A Student's History of England Volume II Part 16

LEADING DATES

Reign of Charles II., 1660-1685

Tory Reaction 1681 Flight of Shaftesbury 1682 Forfeiture of the Charter of the City of London 1683 The Rye House Plot 1683 Executions of Russell and Sidney 1683 Death of Charles II. Feb. 6, 1685

1. =Tory Reaction. 1681.=--The Tory reaction which followed made itself especially felt in the law-courts. Judges and juries who had combined to send to death innocent Catholics, upon the testimony of forsworn informers, now combined to send to death ardent Whigs, upon the testimony of informers equally base. College, the inventor of the Protestant flail (see p. 615), was condemned to death, as having borne arms in Oxford during the last Parliament, and others shared his fate on equally slight grounds. In the City of London, however, it was still impossible to secure a verdict against a Whig. Juries were everywhere nominated by the sheriff of the county, and sheriffs were, in political cases, ready to compose a jury of political partisans. In every part of England except Middles.e.x, the sheriffs were named by the king, and were, therefore, Tories. The City of London, which was strongly Whig, had the privilege of electing sheriffs for London and Middles.e.x, and these sheriffs took care that Middles.e.x juries should be composed of Whigs. Shaftesbury was accused of high treason, but before he could be tried the Grand Jury of Middles.e.x had to find a true bill against him--that is to say, to declare that there was sufficient evidence against him to call for a trial. On November 24, =1681=, the Grand Jury, composed of his own political partisans, threw out the bill, and he was at once set at liberty.

2. ='Absolom and Achitophel.' 1681.=--A few days before Shaftesbury's release, Dryden, the greatest living master of the heroic couplet, strove to stir up men's minds against the prisoner by his satire of 'Absolom and Achitophel,' in which the part of the tempter Achitophel was a.s.signed to Shaftesbury and the part of the tempted Absolom to Monmouth. Shaftesbury was described as

For close designs and crooked councils fit; Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit; Restless, unfixed in principles and place; In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace; A fiery soul, which worketh 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 ran high, He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to show his wit.

3. =The Scottish Test Act and the Duke of York's Return.

1681-1682.=--The 'daring pilot's' course was nearly run. Before long, on May 27, =1682=, Shaftesbury's most conspicuous enemy, the Duke of York, returned from Scotland. Whilst he was in Scotland he had obtained an Act from the Scottish Parliament, binding on all officials a new test, requiring them to swear to the doctrine of hereditary right and to the maintenance of the episcopal Church. The Earl of Argyle, the son of the Marquis of Argyle, the political leader of the Covenanters against Charles I., having inherited his father's Presbyterianism, not only refused the oath, but gave reasons for refusing. The Crown lawyers declared that his reasons poisoned the minds of the subjects against the king, and he was tried and condemned to death under an old statute against leasing-making--literally, the making of lies--which had been pa.s.sed about a century before to punish court favourites who sowed dissension between the king and his people by poisoning the mind of the king against his subjects. Argyle, however, escaped to Holland, and on April 20, =1682=, James reached London.

4. =The City Elections. 1682.=--The first thing on which, after James's return, the king's ministers set their heart, was to strike a blow at Shaftesbury. As he lived in his house in Aldersgate Street and took care never to leave the City, it was impossible to bring him to trial as long as the sheriffs of London and Middles.e.x were Whigs. The Lord Mayor, Moore, was gained by the Court, and, by various unscrupulous contrivances, he secured the appointment of two Tory sheriffs, and, even before the end of =1682=, of a Tory Lord Mayor named Prichard as his own successor. There would no longer be any difficulty in filling the Middles.e.x jury box with Tories.

5. =Flight and Death of Shaftesbury. 1682-1683.=--Shaftesbury had for some time been keenly alive to the danger impending over him. He had wild followers in the City ready to follow him in acts of violence, and he had proposed to Russell and Monmouth that the king's guards at Whitehall should be attacked, and the king compelled to do his bidding. Russell and Monmouth recoiled from an act of violence which would certainly end in bloodshed. Shaftesbury still hoped to effect his end by the aid of his less scrupulous supporters; but time slipped away, and on October 19, three days before Prichard's election, he fled to Holland, where he died on January 22, =1683=. With all his faults, he had led the way on that path in which the English nation was, before long, to walk, as he had latterly striven for a combination of Parliamentary supremacy with toleration for dissenters and without toleration for Catholics.

His personal failure was due to the disquietude caused by his turbulence in the minds of that large part of the community which regards orderly government as a matter of primary necessity.

6. =The Attack on the City. 1682-1683.=--The difficulty which Charles had experienced in bending the city to his will made him anxious to provide against similar resistance in the future. Taking care to effect his objects under, at least, the form of law, he enforced on the electors in the City, who were called in December to choose the Common Council, the oath of supremacy and the proof required by the Corporation Act of having received the Sacrament in the Church. The result was that a Tory majority was returned on the Common Council. Following up this blow in =1683=, he called on the City to show cause, by a writ known as '_Quo Warranto_,' before the King's Bench, why its charter should not be forfeited, in consequence of its having imposed irregular tolls and having attacked the king's authority in a pet.i.tion exhibited in =1680=. The King's Bench decided against the City, and the king then offered to restore the charter on certain conditions, of which the princ.i.p.al was, that he was to have a veto on the election of its princ.i.p.al officers. At first the City accepted his terms, but, before the end of the year, it drew back, and the king then named the Lord Mayor and other officers directly, paying no further regard to the munic.i.p.al self-government under which the City had, for many centuries, conducted its own affairs.

7. =The Remodelling of the Corporations. 1683-1684.=--A large number of other corporate towns were treated as London had been treated. By a plentiful use of writs of _Quo Warranto_, the judges on circuit obtained the surrender of their charters, after which the king issued new ones in which Tories alone were named as members of the corporations. It was said of Jeffreys, one amongst the judges who was most subservient, that he 'made all charters, like the walls of Jericho, fall down before him.' The object of these proceedings was to make sure of a Tory Parliament when the time came for fresh elections. In a large number of boroughs the corporations chose the members, and in such cases wherever the corporation had been remodelled, there would be a safe Tory seat. At the same time the laws against the Dissenters were strictly executed, and the prisons filled with their ministers.

8. =The Rye House Plot. 1683.=--When injustice is done under legal forms, there are usually some persons who think it allowable to appeal to force. Some of Shaftesbury's more violent followers formed a plot to attack the king and his brother at the Rye House on their return from Newmarket, and either to seize or murder them. The plot failed, as Charles pa.s.sed the Rye House some days earlier than was expected, and several of the conspirators were taken and executed.

9. =The Whig Combination. 1683.=--The discovery of the Rye House Plot brought to light a dangerous combination amongst the Parliamentary Whigs, in which Monmouth, Russell, Ess.e.x, Lord Howard of Escrick, and other notable persons were implicated. They had, indeed, kept themselves free from any intention to offer personal violence to the king, but they had attempted to form an a.s.sociation strong enough to compel him to summon another Parliament, though apparently without coming to a definite conclusion as to the way in which they were to use compulsion. In their own eyes their project was no more than const.i.tutional agitation. In the eyes of the king and of the Crown lawyers it was a preparation for rebellion. Ess.e.x committed suicide in prison, whilst Howard of Escrick turned informer against his friends.

10. =Trial and Execution of Lord Russell. 1683.=--Russell was accordingly put on his trial as a traitor. In those days no one on his trial for treason was allowed to be defended by a lawyer, as far as the facts of the case were concerned, but no objection was taken to his having some one near him to take notes of the evidence and to a.s.sist his memory. "Your friends," wrote his wife to him shortly before the trial, "believing I can do you some service at your trial, I am extremely willing to try. My resolution will hold out, pray let yours." Her offer was accepted, and she gave her husband all the help that it was possible to give. The jury, however, brought in a verdict of guilty, and sentence of death followed. In prison Russell was visited by two ministers, Tillotson and Burnet.

No clergymen in England were more liberal-minded than these two, yet they urged the prisoner to acknowledge that resistance to the king was in all cases unlawful. Russell maintained that, in extreme cases, subjects might resist. Here lay the root of the political animosity between Whig and Tory. Whether an extreme case had occurred was a matter of opinion. "As for the share I had in the prosecution of the Popish Plot," Russell declared on the scaffold, "I take G.o.d to witness that I proceeded in it in the sincerity of my heart, being then really convinced, as I am still, that there was a conspiracy against the king, the nation, and the Protestant religion." It was because the nation at large no longer held this to be true that the Tories were in power.

11. =Execution of Algernon Sidney. 1683.=--Russell's trial was followed by that of Algernon Sidney. Though the real charge against him was that of having conspired against the king, only one, and that a not very credible, witness could be produced as evidence of this; and the prosecuting lawyers then brought forward a treatise, written in his own hand, but neither printed nor circulated in ma.n.u.script, in which he had advocated the right of subjects to depose their king. This was held to be equivalent to having a second witness against him, and Sidney was condemned and executed. He was a theoretical Republican, and it was hard to bring up against him a writing which he had never published. Other less important Whigs were also put to death. Monmouth owed his pardon to his father's tenderness, but, as he still continued to bear himself as the head of a party, he was sent into honourable exile in Holland.

12. =Parties at Court. 1684.=--In the spring of =1684= three years had pa.s.sed without a Parliament, although the statute repealing the Triennial Act (see p. 588) had declared that Parliament ought to be summoned every three years. So sure was Charles of his ground that he liberated Danby without causing a murmur of complaint. At Court there were two parties, one led by Halifax, which urged that, by summoning a Parliament now, Charles would not only comply with the law, but would have a Parliament as loyal as the Cavalier Parliament had been; the other, led by Lawrence Hyde, the second son of Clarendon, who had recently been created Earl of Rochester.

Rochester, who was the highest of Tories, pointed out that the law prescribed no means by which the king could be compelled to call a Parliament if he did not wish to do so, and that, after all, the Cavalier Parliament, loyal as it was at first, had made itself very disagreeable to the king during the latter years of its existence.

All through the year Charles hesitated and left the question undecided. The king of France, who was renewing his aggressions on the Continent under the guise of legal claims, was ready to do all he could to prevent the meeting of an English Parliament, which would, in all probability, declare against him, and by sending money to Charles from time to time, he saved him from the necessity of asking his subjects for support.

13. =Death of Charles II. 1685.=--On February 2, =1685=, before anything had been decided, Charles was struck down by an apoplectic stroke. It was soon known that he was dying. Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke plainly to him: "It is time," he said, "to speak out; for, sir, you are about to appear before a Judge who is no respecter of persons." The king took no notice, and, after a while, the Duke of York came to his bed-side and asked his brother whether he wished to be reconciled to the Church of Rome.

"Yes," murmured the dying man, "with all my heart!" James sent for a priest, directing the bishops and the courtiers to leave the room.

Charles was duly reconciled, receiving absolution and the sacraments of the Roman Church. He lingered for some days, and begged pardon of those around him. He had been, he said, an unconscionable time in dying, but he hoped they would excuse it. On February 6 he died.

14. =Const.i.tutional Progress. 1660-1685.=--The twenty-five years of the reign of Charles II. were years of substantial const.i.tutional progress. Charles did not, indeed, acknowledge that Parliament had that right of directing the choice of his ministers which the Long Parliament had upheld against his father in the Grand Remonstrance; but though he took care that his ministers should be responsible to himself and not to Parliament, he had also taken care, on the whole, to adapt the selection of his ministers to the changing temper of Parliament and the nation. Clarendon, the Cabal, and Danby had all been allowed to disappear from office when Parliament turned against them. The formation of Parliamentary parties, again, was itself a condition of Parliamentary strength. The Cavalier Parliament had been weakened in its later years by the uncertainty of its aims. At one time the king's reliance upon France and his tendency to rest his government on armed force provoked a majority to vote against him. At another time some concession made by him to their wishes brought round a majority to his side. In the latter years of Charles's reign this uncertainty was at an end. Charles had thrown his dependence on France and the army into the background, and in a struggle, the successful issue of which would bring no personal advantage to himself, had taken his stand on the intelligible principle of defending his brother's succession. He had consequently rallied round the throne all who thought the maintenance of order to be of supreme importance, whilst all who suspected that the order which Charles maintained was hurtful and oppressive combined against him. This sharp division of parties ultimately strengthened the power of Parliament. The intemperance of Charles's adversaries had indeed given him the upper hand for the time, but, if ever the day came when a king made himself unpopular, a Parliament opposed to him would be all the stronger if its majority were of one mind in supporting definite principles under definite leaders. Charles II., in short, did not live to see the establishment of Parliamentary government, but he unwittingly prepared the way for it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dress of ladies of quality: from Sandford's _Coronation Procession of James II._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ordinary attire of women of the lower cla.s.ses: from Sandford's _Coronation Procession of James II._]

15. =Prosperity of the Country.=--The horror of a renewal of civil war, which was partly the result of sad experience, was also the result of the growth of the general well-being of the community. The population of England now exceeded 5,000,000. Rents were rising, and commerce was rapidly on the increase. Fresh colonies--amongst them Pennsylvania and Carolina--were founded in America. In England itself the growth of London was an index to the general prosperity.

In those days the City was the home of the merchants, who did not then leave the place where their business was done to spend the evening and night in the suburbs. Living side by side, they clung to one another, and their civic ardour created a strength which weighed heavily in the balance of parties. The opposition of the City to Charles I. had given the victory to Parliament in the civil war, and its dislike of military government had done much to bring about the Restoration. The favour of the City had been the chief support of Shaftesbury, and it was only by overthrowing its munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions that Charles II. had succeeded in crippling its power to injure him. In the meantime a new forest of houses was springing up on sites between Lincoln's Inn and what is now known as Soho Square, and round St. James's Church. The Court and the frequent meetings of Parliament attracted to London many families which, a generation earlier, would have lived entirely in the country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Coach of the latter half of the seventeenth century: from Loggan's _Oxonia Ill.u.s.trata_.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Wagon of the second half of the seventeenth century: from Loggan's _Oxonia Ill.u.s.trata_.]

16. =The Coffee Houses.=--Nothing has made a greater change in the material habits of Europeans than the introduction of warm beverages. Chocolate first made its way into England in the time of the Commonwealth, but it was for some time regarded merely as a medicine, not to be taken by the prudent except under a physician's orders, though those interested in its sale declared that it was suitable for all, and would cure every possible complaint. Chocolate was soon followed by coffee, and coffee soon became fas.h.i.+onable, not as a medicine, but as a pleasant subst.i.tute for beer and wine. The introduction of tea was somewhat later. It was in the reign of Charles II. that coffee-houses arose in London, and became places of resort, answering the purposes of the modern clubs. They soon acquired political importance, matters of state being often discussed in them, and the opinion of their frequenters carrying weight with those who were directly concerned with Government. The gathering of men of intellectual prominence to London was a marked feature of the time, and, except at the universities, there was scarcely a preacher or a theological writer of note who was not to be found either in the episcopate or at the head of a London parish.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Reaping and harvesting in the second half of the seventeenth century; Cambridge in the distance: from Loggan's _Cantabrigia Ill.u.s.trata_.]

17. =Condition of London.=--The arrangements for cleanliness did not keep pace in London with the increased magnificence of the dwellings. The centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields, for instance, was a place where rubbish was shot, and where beggars congregated. St.

James's Square was just as bad, whilst filthy and discoloured streams poured along the gutters, and carts and carriages splashed mud and worse than mud over the pa.s.sengers on foot. At the beginning of the reign of Charles II. the streets were left in darkness, and robbers made an easy prey of those who ventured out after dark.

Young n.o.blemen and gentlemen when drunk took pleasure in knocking down men and insulting women. These were they of whom Milton was thinking when he declared that

In luxurious cities, when the noise Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, And injury, and outrage: and when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

Something was, however, done before the end of the reign to mitigate the dangers arising from darkness. One man obtained a patent for lighting London, and it was thought a great thing that he placed a lantern in front of one door in every ten in winter only, between six and midnight.

18. =Painting.=--The art of the time, so far as painting was concerned, was entirely in the hands of foreigners. Van Dyck, a Fleming, from Antwerp, had left to the world numerous representations of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, of Strafford and Laud, and of the ladies and gentlemen who thronged the Court. An Englishman, Samuel Cooper, made posterity acquainted with the features of Cromwell (see p. 567). Charles II. again called in the services of a foreigner, whose real name was Van der Goes, but who called himself Lely, because his father's house on the borders of Germany and the Netherlands was known by the sign of the Lily. Lely painted Court beauties and Court gentlemen. He had far less power than Van Dyck of presenting on canvas the mind which lies behind the features, and in many cases those who sat to him had minds less worthy of being presented than those with which Van Dyck had to do. When Charles II. wished for a painting of the sea and of s.h.i.+pping he had to send for a Dutch painter, Vandevelde; whilst an Italian, Verrio, decorated his ceilings with subjects taken from heathen mythology.

19. =Architecture.=--In architecture alone English hands were found to do the work required; but the style in which they built was not English but Italian. The rows of pillars and round arches, with the meaningless decorations which bespoke an age preferring sumptuousness to beauty, superseded the quaint Elizabethan and early Jacobean houses, which seemed built for comfort rather than for display, such as Ingestre Hall (see p. 471) and Hatfield House (see p. 485). In the reign of James I., Inigo Jones planned the great banqueting hall at Whitehall (see p. 493), and so contemptuous was he of the great architecture of the middle ages, that he fitted on an Italian portico to the west front of the old St. Paul's. This style of building culminated in the work of Sir Christopher Wren.

The fire of London gave him an opportunity which he did not throw away. The steeple of St. Mary-le-Bow is an example of his powers of design (see p. 614), but his greatest achievement, the new St.

Paul's, was, when Charles II. died, only slowly rising from the ground, and it remained uncompleted till long after Charles II. had been laid in the grave.

20. =Science.=--The foundation of the Royal Society (see p. 598) had borne ample fruit. Halley and Flamsteed were the astronomers of the time till their fame was eclipsed by that of Isaac Newton, who before the end of the reign of Charles II. was already meditating on the views contained in his 'Principia,' in which the law of gravitation was set forth, though that work was not written till after the death of that king.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Costume of a gentleman: from Sandford's _Coronation Procession of James II._]

21. =Difficulties of Communication.=--Difficulties of communication served both to encourage town life and to hinder the increase of manufactures at any considerable distance from the sea. The roads were left to each parish to repair, and the parishes usually did as little as possible. In many places a mere quagmire took the place of the road. Young and active men, and sometimes ladies, travelled on horseback, and goods of no great weight were transmitted on packhorses. The family coach, in which those who were too dignified or too weak to ride made their way from one part of the country to another, was dragged by six horses, and often sank so deeply in the mud as only to be extricated by the loan of additional plough horses from a neighbouring farm, whilst heavy goods were conveyed in lumbering waggons, still more difficult to move even at a moderate speed. For pa.s.sengers who could not afford to keep a coach the carrier's waggon served as a slow conveyance; but before the end of the reign of Charles II. there had been introduced a vehicle known as The Flying Coach, which managed to perform a journey at the rate of fifty miles a day in summer and thirty in winter, in districts in which roads were exceptionably good.

22. =The Country Gentry and the Country Clergy.=--These difficulties of communication greatly affected the less wealthy of the country gentry and the country clergy. A country gentleman of large fortune, indeed, would occasionally visit London and appear as a visitor at the house of some relative or friend to whom he was specially attached. The movements, however, even of this cla.s.s were much restricted, whilst men of moderate estate seldom moved at all. The refinements which at present adorn country life were not then to be found. Books were few, and the man of comparatively slender means found sufficient occupation in the management of his land and in the enjoyment of field sports. His ideas on politics were crude, and, because they were crude, were pertinaciously held. The country clergyman was relatively poorer than the country squire; and had few means of cultivating his mind or of elevating the religion of his paris.h.i.+oners. The ladies of the houses of even the richest of the landed gentry were scarcely educated at all, and, though there were bright exceptions, any one familiar with the correspondence of the seventeenth century knows that, if he comes across a letter particularly illegible and uninteresting, there is a strong probability that the writer was a woman.

23. =Alliance between the Gentry and the Church.=--A common life pa.s.sed in the country under much the same conditions naturally drew together the squire and the rector or vicar of his parish. A still stronger bond united them for the most part in a common Toryism.

They had both suffered from the same oppression: the squire, or his predecessor, had been heavily fined by a Puritan Parliament or a Puritan Lord Protector, whilst the inc.u.mbent or his predecessor had been expelled from his parsonage and deprived of his livelihood by the same authority. They therefore naturally combined in thinking that the first axiom in politics was to keep Dissenters down, lest they should do again what men like-minded with themselves had done before. Unless some other fear, stronger still, presented itself to them, they would endure almost anything from the king rather than risk the return to power of the Dissenters or of the Whigs, the friends of the Dissenters.

CHAPTER XLI

JAMES II. 1685-1689

LEADING DATES

Accession of James II. Feb. 6, 1685 Meeting of Parliament May 19, 1685 Battle of Sedgemoor July 6, 1685 Prorogation of Parliament Nov. 20, 1685 The Judges allow the King's Dispensing Power June 21, 1686 First Declaration of Indulgence April 4, 1687 Second Declaration of Indulgence April 22, 1688 Birth of the Son of James II. June 10, 1688 Acquittal of the Seven Bishops June 30, 1688 Landing of William of Orange Nov. 5, 1688 The Crown accepted by William and Mary Feb. 13, 1689