonconformists were embittered by the overclouding of those hopes on which they had been taught to rely. The only effect of Clarendon's enforced interference was to involve him in the hatred of the dissenters, and in the suspicions of the Bishops and the Churchmen.

The blow fell on St. Bartholomew's Day; and on August 24th the Church saw her full triumph, when the nonconforming ministers, to the number, it was said, of some two thousand, were ejected from their livings. [Footnote: The number was variously reckoned; a more moderate computation was 1200.

Mr. Bates's careful calculations (_Declaration of Indulgence_, Appendix II.) give 450 as the number of ministers ejected between May, 1660, and August, 1662, and 1800 as ejected on the latter date.] The triumph was bought at the price of establis.h.i.+ng a solid, permanent, and increasing body of irreconcilable foes. The Church was entrenched in a position rendered impregnable by law, which secured her even against the power of the Crown. But the forces of nonconformity were consolidated, and gradually gathered to themselves a ma.s.s of political adherents, and equipped themselves with a whole armoury of political weapons. The Act of Uniformity did much more than settle the terms between the Church and Nonconformity. It shaped the course of the two parties which, gradually diverging farther and farther, were to divide the nation into two camps.

Charles still sought to secure his own ease by efforts after conciliation --some of them more questionable in law, and more insidious in their motives, even than his ill-considered promises to the Nonconformist ministers. To what lengths his own Roman Catholic sympathies went it is difficult to say. But there were many influences at Court which were working for the abandonment of the penal laws against the Catholics.

Bristol was restless in this matter, to which personal ambition and his growing jealousy of Clarendon stimulated him, much more than any religious zeal. Concessions granted by royal prerogative would mean new force for that prerogative; it would bring with it the increase of personal influence at the expense of the law; it seemed to promise the conciliation of new adherents; and it certainly involved the weakening of the orthodox Churchman as well as the Nonconformist. Before the end of this year, 1662, Charles issued a Declaration, purporting to dispense with the more severe laws against the Roman Catholics. It was contrived by a little clique of courtiers opposed to Clarendon, and of their gradual rise to influence we shall presently see more. It was intended as a means of consolidating their hold upon the King, and of increasing the number of their own adherents. It soon became clear that the Declaration a.s.sumed a dispensing power for the royal prerogative, which the nation would repudiate, and which even the House of Commons, with all its effusive loyalty, would not confirm. In that Declaration, published on December 6th, the King expressly confirmed the Act of Uniformity and stated his own intention of maintaining it. He defended himself against the charge that in that Act he had violated the Declaration of Breda. It was intended to provide for the discipline and government of the Church; but there still remained for consideration what concessions should be made for tender consciences in view of the severe penal laws; and he announced that he would ask the concurrence of Parliament to an Act which would allow him "to exercise with a more universal satisfaction that power of dispensing which he conceived to be inherent in him." But the Declaration was careful to add that no tightening of the most severe of the penal laws was to be construed as an intention of permitting equal toleration to all religions.

Clarendon was laid aside by illness when this Declaration was concocted and published, and although those who planned it endeavoured to make out that he had been an a.s.senting party, his own words give a direct denial to this.

When, in the spring of 1663, Charles attempted to give legislative effect to this Declaration by a Bill introduced by Lord Robartes and Lord Ashley into the House of Lords, he very quickly found out that the temper of the nation was in no compliant mood, and that there were marked limits to the submissive loyalty of the Commons. That House was not patient enough to wait for the Bill to be sent to it. A committee was at once appointed, and p.r.o.nounced in no measured terms against any such scheme. It was inconsistent with the laws of England; it would endanger the peace of the kingdom; it would expose the King to the restless importunity of every sect; and it would "establish schism by law." The House of Lords acted in the same temper. Clarendon was joined in his opposition by Southampton and the Bishops, who thus fulfilled the part which Bristol had prophesied for them, of stalwart opponents of Catholic concessions. The Chancellor would not have been unwilling to see some sort of toleration. But his duty and his policy in this matter were clear. To have proceeded with the Bill would have strained to breaking point the loyalty of the Commons and of the nation. Toleration, to have any good effect, must be the voluntary work of Parliament, and not the contrivance of a Court clique. But Clarendon was under no mistake as to the odium he incurred with that clique, or as to the irritation which his conduct must arouse in the mind of the King, his master.

CHAPTER XX

DOMESTIC DISSENSION AND FOREIGN COMPLICATIONS

The difficulties with which Clarendon had to deal in settling the affairs of the Church were, in essence, inevitable. Each side was struggling for very life. They had, to inspire them, not only profoundly hostile convictions, but the memory of years of angry strife and alternate persecution. But these difficulties were aggravated by the intrigues at Court, by the s.h.i.+ftless vacillation of the King, and by the underlying suspicion, which perhaps haunted Clarendon more than he admitted to himself with respect to the King, that concession might pave the way for indulgence to the Roman Catholics, to which the nation at large was profoundly opposed. His position was complicated by the perpetual bickerings of selfish factions, and by ign.o.ble broils within the palace, in which he was compelled to interfere.

It was in June, 1661, that the marriage treaty was signed. As might have been expected, long delays supervened. Lord Sandwich was despatched with a fleet to take over Tangier, and on his return voyage to escort the Princess to England. But that was a matter which did not proceed without interruption. There was a considerable body of opinion in Portugal which regarded with profound dislike the abandonment of a position so important.

The Queen-Mother of Portugal was anxious to implement her agreement, but, in order to do so, she had to dispatch a Governor who was pledged to carry out the evacuation. Only a few days before Sandwich arrived, that Governor suffered defeat at the hands of the Moors, and was placed in a position of serious danger. The arrival of Sandwich was timely. He was able to secure the place against the attacks of the Moors, and to escort the Portuguese troops back to their own country, where they were the objects of popular indignation. All this took time; and it was not till March, 1662, that Sandwich arrived at Lisbon, to escort the Princess Catherine to England, along with the stipulated dowry of 500,000. The Queen-Mother of Portugal was anxious, in this respect also, to meet the terms of the treaty; but it was not easy for her to do so. The Portuguese Court could raise only a moiety of the dowry, and even that consisted in large part of merchandise and jewels of doubtful value. There were difficulties in handing over Bombay; and the further conditions--as to free rights of trading in the East Indies and Brazil--could only slowly be made effectual. Those who had intrigued against the marriage found in these delays just the opportunity they desired. The reports which reached England were not all favourable to the new Queen; and the alliance was by no means so popular as it had been a year before. All this told against Clarendon, to whom was imputed a far greater responsibility for the arrangement than was actually his, and who had been forced to support it, in its later stages, largely in order to counteract the intrigues of Bristol and the Spanish amba.s.sador.

It was on May 20th, 1662, that the Princess arrived at Portsmouth, where the King met her, and where the marriage ceremony took place. His first impression seems to have been fairly good, if we are to believe that a bridegroom would write full confidences to his Chancellor.

"If I have any skill in physiognomy, which I think I have," he writes to Clarendon, "she must be as good a woman as ever was born." "I cannot easily tell you," he writes again; "how happy I think myself; I must be the worst man living (which I think I am not) if I be not a good husband."

"Never two humours," he adds, "were better fitted together than ours are."

Unfortunately Charles's experiences had scarcely made him a judge of a good woman, and his superficial good humour was but a flimsy foundation for married happiness.

The royal couple came to Hampton Court; with happy omen, on May 29th; the King's birthday; and the anniversary of his Restoration. The Court of England; however, was scarcely a scene likely to be congenial to one who had lived a sequestered life, amidst strictly religious surroundings, and in the formal routine of elaborate ceremonial; nor was Charles, by character, or by the experiences through which he had pa.s.sed, disposed to arrange his life according to the tastes of the devout bride whom policy had selected for him. But Clarendon was prepared to hope much from the King's natural good nature and kindliness; and, tempestuous as his life had hitherto been, the Chancellor strove to do his duty, with more of frankness, perhaps, than of tact, by reminding his master "of the infinite obligations he had to G.o.d, and that He expected another kind of return from him, in purity of mind and integrity of life." Charles listened to these admonitions with a patience that was not altogether a.s.sumed, and seems to have been not unwilling to find merits in his bride. But a bridegroom that has to be schooled to his duty is hardly a promising husband. Unfortunately the lesson of his Chancellor was soon forgotten.

There were not wanting those who found it to their advantage to countermine Clarendon's efforts. At first things looked not unpromising for the newly married pair. The Queen had "beauty and wit enough to make herself very agreeable to him"--such are Clarendon's, perhaps too roseate, words. The King's resolutions were good, and he seems to have promised himself, if not a union of ardent affection, at least the satisfaction of an innocent and fairly happy married life.

But selfish designs and untoward circ.u.mstances soon dispelled such slender hopes as Clarendon persuaded himself to form. The licentiousness of the Court had already gone too far. The King's boon companions were men who founded their own hopes on breaking down any good resolutions that their prince might form, and in bending his facile character to their own mould.

Religion was with them nothing else than an easy object of ribald jest and ridicule; and virtue nothing but a fantastic restraint upon the natural freedom of emanc.i.p.ated libertines. They could breathe only in the atmosphere of degraded and corrupt vice; and it was by deliberately flouting all the curbs of decency that they could best undermine the Chancellor's power. The spur of ambition and the greed for gain both urged them along the path towards which their craving for licentiousness also pointed. A licentious Court would be that in which money would be most freely squandered, and where sordid profits would be most plentiful. The more the moral lessons of Clarendon were set aside, the more surely would his authority be weakened, and his company become irksome to the King; the more open would be the way for the baser crew to achieve influence and wealth. Charles's mind was a soil on which such seeds could easily be sown, and were like to yield an ample crop.

All this found powerful help from the lack of tact and perspicacity amongst the numerous company whom the Queen had brought as her companions.

They were "the most improper," says Clarendon, "to promote that conformity in the Queen that was necessary for her condition of future happiness."

"Conformity," on the Queen's part, is a word which, in all the circ.u.mstances, has rather an ugly sound; and the art of tactful management of the ladies of Court was not perhaps one in which Clarendon possessed such mastery as qualified him for the office of critic. But at least he saw the flagrant faults in these Portuguese duennas. The women were "old and ugly and proud, incapable of any conversation with persons of quality and a liberal education." It was their avowed object to perpetuate their own influence with the Queen, and to prevent her from any conformity either with the fas.h.i.+ons or the language of England. They fancied that by rigid adherence to the antique usages of their Court they would compel the English aristocracy to adopt their manners. By their advice the Queen would not even wear the English dresses which the King had provided for his bride; and she received the ladies whom he placed in attendance on her without grace or cordiality. This was precisely the conduct that made the work of the profligates easy, that irritated the temper of the King, and that undermined the work of Clarendon.

There was one figure at Court whose presence planted a deep seed of resentment between Charles and his Queen. Lady Castlemaine had hitherto been the prime favourite in the King's seraglio. She was none of the comic actresses or flower girls from Covent Garden, whose lavishly distributed favours had won the fancy of the King, or made him the complacent follower of their former lovers. Barbara Villiers could rank high amongst the ladies of the aristocracy, as the daughter of Lord Grandison, a Royalist of unblemished reputation and lofty lineage, who had met his death in arms for the King's father, and who had been one of Clarendon's most cherished friends. Even the callous conscience of the King could not set aside the wrong his pa.s.sion had done to her and her husband, Mr. Palmer, who, to his honour, felt the t.i.tle of Lord Castlemaine, conferred upon him as the price of infamy, to be an insult rather than a distinction, and, as long as he could, declined to bear that name. It was an Irish earldom that was granted as the price of his wife's degradation, that being chosen because it was pa.s.sed under the Irish Privy Seal, and so avoided the necessity of consulting the English Chancellor. Charles felt--and perhaps rightly felt --that to a mistress of that rank, and to her family, he must make some amends; and he seems honestly to have intended--however we may guess that his resolution would soon have yielded to his pa.s.sion--to have secured for her a dignified position at Court, while putting an end to his own guilty intimacy with her. It was in this spirit that he presented "the Lady," as she was generally called, to the Queen, whose lady-in-waiting he intended that she should become. The Queen had already learned the story of the intrigue, and had declared that she would never suffer the mistress's presence at her Court: and as soon as she discovered the name of the newly presented lady, she showed her sense of the indignity by bursting into tears, and by retiring from the room. The racy scandal of a royal disagreement was thus published to the Court, and Charles was speedily confirmed in feeling that his own authority was concerned in dealing firmly with an unseemly outburst of what he and his chosen companions deemed to be unreasonable obstinacy. The usages of the French Court, and the example of his own ill.u.s.trious grandfather, Henry of Navarre, seemed to justify his decision; and there were not wanting plenty of tongues ready to suggest that he must be master in his own Court, and must establish the principle that the t.i.tle of King's mistress ought to be one of honour and not of shame. Those who, like Clarendon, saw in that fas.h.i.+on a degrading innovation in English manners, must be taught their error.

Bad blood was soon engendered between the English Court and the Portuguese authorities. The Portuguese amba.s.sador found himself involved in the quarrel. The failure of Portugal, in various particulars, to carry out the full stipulations of the treaty, however earnestly the Queen-Mother laboured to do so, was now made matter of reproach. The King blamed the unhappy envoy as responsible for the obstinacy of the consort whom his Court had supplied; the Queen reproached him with his false reports of the King's virtue and good nature, which she now discovered to be diplomatic fancies. Between the two the poor man "thought it best to satisfy both by dying": and a fever brought him to the brink of the grave, from which some dawning hope of a reconciliation between the royal pair alone rescued him.

Diplomats and statesmen, whose plans were thwarted, and whose lives were worried, by these connubial jars, might have been pardoned for lamenting that the promiscuous amours of the King did not make him callous to matrimonial bickerings.

Charles, for once moved to persevering efforts to attain his end, did not abandon the hope of bringing the Queen to acquiesce in his decision by gentle means. He laid aside the anger which her conduct had at first aroused, and sought to cajole her into a better humour. He a.s.sured her that his intimacy with "the Lady" had already ceased, and that the place at Court which he proposed to a.s.sign to her would be the best guarantee against its renewal. But all these attempts were in vain. The Queen refused any compromise; and on his side the King, whose superficial good humour was not incompatible with profound and pertinacious selfishness, did not scruple to expose her to every insult at Court. He threw himself with his usual cynicism into all the degraded pleasures of the libertine crew of his choice companions; openly pursued his intimacy with Lady Castlemaine, and taught his friends, as an easy means of access to his favour, to flout the pretensions and the feelings of the Queen. "I wish,"

he wrote to Clarendon, "I may be unhappy in this world, and in the world to come, if I fail in the least degree of what I have resolved, which is of making my Lady Castlemaine of my wife's bed-chamber. I am resolved to go through with this matter, let what will come of it: which again I solemnly swear before Almighty G.o.d; therefore if you desire to have the continuance of my friends.h.i.+p, meddle no more in this business, except it be to bear down all false and scandalous reports, and to facilitate what, I am sure, my honour is so much concerned in; and whosoever I find to be my Lady Castlemaine's enemy in this matter, I do promise, upon my word, to be his enemy as long as I live. You may show this letter to my Lord- Lieutenant (Ormonde), and, if you have both a mind to oblige me, carry yourselves like friends to me in this matter." [Footnote: Letters amongst Lansdowne MSS. in British Museum. Printed by Lingard, and in Lister's _Life of Clarendon_, iii. 202.]

Charles's easy humour cloaked an obstinacy as strong as that of any of his race. Be the object perverse enough, it a.s.serted itself, in his facile character, with the pettishness to be found in a spoilt child. He knew Clarendon's opinion of "the Lady," whose acquaintance the Chancellor shunned, and to whom he had forbidden his wife to show any civilities. To Clarendon's bitter annoyance, the King imposed on him of all men the irksome duty of attempting an arrangement with the Queen. Clarendon had already met the request, when first made, by st.u.r.dy remonstrance, and by a powerful appeal to the King's sense of honour. It was only when no other plan could be devised for composing the ugly business, that he felt it his duty to remonstrate with the Queen. It was; he felt, "too delicate a province for so plain-dealing a man." The caprice of fortune never laid upon a man so proud as Clarendon, a task so irksome and so little to his taste. Only the public interest involved forced him to breathe for a time the stifling atmosphere, and mix himself in the nauseating topics, of the royal matrimonial wranglings. Only the imperious need for suppressing a scandal which might smother the new settlement, and the royal power, in the mud of a sordid quarrel, bade him undertake a hateful duty. Honour could not be saved; but disaster might perhaps be avoided.

Again and again he attempted to argue with the Queen. He a.s.sured her, with such confidence as he might, of the King's promise to break the hated connection. He held out hopes of a cordial agreement between them to be gained by conceding what the King desired, at the expense of what Clarendon admitted to be a natural repugnance. He explained to her the authority which the King possessed, and hinted--we may guess with what repugnance--at the usages of other Courts, where such scandals were condoned. He was met, once and again, by pa.s.sionate outbursts, to which the Queen gave way, and which, he knew, would only provoke the resentment of the King--the resentment of a nature, slow to be aroused, but once aroused, relentless because of its very cynicism. At length the Chancellor thought that he had prevailed, and the Queen professed her duty to her husband. But with an ill-judged change of humour she chose this mistimed moment for appearing unduly conciliatory to her rival, and thereby diminished such respect as her resistance had gained, even from those whom it provoked. Charles not unnaturally believed that the violence of an indignation so quickly appeased had been due only to capricious obstinacy, and to no strength of virtuous self-respect. His tyranny grew the greater by her weakness. He dismissed all but one or two of her followers, and left her friendless amidst an unfriendly Court. Clarendon worked in vain; he had done what he could to save the situation, and now "made it his humble suit to the King that he might be no more consulted with nor employed in an affair in which he had been so unsuccessful." A semblance of reconciliation, whatever that was worth, was somehow patched up. The King no longer openly flouted his wife before the crowd of complaisant courtiers. On her part she submitted to his will, and stooped to the ign.o.ble part a.s.signed her in a profligate Court. She accepted, with grat.i.tude, such an occasional show of kindness, as from time to time made the Court gossips surmise that a better understanding might come. For the rest she sank into insignificance amidst such childish amus.e.m.e.nts as were to fill up her life.

Praise and blame are alike out of place in regard to Clarendon's conduct in the affair, and we may spare ourselves the tedious moralizings of his critics. No one loathed more utterly than he the disgusting licentiousness out of which the whole sordid story grew, and no one treated with more contemptuous austerity the objects of the King's pa.s.sion, and the pandars to his vices. However high his own ideal of domestic virtue, Clarendon was a man of the world, not blind to its vices, and not eager to pry into scandals or pursue the secrets of private life. It was not only the vice of Charles's courtiers, it was the sickening parade of debauchery in all its nakedness, which seemed to him to make the Court unmanly and contemptible. Feeling as he did, he had spoken words of bold remonstrance to the King himself, although he was fully conscious how irksome his moralizings were, and how easily they lent themselves to the gibes of Charles's baser companions. Busy tongues carried to him tales of these sneers--which were, indeed, scarcely concealed in his own presence, and which were only too openly betrayed by the behaviour of the sycophantish crew. He saw how fatal was the ruin caused by the flagitious obscenity of the Court--sunk as it was far below the level of the free play of licentious gallantry [Footnote: The more we become familiar with the intimate records of the age, the more we recognize how little its sickening degradation is described by any of the epithets usually applied to the reign of the "merry monarch." Its filth was even more disgusting than its vice, its obscenity than its licentiousness, and its unmanliness than its profligacy. ]--and he knew well that this unseemly matrimonial fracas proclaimed it to the world. He tried rebuke and remonstrance. When these failed, he only did his duty in attempting--vainly, as it proved--a compromise; and it was with disgust as well as weariness that he turned away from the degrading and hopeless task of patching up the strife that was undermining all his efforts at reconstruction. The Court which he dreamed of restoring, chastened by adversity, enhanced in dignity, resting upon a sound const.i.tutional foundation, and fenced by a bulwark of stately reverence, was now to be a byword amongst the people, as the home of ign.o.ble trifling, of b.e.s.t.i.a.l vice, of sordid intrigue, and of vulgarizing domestic jars.

The little clique of his enemies comprised Bristol, that strange mixture of contradictions--fantastic vanity and flightiness, tempered by subtle wariness and vigorous intellectual strength; treachery and double-dealing, redeemed by occasional gleams of romantic extravagance and enthusiastic zeal; Buckingham, to whom all virtue was a natural object of antipathy, and pre-eminence in profligacy his chief ambition; and Ashley, whose keen intellect and cunning a.s.sumption of specious aims, were the instruments of a boundless ambition, and were unchecked by any thought of principle, or any scruple of consistency. They had as humbler tools, in their sordid work, Sir Henry Bennet and Sir Charles Berkeley. All found in this sorry affair, precisely the most favourable means of promoting the one aim which held them together--the undermining of Clarendon's power. For this object they were all alike prepared to support the pretensions, and flatter the vanity, of the shameless and grasping courtesan, to ruin the happiness of the wife, to degrade the honour, and send to slumber the scruples, of the King, and to besmirch that Crown, which a flood of unselfish loyalty had restored, only two years before, to the love and reverence of the nation.

But other matters, of larger public concern, had to be faced by Clarendon; and in these, too, he was obstructed by the machinations of the same unscrupulous clique.

We are apt to forget, in the engrossing incidents of our civil war, and its sequel, the enormous changes that were in progress in the material condition of the country, and the larger economic struggle that was being waged between the Western European Powers in regard to the supremacy in commercial undertakings, as developed by the colonial enterprise of the time. Wars were to be carried on hereafter, not on the ground of dynastic disputes or of religious differences, but in order to gain a firm footing in the vastly increasing field of commercial operations. The sovereignty of the seas was necessary to achieve that end, and it was this underlying conviction that prompted the United Provinces to their struggle with the English fleet--a struggle, the ultimate fate of which remained long doubtful in view of the intense importance of the warring interests, and the indomitable courage of the combatants on either side. Cromwell had enormously developed the commercial supremacy of England by the Navigation Act, which required that foreign goods should arrive in England only in s.h.i.+ps sailing under the English flag, or under the flag of the country in which the commodities had their origin. This Act was renewed by the Convention Parliament and confirmed by the Parliament of 1661, in its full stringency of operation. It threatened the very foundation of the Dutch naval and commercial supremacy, and planted a root of enmity between England and the United Provinces, rendered permanent by the irreconcilable opposition of material interests which grew up by the irresistible force of circ.u.mstances. Other differences might be composed, but that resting on the instinct of self-preservation could know no end. Statesmen had to shape their policy--sometimes blindly enough--but always under the pressure of this vigorous instinct of self-interest prevalent amongst the trading cla.s.ses of the country.

The wealth of France rendered her less susceptible to these feelings, and her statesmen took less account of them; but to prove the unquestioned power of her Crown, it became necessary for her to a.s.sert herself, like her neighbours, at sea. Just before the Restoration, an insecure peace had been patched up between France and Spain. But while France consented to abandon her support of Portugal, she had no mind that Portugal should be left at the mercy of Spain. It was her first business to contrive a counterpoise to the power of Spain. But it was more difficult for France to decide what should be her relation to England. She had cultivated an alliance with Cromwell, and in order to consolidate that alliance, she had treated the Royalist cause with contemptuous neglect. Neither on the part of the people of England, nor on the part of its Court, was any close connection with France desired. The old jealousies, bred of close neighbourhood, could not be effaced. An alliance with Spain had seemed at first more desirable.

But overtures from Charles for a Spanish marriage had been treated somewhat cavalierly by the Spanish Court. This naturally prompted the obvious alternative of a Portuguese marriage, and such a marriage offered to France precisely the opportunity she desired. A marriage treaty between England and Portugal seemed certain to secure for Portugal the support of England in her struggle with Spain; and France welcomed the appearance of an ally who might render to Portugal that help against Spain, which she herself was precluded by treaty from openly offering. The King of England had been encouraged to prosecute the treaty of marriage with Portugal by a.s.surance of French sympathy. Such sympathy would not, in itself, have been a sufficient inducement. Other more powerful motives operated. "The princ.i.p.al advantages we propose to ourself," wrote Charles to his envoy in Portugal, "by this conjunction with Portugal, is the advancement of the trade of this nation." These words were perfectly true, and the possession of Tangier and Bombay, with equal trading rights in the East Indies and Brazil, were real and substantial advantages to England. They were not lessened by the fact that the alliance brought England and France, for a time, to a better understanding.

But France had her own causes of jealousy, and it was necessary for Clarendon to take all care that these should not drive her into the hands of that chief enemy, with whom England must sooner or later come to deadly grips-the Dutch Republic. Clarendon fully appreciated the great work of Cromwell in making England feared in Europe, and he was anxious that she should not, under the monarchy, suffer any abatement of the power which Cromwell had so triumphantly established. But he knew also the inherent weakness of the country at the moment, and her inability to sustain the burden of a war. To Clarendon it was a matter of supreme and vital importance that war should not come until her resources were consolidated.

Even at the cost of a crippling debt, her naval stores and a.r.s.enals were equipped with careful industry. But Clarendon knew well that though definite and detailed preparation of that kind might help her to meet a sudden emergency, England was in no financial condition to maintain the annual pressure of a long-continued war. France, alive to the embarra.s.sments of English Ministers, soon put forward new topics of complaint, and pressed for redress as the price of her continued friendliness. Disputes arose as to the respective rights of the fis.h.i.+ng fleets of each country, and acts of violence and privateering occurred on both sides. France refused to comply with the custom that had prevailed since it was conceded by Henry IV. to Elizabeth, which recognized England's naval supremacy by prescribing that all other fleets should salute the English flag. [Footnote: The following statement, which has kindly been supplied to me, has high authority:--

"From the 14th to the 18th century the salute (at first by lowering the topsail, and later by dipping the flag) was more or less jealously claimed by English s.h.i.+ps of war from all other s.h.i.+ps, whether foreign men-of-war or English or foreign merchantmen. While there was no nation strong enough to resist the English claim (and this was especially the case while England held possessions on both sides of the Channel) the salute was pretty generally accorded, and it was not until the 17th century that any serious resistance was made. During almost the whole of that century an acute controversy raged about the meaning and the scope of the Sovereignty of the Seas. The English case was bolstered up by doubtful doc.u.ments, such as an alleged Ordinance of King John, said to have been issued at Hastings in 1200, but now acknowledged to be a forgery.

In 1635, Selden published his 'Mare Clausum' in support of the English claim. Apparently he was moved to this by the publication by Grotius in 1633 of 'Mare Liberum,' though the latter was more directly aimed at the monopoly claimed by the Portuguese in the East Indies. Probably Selden wrote with his tongue in his cheek to please Charles I., for he is said to have made ridicule of his own book in private conversation.

The English, however, were not content to enforce their claim by words, but often during the 16th and 17th centuries enforced it by cannon shot.

The arrogant claim that any vessel (a yacht for instance) bearing the Union flag must be saluted by foreign s.h.i.+ps, and even by a foreign fleet of men-of-war, was much resented by the Dutch after they had crushed Spain, and was one of the causes that led to the outbreak of the First Dutch War (1652-4) though commercial jealousy was the prime cause.

The first battle (Dover, May, 1652) was occasioned by Tromp flaunting his flag in the face of Blake.

This war turned out, on the whole, sufficiently favourable to the English to enable them to secure a clause in the Treaty of peace in 1654--

'That the s.h.i.+ps and vessels of the United Provinces, as well those fitted for war as others, meeting any s.h.i.+p of War of the said Commonwealth in the British Seas, shall strike their Flag, and lower their Topsail in such manner as had been any time before practised under any Government.'

Similar clauses occur in the Treaty of Westminster, 1662, and that of Breda (which ended the Second Dutch War), 1667. The Treaty closing the Third Dutch War (Westminster, 1673) has a similar article, but the seas are defined.

During the 18th century the claim does not seem to have been often enforced, and by the time of the Peace of Amiens, 1803, when the ancient claim to the Sovereignty of France was formally abandoned, the claim to the salute had become extinct."] The traditional, but none the less galling, a.s.sumption of the t.i.tular sovereignty and arms of France, by the English King, was another cause of emphatic complaint. The French Court knew enough of England's financial weakness, to judge the moment propitious for pressing these subjects of dispute. Clarendon thought it well, to begin, at least, by a.s.suming an independent and combative tone.

He strove, under the compulsion to which many a diplomat has had to yield, to cover his weakness by proud words, and he managed to provoke Louis XIV.

to angry remonstrances, and even to threats of war. It was to Clarendon personally that the French King ascribed the supercilious tone of the English demands, and it was his compliance that Louis and his Ministers chiefly sought to gain. The Powers abroad knew what Clarendon's work for the exiled Court had been. They could estimate the value of his statesmans.h.i.+p, and dreaded him as England's most efficacious Minister. But they attributed to him a power which, hampered as he was, was never truly his. Clarendon was in truth attempting an impossible task, and he fought with fettered hands. He could expect no support from the King, who was already allured by the prospects of financial a.s.sistance, skilfully held out by Louis. It was hard to maintain a proud defiance amidst the perplexities of divided counsels, of selfish intrigues, and of a bankrupt exchequer. He had to temporize as to the King's t.i.tle, and to accept the abrogation of the token of respect to England's supremacy upon the seas.

The imperious tone was one which no Minister of Charles II. could longer safely a.s.sume.

Another far more substantial concession to French demands soon after came up for discussion.

It was a striking tribute to Cromwell's influence abroad that the sea-port of Dunkirk, when conquered by the allied Powers, had, according to treaty, been handed over to the keeping of the English Commonwealth. It was not the only important possession which the restored King of England owed to the prowess of the rebels by whom he had been exiled, and to whose conquests he was now the heir. As to its value there were doubts. Although it had been a troublesome hive of privateers, the place was reckoned not to be really of much strategical importance, and the naval experts had already expressed doubts whether its value was equivalent to the expense which it involved. The revenue of England was sorely crippled, and the possession of Dunkirk not only involved heavy expenditure, but was a very probable source of expensive warlike complications. It was from Lord Southampton, who, as Treasurer, felt the financial burden most, that the first suggestion of parting with it came. The exchequer was in ill state to stand further drains, and Tangier and Bombay, however beneficial their possession might ultimately become, were now nothing but sources of heavy expense. Southampton imparted his misgivings to the King, and sought for some device by which he might s.h.i.+ft some part of the constantly growing expenditure. Could Dunkirk not be handed over as a _d.a.m.nosa hereditas?_ The naval experts were consulted, and were ready not only to acquiesce, but to avow their opinion that Dunkirk offered no advantages equivalent to its cost, which was reckoned at not less than a hundred and twenty thousand a year. Southampton told the Chancellor of his difficulties, and propounded to him the scheme for lightening them; but found Clarendon so averse to a proposal for parting with any naval stronghold, that even the entire confidence bred of their old friends.h.i.+p did not tempt the Treasurer to reopen a subject so distasteful until some definite proposal could be framed. The General (Albemarle) and he laid it before the King so urgently, that Charles was attracted by a scheme which offered the tempting bait of financial provision, and at length it was formally brought before that secret and select Council which consulted upon all matters of prime importance. It could no longer be kept from the Chancellor; and Clarendon's illness made it necessary on this, as on many other occasions, to summon the Council to his sickroom, where, besides the King and the Duke of York, the Chancellor and the Treasurer, with Albemarle, Sandwich, Sir George Carteret, and the two secretaries of State, were present. Southampton knew the opposition he had to expect from Clarendon, and playfully asked the King, when he entered the room, "to take the Chancellor's staff from him, otherwise he would break his Treasurer's head." Charles told Clarendon that the business to be debated was one which he knew that Clarendon would oppose; but when he had heard the arguments, he thought they would change his view. Steps had evidently been taken with care to prepare the ground and marshall the arguments. The naval and military experts explained the small strategical value of the place, its ineffectiveness as a naval base, and the deficiencies of its land defences. Against such arguments Clarendon was, of course, powerless; and it was equally impossible for him to argue away the heavy burden on a crippled treasury, of which the Treasurer begged to be relieved. To hold the place longer was only too likely to involve a costly war with one or both of the Powers of France and Spain, and it was a source of irritation to the United Provinces as well. Not only were the arguments strong, but the Chancellor was soon convinced that he had not been consulted until those who desired to effect a profitable bargain had already gained the determined adherence of the King. It was no part of Clarendon's practice to argue in the face of impossibilities. Little remained for him or any other Minister but to decide with which Power it was possible to strike the best bargain, and which it was most expedient to conciliate.

There are some variations between the various accounts that have reached us as to the first author of the suggestion. Sandwich, in a conversation with Pepys, [Footnote: In February, 1666.] averred that he himself was the first adviser, and this account is partially confirmed by what Sir Robert Southwell told, in 1670, of a conversation between Sandwich and himself in October, 1667. On the other hand, D'Estrades, the French envoy, a.s.serts-- what would give the lie to what Clarendon avers in his Life with convincing proof and elaborate circ.u.mstantiality--that Clarendon had told him that he was himself the author of the proposal. As regards Pepys's report, Sandwich, probably, after the common fas.h.i.+on of experts, a.s.signed too much importance to his own expert advice; while the French envoy might easily have misunderstood the att.i.tude a.s.sumed by Clarendon, who was bound, of course, to submit to the French diplomat even proposals which he disliked as if he entirely concurred in them. We need have no difficulty in a.s.suming Clarendon's own deliberate and written account to be substantially correct. That he was brought unwillingly to concur in a proposal which had virtually obtained the a.s.sent of the King, is confirmed by the fact that in his speech to Parliament in May, 1662, he condemned the murmurs against the cost of Dunkirk, on the ground that it was a diadem of which the English Crown could only be deprived at the cost of great danger. It was no part of Clarendon's character to decline a responsibility which was his own; nor was it his inclination to part lightly with anything that added to the dignity of the English Crown. That the first suggestion did not come from him may be accepted on his own solemn averment; but it is also strongly confirmed by inherent probability.

It remained only to decide with which Power the bargain should be made.

Policy, it might have been held, should have some influence in determining the choice, at a moment when international relations were so delicately poised. But Clarendon tells us that, strangely enough, the only question was, Who would give the highest price? Both Spain and France were eager to have the sea-port. Of the two Spain was by far the most popular in England; but she was not likely to be so good a purchaser. She claimed the cession of Dunkirk as a right, and it is always improbable that one who puts forward such a claim should be inclined either to pay heavy purchase- money, or to owe a deep debt of grat.i.tude, for what is claimed as a right.