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LittRAKT
•TATE TCACHCRS COLLtOk
•ANTA SARBAKA. CALII»CmN»A
THE
HISTORY OF ENGLAND
FROM THE
ACCESSION OF JAMES II
BT
THOMAS BABINGTON xMACAULAY.
VOL. L
CHICAGO :
DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO.
407-425 Dearborn Street
1890
DONOHUE & HENNEBERRY,
Printers and Binders,
Chicago.
CONTENTS OF VOL. 1.
CHAPTER I.
Introduction 13
Britain under the Romans . 15
Britain under the Saxons , 16
Conversion of the Saxons to Christianity 17
Danish Invasions ; The Normans , 20
Tlie Norman Conquest 23
Separation of England and Normandy 25
Amalgamation of Races 26
English Conquests on the Continent . . . , 28
Wars of the Roses 30
Extinction of Villenage 31
Beneficial Operation of the Roman Catholic Religion 32
The early English Polity often misrepresented, and why ? .. . . 34
Nature of the Limited Monarchies of the Middle Ages 36
Prerogatives of the early English Kings 37
Limitations of the Prerogative 38
Resistance an ordinary Check on Tyranny in the Middle Ages 42
Peculiar Character of the English Aristocracy. 45
Government of the Tudors : 46
Limited Monarchies of the Middle Ages generally turned into
Absolute Monarchies 49
The English Monarchy a singular Exception 50
The Reformation and its Effects 51
Origin of the Church of England 55
Pier peculiar Character , , 57
Relation in which she stood to the Crown 59
The Puritans 63
Their Republican Spirit 65
No systematic parliamentary Opposition offered to the Gov-
ernment of Elizabeth 66
5
6 CONTENTS.
PAGE.
Question of the Monopolies 67
Scotland and Ireland become Parts of the same Empire with
England 68
Diminution of the Importance of England after the Accession
of James 1 72
Doctrine of Divine Right 73
The Separation between the Chnrch and the Puritans be-
comes wider 77
Accession and Character of Charles I. . . •. 85
Tactics of the Opposition in the House of Commons 86
Petition of Right 87
Petition of Right violated ; Character and Designs of Went-
worth 88
Character of Laud 89
Star Chamber and High Commission 90
Ship-Money 91
Resistance to the Liturgy in Scotland 94
A Parliament called and dissolved 95
The Long Parliament 97
First Appearance of the Two great English Parties 98
The Remonstrance 105
Impeachment of the Five Members 107
Departure of Charles from London 108
Commencement of the Civil War . „ . Ill
Successes of the Royalists 112
Rise of the Independents 114
Oliver Cromwell 115
Self denying Ordinance ; Victory of the Parliament 116
Domination and Character of the Army 117
Rising against the Military Government suppressed 120
Proceedings against the King 121
His Execution 124
Subjugation of Ireland and Scotland 126
Expulsion of the Long Parliament 127
The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell 130
Oliver succeeded by Richard ^ 135
Fall of Richard and Revival of the Long Parliament 137
Second Expulsion of the Long Parliament 138
The Army of Scotland marches into England 139
Monk declares for a Free Parliament 141
CONTENTS. 7
PAOE.
Geueial Election of 1660 142
The Restoration 143
CHAPTER II.
Conduct of those who restored the House of Stuart unjustly
censured 145
Abolition of Tenures by Knight Service ; Disbandment of the
Army 147
Disputes between the Roundheads and Cavaliers renewed 148
Religious Dissension 150
Unpopularity of the Puritans 153
Character of Charles II „ 159
Character of the Duke of York and Earl of Clarendon 162
General Election of 1661 165
Violence of the Cavaliers in the new Parliament 166
Persecution of the Puritans 167
Zeal of the Church for Hereditary Monarchy 168
Change in the Morals of the Community 168
Profligacy of Politicians 171
State of Scotland 173
State of Ireland 176
The Government become unpopular in England 177'
War with the Dutch 180
Opposition in the House of Commons 181
Fall of Clarendon 182
State of European Politics, and Ascendency of France 185
Character of Lewis XIV 187
The Triple Alliance 189
The Country Party 190
Connection between Charles II. and France 191
Views of Lewis with respect to England 194
Treaty of Dover 196
Nature of the English Cabinet 197
The Cabal 198
Shutting of the Exchequer 201
War with the United Provinces, and their extreme Danger. . . 202
William, Prince of Orange 203
Meeting of the Parliament ; Declaration of Indulgence 205
It is cancelled, and the Test Act passed 207
The Cabal dissolved 208
8 CONTENTS.
PAGE.
Peace with the United Provinces ; Administration of Danby 209
Embarrassing Situation of the Country Party 211
Dealings of that Party with the French Embassy 213
Peace of Niniegueu 213
Violent Discontents in England 214
Fall of Danby ; the Popish Plot 216
Violence of the new House of Commons 221
Temple's Plan of Government 223
Character of Halifax 225
Character of Sunderland 228
Prorogation of the Parliament ; Habeas Corpus Act ; Second
General Election of 1679 230
Popularity of Monmouth 231
Lawrence Hyde . .• 235
Sidney Godolphin 236
Violence of Factions on the Subject of the Exclusion Bill. 237
Names of Whig and Tory ; 238
Meeting of Parliament ; The Exclusion Bill passes the Com-
mons ; Exclusion Bill rejected by the Lords 239
Execution of Stafford ; General Election of 1681 240
Parliament held at Oxford, and dissolved 241
Tory Reaction 242
Persecution of the Whigs 244
Chaiter of the City confiscated ; Whig Conspiracies 245
Detection of the Whig Conspiracies 247
Severity of the Government ; Seizure of Charters 248
Lifliience of the Duke of York 250
He is opposed by Halifax 251
Lord Guildford 252
Policy of Lewis 254
State of Factioiv* in the Court of Charles at the time of his
Dftath 256
CHAPTER m.
Great Change in the State of England since 1685 257
Population of England in 1685 259
Increase of Population greater in the North than in the South 261
Revenue iu 1G85 264
Military System 266
The Navy- 273
CONTENTS. 9
PAGE.
The Ordnance 280
Noneffective Charge ; Charge of Civil Government > . 281
Great Gains of Ministers and Courtiers 282
State of Agriculture 285
Mineral Wealth of the Country 289
Increase of Rent 291
Tlie Country Gentlemen 292
The Clergy 296
The Yeomanry ; Growth of the Towns ; Bristol 306
Norwich 308
Other Country Towns 309
Manchester ; Leeds ; Sheffield 311
Birmingham 313
Liverpool 314
Watering-places ; Cheltenham ; Brighton ; Buxton ; Tunbridge
Wells 315
Bath 316
London 318
The City 320
Fashionable Part of the Capital 324
Police of London 329
Lighting of London 330
Whitefriars ; The Court 331
The Coffee Houses 334
Difficulty of Travelling 338
Badness of the Roads 339
Stage Coaches 343
Highwaymen 346
Inns 349
Post Office , 350
Newspapers 352
News-letters 354
The Observator 356
Scarcity of Books in Country Places ; Female Education 357
Literary Attainments of Gentlemen 359
Influence of French Literature 360
Immorality of the Polite Literature of England 361
State of Science in England 368
State of the Fine Arts. 373
State of the Common People ; Agricultural Wages 376
10 CONTENTS.
PAGE.
Wages of Manufacturers 378
Labour of Children in Factories 379
Wages of different Classes of Artisans 380
Number of Paupers 381
Benefits derived by the Common People from the Progress of
Civilisation 382
Delusion which leads Men to overrate the Happiness of pro-
ceding Generations 385
CHAPTER rV,
Death of Charles II 387
Suspicions of Poison 398
Speech of James II. to the Privy Council 400
James proclaimed 401
State of the Administration 402
New Arrangements 404
Sir George Jeffreys 406
The Revenue collected without an Act of Parliament 410
A Parliament called 411
Transactions between James and the French King 412
Churchill sent Ambassador to France ; His History 415
Feelings of the Continental Governments towards England. . 418
Policy of the Court of Rome. 420
Struggle in the Mind of James ; Fluctuations in his Policy.. . 423
Public Celebration of the Roman Catholic Rites in the Palace 425
His Coronation 427
Enthusiasm of the Tories ; Addresses 430
The Elections 431
Proceedings against Gates 435
Proceedings against Dangerfield 440
Proceedings against Baxter 442
Meeting of the Parliament of Scotland 446
Feeling of James towards the Puritans 447
Cruel Treatment of the Scotch Covenanters 449
Feeling of James towards the Quakers 453
William Penn 455
PocTiliar Favour shown to Roman Catholics and Quakers 458
Meeting of the English Parliament; Trevor chosen Speaker;
Character of Seymour 461
The King's Speech to the Parliament 463
CONTENTS. H
PAGE.
Debate in the Commons ; Speech of Seymour 464
The Revenue voted ; Proceedings of the Commons concerning'
Religion 465
Additional Taxes voted ; Sir Dudley North 467
Proceedings of the Lords . 469
Bill for reversing the Attainder of Stafford 470
CHAPTER V.
Whig Refugees on the Continent 472
Their Correspondents in England 473
Characters of the leading Refugees ; Ayloffe ; Wade 474
Goodenough ; Rumbold 475
Lord Grey 476
Monmouth 477
Ferguson 478
Scotch Refugees ; Earl of Argyle 483
Sir Patrick Hume; Sir John Cochrane ; Fletcher of Saltoun. 486
Unreasonable Conduct of the Scotch Refugees 487
Arrangement for an Attempt on England and Scotland 488
John Locke 490
Preparations made by Government for the Defence of Scot-
land 491
Conversation of James with the Dutch Ambassadors ; Ineffec-
tual Attempts to prevent Argyle fi"om sailing 492
Departure of Argyle from Holland; He lands in Scotland... . 495
His Disputes with his Followers 496
Temper of the Scotch Nation 498
Argyle's Forces dispersed • 501
Argyle a Prisoner 502
His Execution , . . 507
Execution of Rumbold 508
Death of Ayloff 510
Devastation of Argyleshire 511
Lieffectual Attempts to prevent Monmouth from leaving Hol-
land 512
His Arrival at Lyme . 514
His Declaration - 515
His Popularity in the West of England . . . . , 516
Encounter of the Rebels with the Militia at Bridport ..... 618
Encounter of the Rebels with the Militia at Axminster j News
12 CONTENTS.
VXGB,
of the Rebellion carried to London ; Loyalty of the Parlia-
ment = 520
Reception of Monmouth at Taunton 524
He takes the Title of King > 527
His Reception at Bridgewater 531
Preparations of the Government to oppose him 532
His Design on Bristol 535
He relinquishes that Design 53G
Skirmish at Philip's Norton; Despondence of Monmouth.. . 538
He returns to Bridgewater ; The Royal Army encamps at
Sedgemoor . . . 540
Battle of Sedgemoor 544
Pursuit of the Rebels - 550
Military Executions ; Flight of Monmouth 551
His Capture 558
His Letter to the King; He is carried to London 555
His Interview with the King ....... .... 556
His Execution . 560
His Memory cherished by the Common People . . 563
Cruelties of the Soldiers in the West ; Kirke ,, 566
Jeffreys sets out on the Western Circuit . .... 571
Trial of Alice Lisle . ... 572
The Bloody Assizes 576
Abraham Holmes 579
Christopher Battiscombe ; The Hewlings 580
Punishment of Tutchin 581
Rebels Transported 582
Confiscation and Extortion 583
Rapacity of the Queen and her Ladies. 585
Grey ; Cochrane ; Storey 591
Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson 591
Jeffreys made Lord Chancellor 593
Trial and Execution of Cornish 594
Trials and Executions of Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt 596
Trial and Execution of Bateman 598
*?<irsecution of the Protestant Dissenter^ 699
HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
I PURPOSE to write the history of England from the accession
of King James- the Second down to a time which is within the
memory of men still living. I shall recount the errors which,
in a few months, alienated a loyal gentry and priesthood from
the House of Stuart. I shall trace tlie course of that revolution
which terminated the long struggle between our sovereigns and
their parliaments, and bound up together the rights of the peo-
ple and the title of the reigning dynasty. I shall relate how the
new settlement was, during many troubled years, successfully
defended aijainst foreisjn and domestic enemies ; how, under that
settlement, the authority of law and the security of property
were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of
individual action never before known ; how, from the auspicious
union of order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of whicli the
annals of human affairs had furnislied no example ; how our
country, from a state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to
the place of umpire among European powers ; how her opulence
and her martial glory grew together ; how, by wise and resolute
good faith, was gradually establislied a public credit fruitful of
marvels which to the statesmen of any former age would liave
seemed incredible ; how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a
maritime power, compared with which every other maritime
power, ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance ; how Scot-
land, after ages of enmity, was at length united to England, not
merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and
affection ; how, in America, the British colonies rapidly became
far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and
1*
14 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Pizarro had added to the dominions of Charles the Fifth ; how.
in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less splen-
did and more durable than that of Alexander.
Nor will it be less my duty faithfully to record disasters
mingled with triumphs, and great national crimes and lollies .
far more humiliating than any disaster. It will be seen that
even what we justly account our chief blessings were not with-
out alloy. It will be seen that tho system which effectually se-
cured our liberties against the encroachments of kingly power
gave birth to a new class of abuses from which absolute monar-
chies are exempt. It will be seen that, in consequence partly of
mi wise interference, and partly of unwise neglect, the increase of
wealth and the extension of trade produced, together with
immense good, some evils from which poor and rude societies
are free. It will be seen how, in two important dependencies of the
crown, wrong was followed by just retribution ; how imprudence
and obstinacy broke the ties which bound the North American
colonies to the parent state ; how Ireland, cursed by the domina-
tion of race over race, and of religion over religion, remained
indeed a member of the empire, but a withered and distorted
member, adding no strength to the body politic, and reproachfully
pointed at by all wdio feared or envied the greatness of Eng-
land.
Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of
this chequered narrative will be to excite thankfulness in all reli-
gious minds, and hoi^e in the breasts of all patriots. For the
histoi'y of our country during the last hundred and sixty years
is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual
improvement. Those who compare the age on which their lot
has fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagina-
tion may talk of degeneracy and decay : but no man who is
correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a mo-
rose or desponding view of the present.
I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have
undertaken if I were merely to treat of battles and sieges, of the
rise and full of administrations, of intrigues in the palace, and of
debates in the parliament. It will be my endeavour to relate tho
BEFOKE THIC llESTOKATIOX. 15
history of the people as well as the history of the governmeat^
to trace the progress of useful and ornamental arts, to describe-
the ri^e of religious sects and the changes of literary taste, to
portray the manners of successive generations and not to pass
by with neglect even the revolutions which have taken place in
dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements. T shall cheer-
fully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity
of history, if 1 can succeed in j lacing before the English of tl:c
nineteenth century a true i)ictuie of the life of their ancestors.
The events which I propose to relate form only a single
act of a great and eventful drama extending through ages, and
must be very imperfectly understood unless the plot of the
preceding acts be well known. I shall therefore introduce my
narrative by a slight sketch of the history of our country froia
the earliest times. I shall pass very rapidly over many cei
turies : but I shall dwell at some length on the vicissitudes a
that contest which the administration of King James the Second
brought to a decisive crisis.*
Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated th<',
greatness which she was destined to attain. Her inhabitants
when first they became known to the Tyrian mariners, werii
little superior to the natives of the Sandwich Islands. Sho
was subjugated by the Roman arms ; but she received only a
faint tincture of Roman arts and letters. Of the western pro\ -
inces which obeyed the Caesars, she was the last that war,
conquered, and the first that was flung away. No magnificent
remains of Latin porches and aqueducts are to be found in
Britain. No writer of British birth is reckoned among the
masters of Latin poetry and eloquence. It is not probable that
the islanders were at any time generally familiar with the
tongue of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the
vicinity of the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries,
* In this, and in the next chapter, I have very seldom thought it necessary to
cite anthorities : for. in these cliapters, I have not detailed, evonts minntely, oi
used recondite materials ; and the facts wliich I mention are for the most part
such that a person tolerably well read in English liistory, if not already ap-
prised of them, will at least Icnow where to look for evidence of them. Tn the
Bubsequent chapters I sha'll carefully indicate the sources of to-' <'><"ormation.
16 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
been predominant. It drove out the Celtic ; it was not driven
out by the Teutonic; and it is at this day the basis of the
French, Spanish and Portuguese languages. In our island the
Latin appears never to have superseded the old Gaelic speech,
and could not stand its ground against the German.
The scanty and superficial civilisation which the Britons had
derived from their southern masters was effaced by the calamities
of the fifth century. In the continental kingdoms into which
the Roman empire was then dissolved, the conquerors learned
much from the conquered race. In Britain the conquered race
became as barbarous as the conquerors.
All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the con-
tinental provinces of the Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric,
Clovis, Alboin, were zealous Christians. The followers of Idu
and Cerdic, on the other hand, brought to their settlements in
Britain all the superstitions of the Elbe. While the German
princes who reigned at Paris, Toledo, Aries, and Ravenna
listened with reverence to the instructions of bishops, adored
the relics of martyrs, and took part eagerly in disputes touching
the Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia were
still performing savage rites in the temples of Thor and
Woden.
The continental kingaoms which had risen on the ruins of
the Western Empire kept up some intercourse with those
eastern provinces where the ancient civilisation, though slowly
fading away under the influence of misgovernment, might still
astonish and instruct barbarians, where the court still exhibited
the splendour of Diocletian and Constantine, where the public
buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of Polycletus
and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants,
themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still read
and interpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes,
and of Plato. From this communion Britain was cut off. Her
slipres were, to the polished race which dwelt by the Bosporus,
objects of a mysterious horror, such as that witli which the
lonians of the age of Homer had regarded the Straits of Scylla
and the city of the Lrestrygonian cannibals. There was ong
BEFOUt: THE RESTORATION. 17
'?rovince of ouv island in which, as Procopius had been told,
the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was such that
no man could inhale it and live. To this desolate region tlie
spirits of the departed were ferried over from the land of the
Fronks at midnight. A strange race of fishermen performed
the ghastly office. The speech of the dead was distinctl}^ heard
bj tiie boatmen : their weight made the keel sink deep in the
water ; but their forms were invisiljle to mortal eye. Such
were the marvels which an able historian, the contemporary of
Belisarius, of Simplicius, and of Tribouian, gravely related in
the rich and polite Constantinople, touching the country in
which the founder of Constantinople had assumed the imperial
purple. Concerning all the other provinces of the Western
Empire we have continuous information. It is only in Britain
that an age of fable completely separates two ages of truth.
Odoacer and Totila, Euric and Thrasimund, Clovis, Fredegunda,
and Brunechild, are historical men and women. But Hengist
and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred are
mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned, and
whose adventures must be classed with those of Hercules and
Romulus.
At length the darkness begins to break ; and the country
which had been lost to view as Britain reappears as England.
The conversion of the Saxon colonists to Christianity was the
first of a long series of salutary revolutions. It is true that
the Church had been deeply corrupted both by that superstition
and by that philosophy against which she had long contended,
and over which she had at last triumphed. She had given a
too easy admission to doctrines borrowed from the ancient
schools, and to rites borrowed from the ancient temples. Ro-
man policy and Gothic ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and Syrian
asceticism, had contributed to deprave her. Yet she retained
enough of the sublime theology and benevolent morality of her
earlier days to elevate many intellects, and to purifv many
hearts. Some things also which at a later period were justly
regarded as among her chief blemishes were, in the seventh
century, and long afterwards, p'-noiig her chief merits That
^1i
18 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the sacerdotal order should encroach ou the functions ot tr.e
civil magistrate would, in our time, be a great evil. But tnat
which in an age of good government is an evil may, in an age
of grossly bad government, be a blessing. It is better that mrm-
kind should be governed by wise laws well administered, and
by an enlightened })ublic opinion, than by priestcraft : but it is
better that men should be governed by priestcraft than by brute
violence, by such a prelate as Dunstan than by such a warrior
as Penda. A society sunk in ignorance, and ruled by mere
physical force, has great reason to rejoice when a class, of which
the influence is intellectual and moral, rises to ascendency.
Such a class will doubtless abuse its power : but mental power,
even when abused, is still a nobler and better power than that
which consists merely in coi'poreal strength. We read in our
Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who, when at the height of great-
ness, were smitten with remorse, who abhorred the pleasures
and dignities which they liad j^urchased by guilt, who abdicated
their crowns, and who sought to atone for their offences 1,)^
cruel penances and incessant prayers. These stories have drawn
forth bitter expressions of contempt from some writers who,
while they boasted of liberality, were in truth as narrow-mind-
ed as any monk of the dark ages, and whose habit was to apply
to all events in the history of the world the standard received in
the Parisian society of the eighteenth century. Yet surely a
svstem which, however deformed by sui)erstition, introduced
strong moral restraints into communities previously governed
only by vigour of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a system which
taught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was, like his mean-
est bondman, a responsible being, might have seemed to deserve
imore respectful mention from philosophers and philanthropists.
The same observations will apply to tlie contempt with
which, in the last century, it was fashionable to speak of the
pilgrimages, the sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic
institutions of the middle ages. In times when men were
scarcely ever induced to travel by liberal curiosity, or by the
pursuit of gain, it was better that the rude inhabitant of the
North should visit Italy and the East as a pilgrim, than that he
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 19
should never see anything but those squalid cabins and un-
cleared woods amidst which he was born. In times when life
and when female honour were exposed to daily risk from ty-
rants and marauders, it was better that the precinct of a shrine
should be reo-arded with an irrational awe, than that there
should be no refuge inaccessible to cruelty and licentiousness.
In times when statesmen were incapable of forming extensive
political combinations, it was better tliat the Christian nations
should be roused and united for the recovery of the Holy
Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be overwhelmed
by the Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a
later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and
luxury of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age
of ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and
gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated,
in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an
asylum, in which one brother could employ himself in tran-
scribincr the Tii^neid of Yirijil, and another in meditating the
Analytics of Aristotle, in which he who had a genius for art
might illuminate a martyi'ology or carve a crucifix, and in
which he who had a turn for natural philosophy might make
experiments on the properties of plants and minerals. Had
not such retreats been scattered here and there, among the
huts of a miserable peasanti-y, and the castles of a ferocious
aristocracy, European society would have consisted merely of
beasts of burden and beasts of in*ey. The Church has many
times been compared by divines to the ark of which we read
in the Book of Genesis : but never was the resemblance more
perfect than during that evil time when she alone rode, amidst
darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the great
works of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed, bearing
within her that feeble germ from which a second and more
glorious civilisation was to spring.
Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was,
in the dark ages, productive of far more good than evil. Its
effect was to unite the nations of Western Europe in one great
commonwealth. What the Olympian chariot course and the
20 IIISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
Pythian oracle were to all the Greek cities, from Trebizond to
Marseilles, Rome and her Bishop were to all Christians of the
Latin communion, from Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew
up sentiments of enlarged benevolence. Races separated from
each other by seas and mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie
and a common code of public law. Even in war, the cruelty of
the conqueror was not seldom mitigated by the recollection that
he and his vanquished enemies were all members of one great
federation.
Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted.
A regular communication was opened between our shores and
that part of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and
policy were yet discernible. Many noble monuments which
have since been destroyed or defaced still retained their pris-
tine magnificence ; and travellers, to whom Livy and Sallust
were unintelligible, might gain from the Roman aqueducts and
temples some faint notion of Roman history. The dome of
Agrippa, still glittering with bronze, the mausoleum of Adrian,
not yet deprived of its columns and statues, the Flavian amphi-
theatre, not yet degraded into a quarry, told to the rude English
pilgrims some part of the story of that great civilised world
which had j^assed away. The islanders returned, with awe
deeply impressed on their half opened minds, and told the won-
dering inhabitants of the hovels of London and York that, near
the grave of Saint Peter, a mighty race, now extinct, had piled
up buildings which would never be dissolved till the judgment
day. Learning followed in the train of Christianity. The
poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was assiduously
studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries. The names
of Bede and Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout Europe.
Such was the state of our country when, in the nnith century,
began the last great migration of the northern barbarians.
During many years Denmark and Scandinavia continued to
pour forth immmerable pirates, distinguished by strength, by
valour, by merciless ferocity, and by hatred of the Christian
name. No country suffered so much from these invaders as
England. Her coast lay near to the ports whence they sailed
BEFORK THK RESTORATION. 21
nor was any shire so far distant from tlie sea as to be secure
from atta:k. Tlie same atrocities which had attended the victory
of tlie Saxon over 'the Celt were now, after the lapse of ages,
suffered by the Saxon at the hand of the Dane. Civilization,
just as it began to rise, was met by this blow, and sank down
once more. Large colonies of adventurei-s from the Baltic
established themselves on the eastern shores of our island, sjoread
gradually westward, and, supj^orted by constant reinforcements
from I eyond tlie sea, aspired to the dominion of the whole realm.
The straggle between Ihe two fierce Teutonic breeds lasted
through six generations. Each was alternately paramount.
Cruel massacres followed by cruel retribution, ]>rovinces wasted,
convents plundered, and cities rased to the ground, make up the
greater part of the history of those evil days. At length the
North ceased to send forth a constant stream of fresh depreda-
tors ; and fi'om that time the mutual aversion of the races be-
gan to subside. Intermarriage became frequent. The Danes
learned the religion of the Saxons ; and thus one cause of deadly
animosity was removed. The Danish and Saxon tongues, both
dialects of one widespread language, were blended together.
But the distinction between the two nations was by no means
effaced, when an event took place which prostrated both, in
common slaveiy and degradation, at the feet of a third peoi^le.
The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom.
Their valour and ferocity bad made them conspicuous among
the rovers wliom Scnndinavia had sent foj'th to ravage Western
Europe. Their sails were long tbe terror of both coasts of the
Channel. Their arms were repeatedly cai-ried far into the heart
of the Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under the walls
of Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble heirs of
Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered
by a noble river, and contiguous to the sea which was their
favourite element. In that province they founded a mighty state,
which gradually extended its influence over the neighbouring
principalities of Britanny and lyiaine. Without laying aside
that duuntless valour which had been the terror of every land
from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans rapidly acquired
22 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
all, and more than all, the knowledge and refinement which they
found in the country where they settled. Their courage se-
cured their territory against foreign invasion. They established
internal order, such as had long been unknown in the Frank
empire. They embraced Christianity ; and with Christianity
they learned a great part of what the clergy had to teach.
The}' abandoned their native speech, and adopted the French
tongue, in which the Latin was the predominant element. They
speedily raised their new language to a dignity and importance
which it had never before possessed. They found it a barbarous
jargon ; they fixed it in writing ; and they employed it in legis-
lation, in poetry, and in romance. They renounced that brutal
intemperance to which all the other branches of the great Ger-
man family were too much inclined. Tlie polite luxury of the
Norman presented a striking contrast to the coarse voracity and
drunkenness of his Saxon and Danish neighbours. He loved to
display his magnificence, not in huge piles of food and hogsheads
of strong drink, but in large and stately edifices, rich armour,
gallant horses, choice falcons, well ordered tournaments, ban-
quets delicate rather than abundant, and wines remarkable rather
for their exquisite flavour than for their intoxicating power.
That chivalrous spirit, which has exercised so powerful an in-
fluence on the jjolitics, morals, and manners of all the Euro-
pean nations, was found in the highest exaltation among the
Norman nobles. Those nobles were distinguished by their
graceful bearing and insinuating address. They were distin-
guished also by their skill in negotiation, and by a natural elo-
quence which they assiduously cultivated. It was the boast of
one of their historians that the Norman gentlemen were orators
from the cradle. But their chief fame was derived from their
military exploits. Every country, from the Atlantic Ocean to
the Dead Sea, witnessed the prodigies of their discii^line and
valour. One Norman knight, at the head of a handful of war-
riors, scattered the Celts of Connaught. Another founded the
monarchy of the Two Sicilies, and saw the emperors both of
the East and of the West fly before his arms. A thtrd, the
l^lygses of the first crusade, was invested by his fellow soldiers
BEFOUt: THE RESTORATION. 23
with the sovereignty of Antioch; and a fourth, the Tancred
whose name lives in the great poem of Tasso, was celebrated
tlirougli Christendom as the bravest and most generous of the
deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre.
The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to pro-
duce an effect on the public mind of England. Before the
Conquest, English princes received their education in Norman-
dy. English sees and English estates were bestowed on Nor-
mans. The French of Normandy was familiarly spoken in the
palace of Westminster. The court of Rouen seems to have been
to the court of Edward the Confessor what the court of Ver-
sailles loasr afterwards was to the court oi Charles the Second.
The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it,
not only placed a Duke of Normandy on the English throne,
but gave up the whole population of England to the tyranny of
the Norman race. The subjugation of a nation by a nation
has seldom, even in Asia, been more complete. The country
was portioned out among ihe captains of the invaders. Strong
military institutions, closely connected with the institution of
property, enabled the foreign conquerors to oppress the children
of the soil. A cruel penal code, cruelly enforced, guarded the
privileges, and even the sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the
subject race, though beaten down and trodden under foot, still
made its sting felt. Some bold men, the favourite heroes of our
oldest ballads, betook themselves to the woods, and there, in de-
fiance of curfew laws and forest laws, waged a predatory war
against their oppressors. Assassination was an event of daily
occurrence. Many Normans suddenly disappeared leaving no
trace. The corpses of many were found bearing the marks of vio-
lence. Death by torture was denounced against the murderers,
and strict search was made for them, but generally in vain ; for
the whole nation was in a conspiracy to sci-een them. It was
at length thought necessary to lay a heavy fine on every Hun-
dre.l in which a person of French extraction sliould be found
slain ; and this regulation was followed up by another r 'gulation,
providing that every person who was found slain should be sup*
posed to be a Frenchman, unless he was proved to be a Saxon.
24 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
During the century and a, half which followed the Cv>Qques^,
there is, to speak strictly, no English historj'. The French
Kings of England rose, indeed, to nn eminence which was the
wonder and dread of all neighbouring nations. They conquered
Ireland. They received the homage of Scotland. By their
valour, by their policy, by their fortunate matrimonial alliances,
they became far more popular on the Continent than their liege
lords the Kings of France. Asia, as well as Europe, was daz-
zled by the power and glory of our tyrants. Arabian chroni-
clers recorded with unwilling admiration the fall of Acre, the
defence of Joppa, and the victorious march to Ascalon ; and
Arabian mothers long awed their infants to silence with the
name of the liouhearted Planta<jenet. At one time it seemed
that the line of Hugh Capet was about to end as the Merovin-
gian and Ciirlovingiau lines had ended, and that a single great
monarchy would spread from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees.
So strong an association is established in most minds between
the greatness of a sovereign and the greatness of the nation
which he rules, that almost every historian of England has ex-
patiated with a sentiment of exultation on the power and splen-
dour of her foreign masters, and has lamented the decay of that
power and splendour as a calamity to our country. This is, in
truth, as absurd as it would be in a Haytian negro of our time
to dwell with national pride on the greatness of Lewis the
Fourteenth, and to speak of Blenheim and Ramilies with patri-
otic regret and shame. The Conqueror and his descendants to th&
fourth generation were not Englishmen : most of them were born
in France : they spent the greater j^art of their lives in France :
their ordinary speech was French : almost every high office in
their gift was filled by a Frenchman : every acquisition which
they made on the Continent estranged them more and more
from the population of our island. One of the ablest among
them indeed attempted to win the hearts of his English subjects
by espousing an English princess. But, by many of his barons,
this marriage was regarded as a marringe between a white plan-
ter and a quadroon girl would novv' be regarded in Virginia. In
history he is known by the honourable surname of Beauclerc;
BEFORE THE HESTORATION. 25
but. in liis own time, his own counti-ymen called him by a Saxon
iiidj-name, in contemptuous allusion to his Saxon connection.
Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, suc-
ceeded in uniting all France under their government, it is prob-
able that England would never have had an independent exist-
ence. Her princes, her lords, her prelates, would have been
men differing iu race and language from the artisans and tho
tillers of the earth. The revenues of lier great proprietors
would have been spent in festivities and diversions on the banks
o£ the Seine. The noble language of Milton and Burke would
have remained a rustic dialect, witliout a literature, a fixed gram-
mar, or a iixed orthograpliy, and would have been contemptuously
abi« idoned to the use of boors. No man of English extraction
wo- Id have risen to eminence, except by becoming in speech and
hal its a Frenchman.
Encrland owes her escai:)e from such calamities to an event
which her historians have generally represented as disastrous.
Her interest was so directly opposed to the interests of her
rulers that she had no hope but iu their errors and misfortunes.
The talents and even the virtues of her first six French Kings
were a curse to her. The follies and vices of the seventh were
her salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities of his
father, of Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had lie
even possessed the martial courage of Stephen or of Richard,
and had the King of France at the same time been as incapable
as all the other successors of Hugh Capet had been, t!ie House
of Plantagenet must have risen to unrivalled ascendency in Eu-
rope. But, just at tliis conjuncture, France, for the first time
since the death of Ciiarlemagne, w is governed by a prince of
great firmness and ability. On the other hand England, which,
since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled genei'ally by wise
statesmen, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of
a trifler and a coward. From that moment her prospects
brightened. John was driven from Normandy. The Norman
nobles were compelled to make their election between the island
and the continent. Shut uj? by the sea with the people whom
they had liit.herto oppressed and despised, they gradually came to
26 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
regard England as tlieir country, and the English as their coun-
trymen. The two races, so long hostile, soon found that they
had common interests and common enemies. Both were alike
aggrieved by the tyranny of a bad king. Both were alike
indignant at the favour shown by the court to the natives of
Poitou and Aquitaine. Tlie greatgrandsons of those who had
fought under William and the greatgrandsons of those who had
fought under Harold began to draw near to each other ia
friendship ; and the first pledge of their reconciliation was the
Great Charter, won by their united exertions, and framed for
their common benefit.
Here commences the history of the English nation. The
history of the preceding events is the history of wrongs inflict-
ed and sustained by various tribes, which indeed all dwelt on
English ground, but which regarded each other with aversion
such as has scarcely ever existed between communities separa-
ted by 2:)hysical barriers. For even the mutual animosity of
countries at war with each other is languid when compared with
the animosity of nations which, morally separated, are yet local-
ly intermingled. In no country has the enmity of race been
carried farther than in England. In no country has that enmity
lieen more completely effaced. The stages of the process by
vvliich the hostile elements were melted down into one homoge-
neous mass are not accurately known to us. But it is certain
that, v,'hen John became King, the distinction between Saxons
and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the end of
the reign of his grandson it had almost disappeared. In the
time of Richard the First, the ordinary imprecation of a Nor-
man gentleman was " May I become an Englishman ! " His
ordinary form of indignant denial was " Do 3'ou take me for an
Englishman ? " The descendant of such a gentleman a hundred
years later was proud of the English name.
The sources of the noblest rivers wliich spread fertility over
continents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be sought
in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in
maps, and rarely explored by travellers. To such a tract the
history of our country during the thirteenth century may not
BKFORE Till-: RESTORATION. 27
anaptly be compared. Sterile and obscure as is that portion of
our anuals, itis there that we must seek for the origin of our
freedom, our prosperity, and our glory. Then it was that the
great English peojile was formed, that the national character be-
gan to exhibit those peculiarities which it has ever since retain-
ed, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders, islanders
not merely in geographical position, but in their politics,
their feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared with dis-
tinctness that constitution which has ever since, through all
changes, preserved its identity ; that constitution of which all
the other free constitutions in the world are copies, and which,
in spite of some defects, deserves to be regarded as the best un-
der which any great society has ever yet existed during many
ages. Then it was that the House of Commons, the archetype
of all the representative assemblies which now meet, either in
the old or in the new world, held its first sittings. Then it
was that the common law rose to the dignity of a science, and
rapidly became a not unworthy rival of the imperial jurisprudence.
Then it was that the couracre of those sailors who manned the
rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England
terrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient collejjes
which still exist at both the great national seats of learning were
founded. Then was formed that language, less musical indeed
than the languages of the south, but in force, in richness, in ap-
titude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher,
and the orator, inferior to the tongue of Greece alone. Then
too appeared the first faint dawn of that noble literature, the most
splendid and the most durable of the many glories of England.
Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the
races was all but complete ; and it was soon made manifest, by
signs not to be mistaken, that a people inferior to none ex-
isting in the world had been formed by the mixture of three
branches of the great Teutonic family with each other, and with
the aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed, scarcely any thing
in common between the England to which John had been
chased by Philip Augustus, and the England from which the
armies of Edward the Third went forth to conquer France.
28 HISTORY OF ENGLA.ND.
A period of more than a hundred years followed, during
which the chief object of the English was to establish, by force
of arms, a great empire on the Continent. The claim of Edward
to the inheritance occupied by the House of Valois was a claim
in which it might seem that his suojects were little interested.
Hut the passion for conquest spread fast from the prince to the
people. The war differed widely from the wars which the Plan-
tageiiets of the tw^elfth century had waged against the descend-
ants of Hugh Capet. For the success of Henry the Second, or
of 'Richard the First, would have made England a province of
France. The effect of the successes of Edward the Third and
Henry the Fifth was to make France, for a time, a province of
P2ngland. The disdain with which, in the twelfth century, the
conrpierors from the Continent had regarded the islanders, was
now retorted by the islanders on the people of the Continent.
Every yeoman from Kent to Northumberland valued himself as
one of a race born for victory and dominion, and looked down
with scorn on the nation before which his ancestors had trem-
bled. Even those knights of Gascony and Guiemie who had
fought gallantly under tlie Black Prince were regarded by the
Englisli as men of an ii;ferior breed, and were contemptuously ex-
cluded from honourable and lucrative commands. In no long
time our ancestors altogether lost sight of the original ground of
quarrel. They began to consider the crown of France as a mere
appoKlage to the crown of p:ngland ; and, when in violation of
the ordinaiy law of succession, they transfei-red the crown of
England to the House of Lancaster, they seem to have thought
that the right of Richard the Second t.o the crown of France
passed, as of course, to that house. The zeal and vigour which
they displayed present a remarkable contrast to the torpor of the
French, who were far more deeply interested in the event of
the struggle. The most splendid victories recorded in the his-
tory of the middle ages were gained at this time, against great
odds, by the English armies. Victories indeed they were of
whicli a nation may jn^th be proud ; for they are to be attribu-
ted to the rnon'l supei-iority of the, \icto)-s. a superiority which
was most strikintj in th'^ lowr^st ra-iks. 'i"li;' knicfhtsof Fnirlan(5
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 29
found worthy rivals in the knights of France. Chandos eiv
countered an equal foe in Du Guesclin. But France had no
infantry that dared to face the English bows and bills. A
French King was brought prisoner to London. An English
Kinof was crowned at Paris. The banner of St. Georofo was
I'arried far beyond the Pyrenees and the Alps. On the south
■)f the Ebro the English won a great battle, which for a time
ilecided the fate of Leon and Castile ; and the English Com-
panies obtained a terrible preeminence among the bands of
warriors who let out tlieir weapons for hire to tlie princes and
commonwealths of Italy.
Nor were the arts of peace neglected by our fathers dui-ing
that stirring period. While France was wasted by war, till
she at length found in her own desolation a miserable defence
against invaders, the English gathered in their harvests, adorned
their cities, jdeaded, traded, aud studied in securitj'. Many
of our noblest architectural monuments belonjx to that aae.
Then rose the fair chapels of New College and of Saint George,
the nave of Winchester and the choir of York, the spire of
Salisbury and the majestic tovv'ers of Lincoln. A copious and
forcible language, formed by an infusion of French into Ger-
man, was now the common property of the aristocracy and of
the people. Nor was it long before genius began to apply that
admirable machine to worthy purposes. While English war-
riors, leaving behind them the devastated provinces of France,
entered Valladolld in triumph, and spread terror to the gates
of Florence, English poets de]^icted in vivid tints all the wide
variety of human manners and fortunes, and English thinkers
aspired to know, or dared to doubt, where bigots had been con-
tent to wonder and to believe. The saine age which produced
the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos nnd Ilawkwood, pro-
duced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe.
Li so splendid and imperial a manner did the English
people, properly so called, first take place among the nations
of the world. Yet while we contemplate with ple^isure the
high and commanding qualities which our forefathers displayed,
we cannot but admit that the end which tlie_y pursued was an
30 HISTORY OF ENGLAND,
end condemned both by humanity and by enlightened iDoliey,
and that the reverses which compelled them, after a long and
bloody struggle, to relinquish the hope of establishing a great
continental empire, were really blessings in the guise of disas-
ters. The spirit of the French was at last aroused : they be-
gan to oppose a vigorous national resistance to the foreign
conquerors ; and from that time the skill of the English cap-
tains and the courage of the English soldiers were, happily for
mankind, exerted in vain. After many desperate struggles,
and with many bitter regrets, our ancestors gave up the contest.
Since that age no British government has ever seriously and
steadily pursued the design of making great conquests on the
Continent. The people, indeed, continued to cherish with pride
the recollection of Cressy, of Poitiers, and of Agincourt. Even
after the lapse of many years it was easy to fire their blood and
to draw' forth their subsidies by promising them an expedition
for the conquest of France. But happily the energies of our
country have been directed to better objects ; and she now
occupies in the history of mankind a j^lace far more glorious
than if she had, as at one time seemed not improbable, acquired
by the sword an ascendency similar to that which formerly be-
longed to the Roman republic.
Cooped up once more within the limits of the island, the
warlike people employed in civil strife those arms which had
been the terror of Europe. The means of profuse expenditure
had long been drawn by the English barons from the oppressed
provinces of France. That source of supply was gone : but
the ostentatious and luxurious habits which prosperity had
engendered still remained ; and the great lords, unable to grati-
fy their tastes by plundering the French, were eagCB-.to plunder
each other. The realm to which they were now confined would
not, in the phrase of Comines, the most judicious observer of
that time, suffice for them all. Two aristocratical factions,
headed by two branches of the royal family, engaged in a long
and fierce struggle for supremacy. As the animosity of those
factions did not really arise from the dispute about the succes ■
sion, it lasted long after all ground of dispute about the succes-
BEKORE THE RESTORATION. 31
sion was removed. The party of the Red Rose survivetl the
last prince who daimed the crown in right of Henry the Fourth.
The party of the Wliite Rose survived the marriage of Ricli-
mond and Elizabeth. Left without chiefs who had any decent
show of riirht, the adherents of Lancaster rallied round a line
of bastards, and the adherents of York set up a succession of
impostors. When, at length, many aspiring nobles had perished
on the field of battle or by the hands of the executionei-, when
many illustrious houses had disappeared forever from history,
when those preat families which remained had been exhausted
and sobered by calamities, it was universally acknowledged that
the claims of all the contending Plantagenets were united in
the house of Tudor.
Meanwhile a change was proceeding infinitely more mo-
mentous than the acquisition or loss of any province, than the
rise or fall of any dynasty. Slavery and the evils by which
slavery is everywhere accompanied v/ere fast disappearing.
It is remarkable that the two greatest and most salutary
social revolutions which have taken place in England, that
revolution which, in the thirteenth century, put an end to the
tyranny of nation over nation, and that revolution which, a few
generations later, put an end to the property of man in man,
were silently and imperceptibly effected. They struck contem-
porary observers with no surprise, and have received from his-
torians a very scanty measure of attention. They were brought
about neither by legislative regulations nor by physical force.
Moral causes noiselessly effaced first the distinction between
Norman and Saxon, and then the distinction between master
and slave. None can venture to fix the precise moment at
which either distinction ceased. Some faint traces of the old
Norman feeling might perhaps have been found late in tlie
fourteenth century. Some faint traces of the institution of vil-
lenage were detected by the curious so late as the days of the
Stuarts ; nor has that institution ever, to this hour, been abol-
ished by statute.
It would be most unjust not to acknowledge that the chief
agent iu these two great deliverances was religion ; and it may
32 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
perhaps be doubted whether a purer religiou might not have
been t'ouud a less elHcient agent. The benevolent spirit of the
Christian morality is undoubtedly adverse to distinctions of
caste. But to the Church of Rome such distinctions are pecu-
liarly odious ; for they are incompatible with other distinctions
which are essential to her system. She ascribes to every prit sL
a mysterious dignity which entitles him to the reverence ci:
every layman ; and she does not consider any man as disqualified,
by reason of his nation or of his family, for the priesthood.
Her doctrines respecting the sacerdotal character, however
erroneous they may be, have repeatedly mitigated some of the
worst evils which can afuict society. That superstition cannot
be regarded as unmixedly noxious which, in regions cursed by
the tyranny of race over race, creates an aristocracy altogether
independent of race, inverts the relation between the oppressor
and the oppressed, and compels the hereditary master to kneel
before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary bondman. To
this daj^, in some countries where negro slavery exists, Popery
appears in advantageous contrast to other forms of Christianity.
It is notorious that the antipathy between the European and
Af ric;in races is l>y no means so strong • at Rio Janerio as at
Wash.ington. In our own country this peculiarity of the Roman
Catholic system produced, during the middle ages, many salutary
effects. It is true that, shortly after the battle of Hastings,
Saxon prelates and abbots were violently deposed, and that
ecclesiastical adventurers from the Continent were intruded by
hundreds into lucrative benefices. Yet even then pious divines
of Norman l)jood raised their voices against such a violation of
the constitution of the Church, refused to accept mitres from
the hands of William, and charged him, on the peril of his soul,
not to forget that the vanquished islanders were his fellow
Christians. The first protector whom the Ensflish found amouir
the dominant caste was Archbishop Anselm. At a time when
the English name was a reproach, and when all the civil and
military dignities of the kingdom were supposed to belong
exclusively to the countrymen of ths Conqueror, the despised
race learned, with transports of de^'^ht, that one of themselves,
BEFORE THE RESTORATION, 33
Nicholas Breakspear, had beeu elevated to the papal throne,
and had held out his foot to be kissed 'by ambassadors sprung
from the noblest houses of Normandy. It was a nationtil as
well as a religious feeling that drew great multitudes to the
shrine of Becket, whom they regarded as the enemy of their
enemies. Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be
doubted : but there is no doubt that he perished by Norman
hands, and that the Saxons cherished his memory with peculiar
tenderness and veneration, and, in their popular poetry, repre-
sented him as one of their own race. A successor of Becket
was foremost among the refractory magnates who obtained that
charter which secured the privileges both of the Norman barons
and of the Saxon yeomanry. How great a part the Roman
Catholic ecclesiastics subsequently had in the abolition of villen-
age we learn from the unexceptionable testimony of Sir Thomas
Smith, one of the ablest Protestant counsellors of Elizabeth.
When the dying slaveholder asked for the last sacraments, his
spiritual attendants regularly adjured him, as he loved his soul,
to emancipate his brethren for whom Christ had died. So suc-
cessfully had the Church used her formidable machinery that,
before the Reformation came, she had enfranchised almost all
the bondmen in the kingdom except her own, who, to do her
justice, seem to have been very tenderly treated.
There can be no doubt that, when these two great revolu-
tions had been effected, our forefathers were by far the best
governed people in Europe. During three hundred years the
social system had been in a constant course of improvement.
Under the first Plautagenets there had been barons able to bid
defiance to the sovereign, and peasants degraded to the level of
the swine and oxen which they tended. The exorbitant power
of the baron had been gradually reduced. The condition of the
peasant had been gradually elevated. Between the aristocracy
and the working people had sprung up a middle class, agricul-
tural and commercial. There was still, it may be, more in-
equality than is favourable«to the happiness and virtue of our
species : but no man was altogether above the restraints of law ;
and no man was altogether below its protection.
34 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
That the political institutions of England were, at this early
period, regarded by the English with pride and affection, and
by the most enlightened men of neighbouring nations with
admiration and envy, is proved by the clearest evidence. But
touching the nature of these institutions there has been much
dishonest and acrimonious controversey.
The historical literature of England has indeed suffered
grievously from a circumstance M^hich has not a little contributed
to her prosperity. The change, great as it is, which her polity
has undergone during the last six centuries, has been the effect
of gradual development, not of demolition and reconstruction.
The present constitution of our country is, to the constitution
under vhich she flourished five hundred years ago, what the
tree is to the sapling, what the man is to the boy. The altera-
tion has been great. Yet there never was a moment at which
the chief part of what exifeted was not old. A polity thus
formed must abound in anomalies. But for the evils arising
from mere anomalies we have ample compensation. Other
societies possess written constitutions more symmetrical. But
no other society has yet succeeded in uniting revolution with
prescription, progress with stability, the energy of youth with
the majesty of immemorial antiquity.
This great blessing, however has its drawbacks : and ons
of those drawbacks is that every source of information as to
our early history has been poisoned by party spirit. A"S there
is no country where statesmen have been so much under the
influence of the past, so there is no country where historians
have been so much under the influence of the present. Between
these two tilings, indeed, there is a natural connection. Whera
history is regarded merely as a picture of life and manners, or
as a collection of experiments from which general maxims of
civil wisdom may be drawn, a writer lies under no very pressing
temptation to misrepresent transactions of ancient date. But
where history is regarded as a repository of titledeeds, on which
the rights of governments and nations depend, the motive to
falsification becomes almost irresistalftle. A Frenchman is not
now impelled by any strong interest either to exaggerate or to
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 35
underrate the powers of the Kings of the house of Valois. The
privileges of the States General, of the States of Brittany, of
the States of Burgundy, are to him matters of as little practical
importance as the constitution of the Jewish Sanhedrim or of
the Amphictyonic Council. The gulph of a great revolution
completely separates the new from the old system. No such
chasm divides the existence of the English nation into two
distinct parts. Our laws and customs have never been lost in
general and irreparable ruin. Witli us the precedents of the
middle ages are still valid precedents, and are still cited, on the
gravest occasions, by the most eminent statesmen. For example,
when King George the Third was attacked by the malady
which made him incapable of performing his regal functions,
and when the most distinguished lawyers and politicians differed
widely as to the course which ought, in such circumstances, to
be pursued, the Houses of Parliament would not proceed to
discuss any plan of regency till all the precedents which were
to be found in our annals, from the earliest times, had been
collected and arranged. Committees were appointed to examine
the ancient records of the realm. The first case reported was
that of the year 1217 : much importance was attached to the
cases of 1326, .of 1377, and of 1422 : but the case which was
justly considered as most in point was that of 1455. Thus in
our country the dearest interests of parties have frequently been
staked on the results of the researches of antiquaries. The in-
evitable consequence was that om antiquaries conducted their
researches in the spirit of partisans.
It is therefore not surprising that those who have written,
concerning the limits of perogative and liberty in'the old polity
of England should generally have shown the temper, not of
judges, but of angry and uiicandid advocates. For they were
discussing, not a speculative matter, but a matter which had a
direct and practical connection with the most momentous and
excitin<? disputes of their own day. From the commencement
of the long contest between the Parliament and the Stuarts
down to the time when the pretensions of the Stuarts ceased
to be formidable, few questions were practically more important
36 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
than the question whether the administration of that family had
or had not been in accordance with the ancient constitution of
the kingdom. This question could be decided only b}^ reference
to the records of preceding reigns. Bracton and Fleta, the
Mirror of Justice and the Rolls of Parliament, were ran-
sacked to find pretexts for the excesses of the Star Chamber
on one side, and of the High Court of Justice on the other.
During a long course of years every Whig historian was anx-
ious to prove that the old English government was all but
republican, every Tory historian to prove that it was all but
despotic.
With such feelings, both parties looked into the chi'onicles
of the middle ages. Both readily found what they sought ;
and both obstinately refused to see anything but what they
sought. The champions of the Stuarts could easily point out
instances of oppression exercised on the subject. 'The defend-
ers of the Roundheads could as easily produce instances of
determined and successful resistance offered to the Crown.
The Tories quoted, from ancient writings, expressions almost as
servile as were Iieard from the pulpit of Mainwaring. The
Whigs discovered expressions as bold and severe as any that
resounded from the judgment seat of Bradshaw. One set
of writers adduced numerous instances in which Kings had
extorted money without the authority of Parliament. Another
set cited cases in which the Parliament had assumed to it-
self the pow«r of inflicting punishment on Kings. Those
who saw only one half of the evidence would have concluded
that the Plantajrenets were as absolute as the Sultans of
Turkey : those who saw only the other half would have con-
cluded that the Plantagenets had as little real power as
the DotJ-es of Venice. ; and both conclusions would have been
equally remote from the truth.
The old English government was one of a class of limited
monarchies which sprang up in Western Europe during the
middle ages, and which, notwithstanding many diversities, bore
to one another a strong family likeness. That there should
have been such a likeness is not strange. The countries Id
BEFOUF, THE KESTORATION. 37
which those monarchies arose had been provinces of the same
great civilised empire, and had been overrun and conquered,
about the same time, by tribes of the same rude and warlike
nation. They were members of the same great coalition against
Islam. They were in communion with the same superb and
ambitious Church. Their polity naturally took the same form.
They had institutions derived partly from imperial Rome,
partly from papal Rome, jDartly from the old Germany. All
had Kings ; and in all the kingly office became by degrees
strictly hereditary. All had nobles bearing titles which "had
orginally indicated military rank. The dignity of knighthood,
the rules of heraldry, were common to all. All had richly
endowed ecclesiastical establishments, municipal corporations
enjoying large franchises, and senates whose consent was ne-
cessary to the validity of some public acts.
Of these kindred constitutions the English was, from an
early period, justly reputed the best. The prerogatives of the
sovereign were undoubtedly extensive. The spirit of religion
and the spirit of chiyalry concurred to exalt his dignity. The
sacred oil had been poured ou his head. It was no disparage-
ment to the bravest and noblest knights to kneel at his feet.
His person was inviolable. He alone was entitled to convoke
the Estates of the realm : he could at his pleasure dismiss
them ; and his assent was necessary to all their legislative
acts. He was the chief of the executive administration, the
sole organ of communication with foreign powers, the captain
of the military and naval forces of the state, the fountain of
justice, of mercy, and of honour. He had large powers for the
regulation of trade. It was by him that money was coined,
that weights and measures were fixed, that marts and havens
were appointed. His ecclesiastical patronage was immense.
His hereditary revenues, economically administered, sufficed to
meet the ordinary charges of government. His own domains
were of vast extent. He was also feudal lord paramount of
the whole soil of his kingdom, and, in that capacity, possessed
many lucrative and many formidable rights, which enabled him
to annoy and depress those who thwarted him, and to enrich
38 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. —
and aggrandise, without any cost to himself, those who enjoyed
his favour.
But his power, though ample, was limited by three great
constitutional principles, so ancient that none can say when
they began to exist, so potent that their natural development,
continued through many generations, has produced the order of
things inider which we now live.
First, the King could not legislate without the consent of
his Parliament. Secondly, he could impose no tax without the
consent of his Parliament. Thirdly, he was bound .to conduct
the executive administration according to the laws of the land,
and, if he broke those laws, his advisers and his agents were
responsible.
No candid Tory will deny that these principles had, five
hundred years ago, acquired the authority of fundamental rules.
On the other hand, no candid Whig will affirm that tliey were,
till a later period, cleared from all ambiguity, or follo\\«ed out
to all their consequences. A constitution of the middle ages
was not, like a constitution of the eighteenth or nineteenth
century, created entire by a single act, and fully set forth in a
single document. It is only in a refined and speculative age
that a polity is constructed on system. In rude societies the
progress of government resembles the progress of language and
of versification. Rude societies have language, and often copious
and energetic language : but they have no scientific grammar,
no definitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions,
moods, tenses, and voices. Rude societies have versification,
and often versification of great power and sweetness : but they
have no metrical canons ; and the minstrel whose numbers,
regulated solely by his ear, are the delight of his audience,
would himself be unable to say of how many dactyls and tro-
chees each of his lines consists. As eloquence exists before
syntax, and song before prosody, so government may exist in a
hiffh decree of excellence long before the limits of legislative,
executive, and judicial power have been traced with precision.
It was thus in our country. The line which bounded the
royal prerogative, though in general sufficiently clear, had not
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 39
everywhere been drawn with accuracy and distinctness. There
was, therefore, near the border^some debatable ground on which
incursions and reprisals continued to take place, till, after ages
of strife, plain and durable landmarks were at length set up.
It may be instructive to note in what way, and to what extent,
our ancient sovereijjns were in the habit of violatinof the three
great principles by which the liberties of the nation were pro-
tected.
No English King has ever laid claim to the general legisla-
tive power. The most violent and imperious Plautagenet never
fancied himself competent to enact, without the consent of his
great council, that a jury should consist of ten persons instead
of twelve, that a widow's dower should be a fourth part instead
of a third, that perjury should be a felony, or that the custom
of gavelkind should be introduced into Yorkshire.* But the
King had the power of pardoning offenders ; and there is one
point at which the power of pardoning and the power of legis-
lating seem to fade into each other, and may easily, at least in
a simple age, be confounded. A penal statute is virtually an-
nulled if the penalties which it imposes are regularly remitted
as often as they are incurred. The sovereign was undoubtedly
competent to remit penalties without limit. He was therefore
competent to annul virtually a penal statute. It might seem
that there could be no serious objection to his doing foi-mally
what he might do virtually. Thus, with the help of subtle and
courtly lawyers, grew up, on the doubtful frontier which sepa-
rates executive from legislative functions, that great anomaly
known as the dispensing power.
That the King could not impose taxes without the consent
of Parliament is admitted to have been, from time immemorial,
a fundamental law of England. It was among the articles
which John was com}>elled by the Barons to sign. Edward the
First ventured to break through the rule : but, able, powerful,
and popular as he was, he encountered an opposition to which
he found it expedient to yield. He covenanted accordingly in
• This is excellently put iy Mr, HaUani in the first chapter of his Constitu-
tional History.
40 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
express terms, for himself and his heirs, that they would never
again levy any aid without the assent and goodwill of the
Estates of the realm. His powerful and victorious grandson
attempted to violate this solemn compact : but the attempt was
strenuously withstood. At length the Plantagenets gave up
the point in despair : but, though they ceased to infringe the
law openly, they occasionally contrived, by evading it, to pro-
cure an extraordinary supply for a temporary purpose. They
were interdicted from taxing ; but they claimed the right of
begging and borrowing. They therefore sometimes begged in
a tone not easily to be distinguished from that of command, and
sometimes borrowed with small thought of repaying. But the
fact that they thought it necessary to disguise their exactions
under the names of benevolences and loans sufficiently proves
that the authority of the great constitutional rule was univer-
sally recognised.
The principle that the King of England was bound to con-
duct the administration according to law, and that, if he did
anything against law, his advisers and agents were answerable,
was established at a very early period, as the severe judgments
pronounced and executed on many royal favourites sufficiently
prove. It is, however, certain that the rights of individuals
were often violated by the Plantagenets, and that the injured
parties were often unable to obtain redress. . According to law
no Englishman could be arrested or detained in confinement
merely by the mandate of the sovereign. In fact, persons
obnoxious to the government were frequently imprisoned with-
out any other authority than a royal order. According to law,
torture, the disgrace of the Roman jurisprudence, could not, in
any circumstances, be inflicted on an English subject. Never-
theless, during the troubles of the fifteenth century, a rack was
introduced into the Tower, and was occasionally used under the
plea of political necessity. But it would be a great error to
infer from such irregularities that the English monarchs were,
either in theory or in practice, absolute. "We live in a highly
civilised society, through which intelligence is so rapidly dif-
fused by means of the press and of the post office that any
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 41
gross act of oppression committed in any part of our island is,
in a few hours, discussed by millions. If the sovereign were
now to immure a subject in defiance of the writ of Habeas
Corpus, or to put a conspirator to the torture, the whole nation
would be instantly electrified by the news. In the middle ages
the state of society was widely different. Rarely and witli
great difficulty did the wrongs of individuals come to the knowl-
edge of the public. A man might be illegally confined during
many months in the castle of Carlisle or Norwich ; and no
whisper of the transaction might reach London. It is highly
probable that the rack had been many years in use before the
great majority of the nation had the least suspicion that it was
ever employed. Nor were our ancestors by any means so much
alive as we are to the importance of maintaining great general
rules. We have been taught by long experience that we can-
not without danger suffer any breach of the constitution to pass
unnoticed. It is therefore now universall}' held that a govern-
ment which unnecessarily exceeds its powers ought to be visited
with severe parliamentary censure, and that a government which,
under the pressure of a great exigency, and withpui'e intentions,
has exceeded its powers, ought without delay to apply to Par-
liament for an apt of indemnity. But such were not the feelings
of the Eiifrlishmen of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
They were little disposed to contend for a principle merely as a
principle, or to cry out against an irregularity which was not
also felt to be a grievance. As long as the general spirit of the
administration was mild and popular, they were willing to allow
some latitude to their sovereign. If, for ends generally ac'
knowledged to be good, lie exerted a vigour beyond the law,
they not only forgave, but applauded him, and while they en-
joyed security and prosperity under his rule, were but too ready
to believe that whoever had incurred his displeasure had de-
served it. But to this indulgence there was a limit ; nor was
that King wise who presumed far on the forbearance of the
English people. They might sometimes allow him to overstep
the constitutional line : but they also claimed the privilege of
overstepping that line themselves, whenever his encroachments
42 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
were so serious as to excite alarm. If, not content with occa-
sionally oppressing individuals, he darpd to oppress great masses,
his subjects promptly appealed to the laws, and, that appeal
failing, appealed as promptly to the God of battles.
Our forefathers might indeed safely tolerate a king in a few
excesses ; for they had in reserve a check which soon brought
the fiercest and proudest king to reason, the check of physical
force. It is difficult for an Englishman of the nineteenth cen-
tury to imagine to himself the facility and rapidity with which,
four hundred years ago, this check was applied. The people
have long unlearned the use of arms. The art of war has been
carried to a perfection unknown to former ages ; and the knowl-
edge of that art is confined to a particular class. A hundred
thousand soldiers, v/ell disciplined and commanded, will keep
down ten millions of ploughmen and artisans. A few regiments
of household troops are sufficient to overawe all the discontented
spirits of a large capital. In the meantime the effect of the
constant progress of wealth has been to make insurrection far
more terrible to thinking men than maladministration. Immense
sums have been expended on works which, if a rebellion broke
out, might perish in a few hours. The mass of movable wealth
collected in the shops and warehouses of London alone exceeds
five hundredfold that which the whole island contained in the
days of the Plantagenets ; and, if the government were subvert-
ed by physical force, all this movable wealth would be exposed
to imminent risk of spoliation and destruction. Still greater
would be the risk to public credit, on which thousands of families
directly depend for subsistence, and with which the credit of the
whole commercial world is inseparably connected. It is no ex-
aggeration to say that a civil war of a week on English ground
would now produce disasters which would be felt from the Hoang-
ho to the Missouri, and of which the traces would be discernible
at the distance of a century. In such a state of society resist-
ance must be regarded as a cure more desperate than almost
any malady which can afflict the state. In the middle ages, on
the contrary, resistance was an ordinary remedy for political
distempers, a remedy which was always at hand, and which,
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 43
though doubtless sharp at the moment, produced* no deep or
lasting ill effects. H a popular chief raised his standard in a
popular cause, an irregular army could be assembled in a day-
Regular army there was none. Every man had a slight tincture^
of soldiership, and scarcely any man more than a slight tincture.
The national wealth consisted chiefly in flocks and herds, in the
harvest of the j^ear, and in the simple buildings inhabited by
the people. All the furniture, the stock of shops, the machin-
ery which could be found in the realm was of less value than
the property which some single parishes now contain. Man-
iifactures were rude ; credit was almost unknown. Society,
therefore, recovered from the shock as soon as the actual conflict
was over. The calamities of civil war were confined to the
slaughter on the field of battle, and to a few subsequent execu-
tions and confiscations. In a week the peasant was driving his
team and the esquire flying his hawks over the field of Towton
or of Bosworth, as if no extraordinary event had interrupted
the regular course of human life.
More than a hundred and sixty years have now elapsed since
the English people have by force subverted a government.
During the hundred and sixty years which preceded the union
sf the Roses, nine Kings reigned in England. Six of these
nine Kings were deposed. Five lost their lives as well as their
irowns. It is evident, therefore, that any comparison between
sur ancient and our modern polity must lead to most erroneous
conclusions, unless large allowance be made for the effect of
that restraint which resistance and the fear of resistance con-
stantly imposed on the Plantagenets. As our ancestors had
against tyranny a most important security which we want, they
misht safely dispense with some securities to which we justly
attach the highest importance. As we cannot, without the risk
of evils from which the imagination recoils, employ physical
force as a check on misgovernment, it is evidently our wisdom
to keep all the constitutional checks on misgovernment in the
highest state of efficiency, to watch with jealousy the first be-
ginnings of encroachment, and never to suffer irregularities,
even when harmless in themselves, to pass unchallengfed, lest
44 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
they acquire the force of precedents. Four hundred years ago
such minute vigilance might well seem unnecessary. A nation
of hardy archers and spearmen might, with small risk to its lib-
erties, connive at sonie illegal acts on the part of a prince whose
general administration was good, and whose throne was not de-
fended by a single company of regular soldiers.
Under this system, rude as it may appear when compared
with those elaborate constitutions of which the last seventy
years have been fruitful, the English long enjoyed a large
measure of freedom and happiness. Though, during the feeble
reign of Henry the Sixth, the state was torn, first by factions,
and at length by civil war ; though Edward the Fourth was a
prince of dissolute and imperious character ; though Richard
the Third has generally been represented as a monster of de-
pravity ; though the exactions of Henry the Seventh caused
great repining; it is certain that our ancestors, wider those
Kings, were far better governed than the Belgians under
Philip, surnamed the Good, or the French under that Lewis
who was styled the Father of his people. Even while the
wars of the Roses were actually raging, our country appears to
have been in a happier condition than the neighbouring realms
during years of profound peace. Comines was one of the most
enlightened statesmen of his time. He had seen all the richest
and most highly civilised parts of the Continent. He had lived
in the opulent towns of Flanders, the Manchesters and Liver-
pools of the fifteenth century. He had visited Florence, recently
adorned by the magnificence of Lorenzo, and Venice, not yet
humbled by the Confederates of Cambray. This eminent mau
deliberately pronounced England to be the best governed country
of which he had any knowledge. Her constitution he emphat=
ically designated as a just and holy thing, which, while it pro-
tected the people, really strengthened the hands of a prince who
respected it. In no other country were men so effectually
secured from wrong. The calamities produced by our intestine
wars seemed to him to be confined to the nobles and the fighting
men, and to leave no traces such as he had been accustomed
to see elsewhere, no ruined dwellings, no depopulated citiest
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 45
It was not ouly by the eliicieucy of the restraints imposed oa
the royal prerogative that England was advantageously distin-
guished from most of the neighbouring countries. A peculiarity
equally important, though less noticed, was the relation in
which the nobility stood here to the commonalty. There was a
strong hereditary aristocracy : but it was of all Itereditary aris-
tocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had none of the
invidious character of a caste. It was constantly receiving
members from the people, and constantly sending down mem-
bers to mingle with the people. Any gentleman might become
a peer. The younger son of a peer was but a gentleman.
Grandsons of peers yielded precedence to newly made knights.
The dignity of knighthood was not beyond the reach of any man
who could by diligence and thrift realise a good estate, or who
could attract notice by his valour in a battle or a siege. It was
regarded as no disparagement for the daughter of a Duke, nay
of a royal Duke, to espouse a distinguished commoner. Thus,
Sir John Howard married the daughter of Thomas Mowbi'ay
Duke of Norfolk. Sir Richard Pole married the Countess of
Salisbury, daughter of Ceorge Duke of Clarence. Good blood
was indeed held in high respect : but between good blood and
::he privileges of peerage there was, most fortunately for our
country, no necessary connection. Pedigrees as long, and
scutcheons as old, were to be found out of the House of Lords
as in it. There were new men who bore the highest titles.
There were untitled men well known to be descended from knights
who had broken the Saxon ranks at Hastings, and scaled the
walls of Jerusalem. There w6re Bohuns, Mowbrays, De Veres,
nay, kinsmen of the House of Plantagenet, with no higher ad-
dition than that of Esquire, aftd with no civil privileges beyond
those enjoyed by every farmer and shopkeeper. There was
therefore here no line like that which in ;ome other countries
divided the patrician from the plebeiauo The yeoman was not
inclined to murmur at dignities to which his own children might
rise. The grandee was not inclined to insult a class into which
his own children must descend.
After the wars of York and Lancaster, the links which con-
46 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
nected the nobility and commonalty became closer and more
numerous than ever. The extent of destruction which had fallen
on the old aristocracy may be inferred from a single circum-
stance. In the year 1454 Henry the Sixth summoned fifty -three
temporal Lords to parliament. The temporal Lords summoned
by Henry the Seven tli to the parliament of 1485 vi^ere only
twenty-nine, and of these several had recently been elevated to
the peerage. During the following century the ranks of the no-
bility were largely recruited from among the gentry. The con-
stitution of the House of Commons tended greatly to promote
the salutary intermixture of classes. The knight of the shire
was the connecting link between the baron and the shopkeeper.
On the same benches on which sate the goldsmiths, draj^ers, and
grocers, who had been returned to parliament by the commercial
towns, sate also members who, in any other country, would have
been called noblemen, hereditary lords of manors, entitled to
hold courts and to bear coat armour, and able to trace back an
honourable descent through many generations. Some of them
were younger sons and brothers of lords. Others could boast
of even royal blood. At length the eldest son of an Earl of
Bedford, called in courtesy by the second title of his father,
offercfl himself as candidate for a seat in the House of Com-
mons, and his example was followed by others. Seated in that
house, the heirs of the .great peers naturally became as zealous
for its privileges as any of the humble burgesses with whom
they were mingled. Thus our democracy was, from an early
period, the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most dem-
ocratic in the world ; a peculiarity which has lasted down to the
present day, and which has produced many important moral and
political effects.
The government of Henry the Seventh, of his son, and of
his grandchildren was, on the whole, more arbitrary than that
of the Plantagenets. Personal character may in some degi-ee
explain the di-fference ; for courage and force of will were com-
mon to all the men and women of the House of Tudor. They
exercised their power during a period of a hundred and twenty
years, always with vigour, often with violence, sometimes with
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 47
cruelty. They, in imitation of the dynasty which had preceded
them, occasionally invaded the rights of the subject, occasionally
exacted taxes under the name of loans and gifts, and occasionally
dispensed with penal statutes : nay, though they never presumed
to enact any permanent law by their own authority, they occa-
sionally took upon themselves, when Parliament was not sitting,
to meet temporary exigencies by temporary edicts. It was,
however, impossible for the Tudors to carry oppression beyond
jt, certain point : for they had no armed force, and they were
surrounded by an armed peopl-e. Their palace was guarded by
a few domestics, whom the array of a single shire, or of a single
ward of London, could with ease have overpowered. These
haughty princes were therefore under a restraint stronger
than any that mere law can impose, under a restraint
which did not, indeed, prevent them from sometimes treat-
ing an individual in an arbitrary and even in a barbarous
manner, but which effectually secured the nation against general
and long confinued oppression. They might safely be tyrants,
within the precinct of the court : but it was necessary for them
to watch with constant anxiety the temper of the country,
Henry the Eighth, for example, encountered no opposition when
he wished to send Buckingham and Surrey, Anne Boleyn and
Lady Salisbury, to the scaffold. But wheu, without the consent
of Parliament, he demanded of his subjects a contribution amount-
ing to one sixth of their goods, he soon found it necessary to
retract. The cry of hundreds of thousands was that they were
English and not French, freemen and not slaves. In Kent the
royal commissioners fled for their lives. In Suffolk four thou-
sand men appeared in arms. The King's lieutenants in that
county vainly exerted themselves to raise an army. Those
who did not join in the insurrection declared that they would
not fight against their brethren in such a quarrel. Henry, proud
and selfwilled as he was, shrank, not without reason, from a
conflict with the roused spirit of the nation. He had before his
eyes the fate of his predecessors who had perished at Berkeley
and Pomfret. lie not only cancelled his illegal commissions ;
he not only granted a general pardon to all the malecontents;
48 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
but he publicly and solemnly auologised for his infraction of thfe
laws.
His conduct, on this occasion, well illustrates the whole policy
of his house. The temper of the princes of that line 'Hjas hot,
ajid their spirits high, but they understood the character of the
nation that they governed, and never once, like some of their
predecessors, and some of their successors, carried obstinacy to
a fatal point. The discretion of the Tudors was such, that their
power, though it was often resisted, was never subverted. The
reign of every one of them was disturbed by formidable discon-
tents: but the govern-ment was always able either to soothe the
mutineers or to conquer and punish them. Sometimes, by timely
concessions, it succeeded in averting civil hostilities ; but in gene-
ral it stood firm, and called for help on the nation. The nation
obeyed the call, rallied round the sovereign, and enabled him to
quell the disaffected minority.
Thus, from the age of Henry the Third to the age of Eliza-
■beth, England grew and flourished under a polity which con-
tained the germ of our present institutions, and which, though not
very exactly defined, or very exactly observed, was yet effec-
tually prevented from degenerating into despotism, by the awe in
which the governors stood of the spirit and strength of the
governed.
But such a polity is suited only to a particular stage in the
progress of society. The same causes which produce a division
of labour in the peaceful arts must at length make war a dis-
tinct science and a distinct trade. A time arrives when the use
of arms begins to occupy the entire attention of a separate class.
It soon appears that peasants and burghers, however brave, are
unable to stand their ground against veteran soldiers, whose
whole life is a preparation for the day of battle, whose nerves
have been braced by long familiarity with danger, and whose
movements have all the precision of clockwork. It is found
that the defence of nations can no longer be safely entrusted to
warriors taken from the plough or the loom for a campaign of
forty days. If any state forms a great regular array, the bor-
dering states must imitate the example, or must submit to a for-
BKFORK THE RESTORATION. 49
eign yoke. But, where a great regular army exists, limited
monarchy, such as it was in the middle ages, cau exist no longer.
The sovereign is at once emancipated from what had been the
chief restraint on his power ; and he inevitably becomes abso-
lute, unless he is subjected to checks such as would be super-
fluous in a society where all are soldiers occasionally, and none
permanently.
With the danger came also the means of escape. In the
monarchies of the middle ages the power of the sword belonged
to the prince ; but the power of the purse belonged to the
nation ; and the progress of civilisation, as it made the sword
of the prince more and more formidable to the nation, made the
purse of the nation more and more necessary to the prince. His
hereditary revenues would no longer suffice, even for the ex-
penses of civil government. It was utterly impossible that,
without a regular and extensive system of taxation, he could
keep in constant efficiency a great body of disciplined troops.
The policy which the parliamentary assemblies of Europe ought
to have adopted was to take their stand firmly on their consti-
tutional right to give or withhold money, and resolutely to
refuse funds for the support of armies, till ample securities had
been provided against despotism.
This wise policy was followed in our country alone. In
the neighbouring kingdoms great military establishments were
formed ; no new safeguards for public liberty were devised ;
and the consequence was, that the old parliamentary institutions
everywhere ceased to exist. In France, where they had always
been feeble, they languished, and at length died of mere weak-
ness. In Spain, where they had been as strong as in any part
of Europe, they struggled fiercely for life, but struggled too
late. The mechanics of Toledo and Valladolid vainly defended
the privileges of the Castilian Cortes against the veteran bat-
talions of Charles the Fifth. As vainly, in the next genera-
tion, did the citizens of Saragossa stand up against Philip the
Second, for the old constitution of Aragon. One after another,
the great national councils of the continental monarchies,
councils once scarcely less proud and powerful tlian those which
4
50 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
sate at Westminster, sank into utter insignificance. If they
met, they met merely as our Convocation now meets, to go
through some venerable forms.
In England events took a different course. This singular
felicity she owed chiefly to her insular situation. Before the
end of the fifteenth century, great military establishments were
indispensable to the dignity, and even to the safety, of the
French and Castilian monarchies. If either of those two powers
had disarmed, it would soon have been compelled to submit to
the dictation of the other. But England, protected by the sea
against invasion, and rarely engaged in warlike operations on
the Continent, was not, as yet, under the necessity of employing
regular troops. The sixteenth century, the seventeenth century,
found her stiU without a standing army. At the commence-
ment of the seventeenth century political science had made con-
siderable progress. The fate of the Spanish Cortes and of the
French States General had given solemn warning to our Par-
liaments ; and our Parliaments, fully aware of the nature and
magnitude of the danger, adopted, in good time, a system of tac-
tics which, after a contest protracted through three generations,
was at length successful.
Almost every writer who has treated of that contest has
been desirous to show that his own party was the party which
was struggling to preserve the old constitution unaltered. The
truth however is that the old constitution could not be preserved
unaltered. A law, beyond the control of human wisdom, had
decreed that there should no loncjer be governments of that
peculiar class which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
had been common throughout Europe. The question, therefore,
was not whether our polity should undergo a change, but what
the nature of the change should be. The introduction of a new
and mighty force had disturbed the old equilibrium, and had
turned one limited monarchy after another into an absolute
monarchy. AVhat had happened elsewhere would assuredly
have happened here, unless the balance had been redressed by
a great transfer of power from the crown to the parliament.
Our princes were about to have at their command means of
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 51
«oti£ioa such as no Plantagenet or Tudor had ever possessed.
They must inevitably have become despots, unless they had
been, at the same time, placed under restraints to which no
Plantagenet or Tudor had ever been subject.
It seems certain, therefore, that, had none but political
causes been at work, the seventeenth century would not have
passed away without a fierce conflict between our Kings and
their Parliaments. But other causes of perhaps greater potency
contributed to jiroduce the same effect. While the government
of the Tudors was in its highest vigour an event took place
which has coloured the destinies of all Christian nations, and in
an especial manner the destinies of England. Twice during
the middle ages the mind of Europe had risen up against the
domination of Rome. The first insurrection broke out in the
south of France, The energy of Innocent the Third, the zeal
of the young orders of Francis and Dominic, and the ferocity
of the Crusaders whom the priesthood let loose on an unwarlike
population, crushed "the Albigensian churches. The second
reformation had its origin in England, and spread to Bohemia.
The Council of Constance, by removing some ecclesiastical dis-
orders which had given scandal to Christendom, and the jmnces
of Europe, by unsparingly using fire and sword against the
heretics, succeeded in arresting and turning back the movement.
Nor is this much to be lamented. The sympathies of a Protes-
tant, it is true, will naturally be on the side of the Albigensian^
and of the Lollards. Yet an enlightened and.temperate Protes'
taut will perhaps be disposed to doubt whether the success^
either of the Albigensians or of the Lollards, would, on the
whole, have promoted the happiness and virtue of mankind.
Corrupt as the Church of Rome was, there is reason to believe
that, if that Church had been overthrown in the twelfth or even
in the fourteenth century, the vacant space would have been
occupied by some system more corrupt still. There was then,
through the greater part oi Europe, very little knowledge ; and
that little was confined to the clergy. Not one man in five
hundred could have spelled his way through a psalm. Book*
were few and costly. The art of printing was unknown.
52 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
Copies of the Bible, iuferior in beauty and clearness to those
which every cottager may now command, sold for prices which
many priests could not aiford to give. It was obviously impos-
sible that the laity should search the Scriptures for themselves.
It is probable therefore, that, as soon as they had put off one
spiritual yoke, they would have put on another, and that the
power lately exercised by the clergy of the Church of Rome
would have passed to a far worse class of teachers. The six-
teenth century was comparatively a time of light. Yet even in
ihe sixteenth century a considerable number of those who
quitted the old religion followed the first confident and i:)lausible
guide who offered himself, and were soon led into errors far
more serious than those which they had renounced. Thus Mat-
thias and Kniperdoling, apostles of lust, robbery, and murder,
were able for a time to rule great cities. In a darker age such
false prophets might have founded empires ; and Christianity
might have been distorted into a cruel and licentious supersti-
tion, more noxious, not only than Popery, but even than Islamism.
About a hundred years after the rising of the Council of
Constance, that great change emphatically called the Reforma-
tion began. The fulness of time was now come. The clergy
were no longer the sole or the chief depositories of knowledge.
The invention of printing had furnished the assailants of the
Church with a mighty weapon which had been wanting to their
predecessors. The study of the ancient writers, the rapid de-
velopment of the powers of the modern languages, the unprece-
dented activity which was displayed in every department of
literature, the political state of Europe, the vices of the Roman
court, the exactions of the Roman chancery, the jealousy with
which the wealth and privileges of the clergy were naturally
regarded by laymen, the jealousy with which the Italian ascend-
ency was naturally regarded by men born on our side of thfe,
Alps, all these things gave to the teachers of the new theology
an advantage which they perfectly understood how to use.
Those who hold that the influence of the Church of Rome
in the dark ages was, on the whole, beneficial to mankind, may
yet with perfect consistency regard the Reformation as an
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 53
inestimable blessing. The leading strings, which preserve and
uphold the infant, would impede the fullgrown man. And so
the very means by which the human mind is, in one stage of
its progress, supported and propelled, may, in another stage, be
mere hindrances. There is a season in the life both of an
individual and of a society, at which subnaission and faith, such
as at a later j^eriod would be justly called servility and credulity,
are useful qualities. The child who teachably and undoubtingly
listens to the instructions of his elders is likely to improve
rapidly. But the man who should receive with childlike docility
every assertion and dogma uttered by another man no wiser
than himself would become contemptible. It is the same with
communities. The childhood of the European nations was
passed under the tutelage of the clergy. The ascendency of
the sacerdotal drder was long the ascendency which naturally
and properly belongs to intellectual superiority. The priests,
with all their faults, were by far the wisest portion of society.
It was, tlierefore, on the whole, good that they should be re-
spected and obeyed. The encroachments of the ecclesiastical
power on the province of the civil power produced much more
happiness than misery, while the ecclesiastical power was iu
the hands of the only class that had studied history, philosophy,
and public law, and while the civil power was in the hands of
savage chiefs, who could not read their own grants and edicts.
But a change took place. Knowledge gradually spread among
laymen. At the commencement of the sixteenth century many
of them were in every intellectual attainment fully equal to the
most enlightened of their spiritual pastors. Thenceforward
that dominion, which, during the dark ages, had been, in spite
of many abuses, a legitimate and salutary guardianship, became
an unjust and noxious tyranny.
From the time when the barbarians overran the Western
Empire to the time of the revival of letters, the influence of the
Church of Rome had been gelierally favourable to science, to
civilisation, and to good government. But, during the last
three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has
been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever ad-
54 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
vance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and
in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has every-
where been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest
and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been
sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual tor-
por, while Protestant* countries, once proverbial for sterility
and barbarism, have been turned by skill and industry into
gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes and statesmen,
philosophers and poets. Whoever, knowing what Italy and
Scotland naturally are, and what, four hundred years ago, they
actually were, shall now compare the country round Rome with
the country round Edinburgh, will be able to form some judg-
ment as to the tendency of Papal domination. The descent of
Spain, once the first among monarchies, to the lowest depths of
degradation, the elevation of Holland, in spite of many natural
disadvantages, to a position such as no commonwealth so small
has ever reached, teach the same lesson. "Whoever passes in
Germany from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality,
in Switzerland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant canton,
in Ireland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant county, finds
that he has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civilisation.
On the other side of the Atlantic the same law prevails. The
Protefetants of the United States have left far behind them the
Roman Catholics of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The Roman
Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole con-
tinent round them is in a ferment with Protestant activity and
enterprise. The French have doubtless shown an energy and
an intelligence which, even when misdirected, have justly en-
titled them to be called a great people. But this apparent
exception, when examined, will be found to confirm the rule ;
for in no country that is called Roman Catholic, has the Roman
Catholic Church, during several generations, possessed so little
authority as in France. The literature of France is justly held
in high esteem throughout the world. But if we deduct from that
literature all that belongs to four parties which have been, on
dififerent grounds, in rebellion against the Papal domination, all
that belongs to the Protestants, all that belongs to the assert-
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 55
ors of the Gallican liberties, all that belongs to the Jansenists,
and all that belongs to the jihilosophers, how much will be left ?
It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the
Roman Catholic relicfion or to the Reformation. For the amal-
gamation of races and for the abolition of villenage, she is
chiefly indebted to ~lhe influence w^hich the priesthood in the
middle ages exercised over the laity. For political and intel-
lectual freedom, and for all the blessings which political and
intellectual freedom have brought in their train, she is chiefly
indebted to the great rebellion of the laity against the priest-
hood.
The struggle between the old and the new theology in our
country was long, and the event sometimes seemed doubtful.
There were two extreme parties, prepared to act with violence
or to suffer with stubborn resolution. Between them lay, dur-
ing a considerable time, a middle party, which blended, very
illogically, but by no means unnaturally, lessons learned in the
nursery with the sermons of the modern evangelists, and, while
clinging with fondness to all observances, yet detested abuses
with which those observances were closely connected. Men in
such a frame of mind were willing to obey, almost with thank-
fulness, the dictation of an able ruler who spared them the
trouble of judging for-themselves, and, raising a firm and com-
manding voice above the uproar of controversy, told them how
to worsliip and wliat to believe. It is not strange, therefore,
that the Tudors should have been able to exercise a great in-
fluence on ecclesiastical affairs ; nor is it strange that their in-
fluence should, for the most part, have been exercised with a
view to their own interest.
Henry the Eighth attempted to constitute an Anglican
Church differing from the Roman Catholic Church on the point
of the supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this
attempt was extraordinary. The force of his character, the
singularly favourable situation in which he stood with respect to
foreign powers, the immense wealth which the spoliation of the
abbeys placed at his disposal, and the support of that class which
still halted between two opinions, enabled him to bid defiance to
56 HISTORY OF ENGLA>:D.
both the extreme ruarties, to burn as heretics those who avowed
the tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as traitors those who
owned the authorxty of the Pope. But Henry's system died
with him. Had his lift been prolonged, he would have found it
difficult to maintain a position assailed with equal fury by all
who were zealous either for the new or for the old opinions.
The ministers who held the royal prerogatives in trust for his
infant son could not venture to persist in so hazardous a policy;
ncr could Elizabeth venture to return to it. It v/as necessary
to make a choice. The government must either submit to Rome,
or must obtain the aid of the Protestants. The governmenl
and the Protestants had only one thmg m common, hatred oi
the Papal power. The English Reformers were eager to go
as far as their brethren on the Continent. They unanimously
condemned as Antichristian numerous dogmas and practices to
which Henry had stubbornly adhered, and which Elizabeth re-
luctantly aban.doned. Many felt a strong repugnance even to
things indifferent which had formed part of the polity or ritual
of the /mystical Babylon. Thus Bishop Hooper, who died man-
fully :, Gloucester for his religion, long refused to wear the
episcopal vestments. Bishop Ridley, a martyr of still greater
renown, pulled down the ancient altars of his diocese, and order-
ed the Eucharist to be administered in the middle of churches,
at tables which the Papists irreverently termed oyster boards.
Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb to be a stage dress,
a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that he
would spare no labour to extirpate such degrading absurdities.
Arch' Ishop Grindal long hesitated about accepting a mitre from
dislike of what he regarded as the mummery of consecration.
Bishop Farkhurst uttered a fervent prayer that the Church of
England would propose to herself the Church of Zurich as the
absolute pattern of a Christian community. Bishop Ponet was
of opinion that the word Bishop should be abandoned to the
Papists, and that the chief officers of the purified church should
be called Superintendents. When it is considered that none of
these prelates beionged to the extreme section oC tke Protestant
party, it cannot be doubted that, if the general sense of that
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 57
party had been followed, the work of reform would have been
cawied on as unsparingly in England as in Scotland.
But, as the government needed the support of the Protes-
tants, so the Protestants needed the protection of the government.
Much was therefore given up on both sides : an union was
effected ; and the fruit of that union was the Church of England.
To the peculiarities of this great institution, and to the strong
passions which it has called forth in the minds both of friends
and of enemies, are to be attributed many of the rnest impor-
tant events which have, since the Reformation, taken place in
our country ; nor can the secular history of England be at all
understood by us, unless we study it in constant connection with
the history of her ecclesiastical polity.
The man wlio took the chief part in settling the conditions
of the alliance which produced the Anglican Church Avas Arch-
bishop Cranmer. He was the representative of botli the parties
which, at tliat time, needed each other's assistance. He was at
once a divine and a courtier. In his character of divine he was
perfectly ready to go as far in the way of change as any Swiss
or Scottish Reformer. In his character of courtier he was de-
sirous to preserve that organisation which had, during many
ages, admirably served the purposes of the Bishops of Rome,
and might be expected now to serve equally well the purposes
of the English Kings and of their ministers. His temper and
his understanding eminently fitted him to act as mediator.
Saintly in his professions, unscrupulous in his dealings, zealous
for nothing, bold in speculation, a coward and a timeserver in
action, a placable enemy and a lukewarm friend, he was in every
way qualified to arrange the terms of the coalition between the
religious and the worldly enemies of Popery.
To this day the constitution, the doctrines, and the services
of the Church, retain the visible marks of the compromise from
which she sprang. She occupies a middle position between the
Churches of Rome and Geneva. Her doctrinal confessions and
discourses, composed by Protestants, set forth principles of
theology in which Calvin or Knox would have found scarcely a
word to disapprove. Her prayers and thanksgivings, derived
58 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
from the ancient Breviaries, are very generally such that
Cardinal Fisher or Cardinal Pole might have heartily joined in
them. A controversialist who puts an Arminian sense on her
Articles and Homilies will be pronounced by candid men to be as
unreasonable as a controversialist who denies that the doctrine
of baptismal regeneration can be discovered in her Liturgy.
The Church of Rome held that episcopacy was of divine
institution, and that certain supernatural graces of a high order
had been transmitted by the imposition of hands through fifty
generations, from the Eleven who received their commission on
the Galilean mount, to the bishops who met at Trent. A large
body of Protestants, on the other hand, regarded prelacy as
positively unlawful, and persuaded themselves that they found
a very different form of ecclesiastical government prescribed in
Scriptui-e. The founders of the Anglican Church took a middle
course. They retained episcopacy ; but they did not declare it
to be an institution essential to the welfare of a Christian society,
or to the efficacy of the sacraments. Cranmer, indeed, on one im-
portant occasion, plainly avowed his conviction that, in tke prim
itive times, there was no distinction between bishops and priests,
and that the laying on of hands was altogether superfluous.
Among the Presbyterians the conduct of public worship is,
to a great extent, left to the minister. Theic prayers, there-
fore, are not exactly the same in any two assemblies on the
same day, or on any two days in the same assembly. In one
parish they are fervent, eloquent, and full of meaning. In the
next parish they may be languid or absurd. The priests of the
Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, have, during many
generations, daily chaunted the same ancient confessions, sup-
plications, and thanksgivings, in India and Lithuania, in Ireland
and Peru. The service, being in a dead language, is intelligible
only to the learned ; and the great majority of the congregation
may be said to assist as spectators rather than as auditors.
Here, again, the Church of England took a middle course. She
copied the Roman Catholic forms of prayer, but translated them
into the vulojar tonsfue, and invited the illiterate multitude to
join its voice to that of the minister.
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 59
In every part of her system the same policy may be traced.
Utterly rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, and con-
demning as idolatrous all adoration paid to the sacramental bread
and wine, she yet, to the disgust of the Puritan, required her
children to receive the memorials of divine love, meekly kneeling
upon their knees. Discarding many rich vestments which sur-
rounded the altars of the ancient faith, she yet retained, to the
horror of weak minds, a robe of white linen, typical of the
purity which belonged to her as the mystical spouse of Christ.
Discarding a crowd of {Dantomimic gestures which, in the Roman
Catholic worship, are substituted for intelligible words, she yet
shocked many rigid Protestants by marking the infant just
sprinkled from the font with the sign of the cross. The
Roman Catholic addressed his prayers to a multitude of Saints,
among whom were numbered many men of doubtful, and some
of hateful, character. The Puritan refused the addition of Saint
even to the apostle of the Gentiles, and to the disciple whom
Jesus loved. The Church of England, though she asked for
the intercession of no created being, still set apart days for the
commemoration of some who had done and suffered great things
for the faith. She retained confirmation and ordination as
edifying rites ; but she degraded them from the rank of sacra-
ments. Shrift was no part of her system. Yet she gently
invited the dying penitent to confess his sins to a divine, and
empowered her ministers to soothe the departing soul by an
absolution which breathes the very spirit of the old religion. In
general it may be said that she appeals more to the understand-
ing, and less to the senses and the imagination, than the Church
of Rome, and that she appeals less to the understanding, and
more to the senses and imagination, than the Protestant
Churches -of Scotland, France, and Switzerland.
Nothing, however, so strongly distinguished the Church of
England from other Churches as the relation in which she stood
to the monai'chy. The King was her head. The limits of the
authority which he possessed, as such, were not traced, and
indeed have never yet been traced with precision. The laws
which declared him supreme in ecclesiastical matters were drawn
60 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
rudely and in general terms. If, for the purpose of ascertain-
ing the sense of those laws, we examine the books and lives of
those who founded the English Church, our perplexity will be
increased. For the founders of the English Church wrote and
acted in an age of violent intellectual fermentation, and of con-
stant action and reaction. They therefore often contradicted
each other, and sometimes contradicted themselves. That the
King was, under Christ, sole head of the Church, was a doctrine
which they all with one voice affirmed : but those words ha,d
very different significations in different mouths, and in the same
mouth at different conjunctures. Sometimes an authority which
would have satisfied Hildebrand was ascribed to the sovereign :
then it dwindled down to an authority little more than that
which had been claimed by many ancient English princes who
had been in constant communion with the Church of Rome.
What Henry and his favourite counsellors meant, at one time,
by the supremacy, was certainly nothing less than the whole
power of the keys. The King was to be the Pope of his king-
dom, the vicar of God, the expositor of Catholic verity, the
channel of sacramental o-races. He arroijated to himself the
right of deciding dogmatically what was orthodox doctrine and
what was heresy, of drawing up and imposing confessions of
faith, and of giving religious instruction to his people. He
proclaimed that all jurisdiction, spiritual as well as temporal,
was derived from him alone, and that it was in his power to
confer episcopal authority, and to take it away. He actually
ordered his seal to be put to commissions by which bishops were
a^ipointed, who were to exercise their functions as his deputies,
and during his pleasure. According to this system, as expounded
by Cranmer, the King was the spiritual as well as the temporal
chief of the nation. In both capacities His Highness must
have lieutenants. As he appointed civil officers to keep his
seal, to collect his revenues, and to dispensie justice in his name,
so he appointed divines of various ranks to preach the gospel,
and to administer the sacraments. It was unnecessary that
there should be any imposition of hands. The King, — such
vv^s the opinion, of Cranmer given in the plainest words, —
BEFORE THE KESTOIiATION. 61
might, in virtue of authority derived from God, make a priest ;
and the priest so made needed no ordination whatever. These
opinions the Archbisliop, in spite of tlie opposition of less
courtl}^ divines, followed out to every legitimate consequence.
He held that his own spiritual functions, like the secular
functions of the Chancellor and Treasurer, were at once deter-
mined by a demise of the crown. When Henry died, there-
fore, the Primate and his suffragans took out fresh commissions,
emjaowering them to ordain and to govern the Church till the
new sovereiffu should think fit to order otherwise. When it
was objected that a power to bind and to loose, altogether
distinct from temporal power, had been given by our Lord to
his apostles, some theologians of this school replied that the
power to bind and to loose had descended, not to the clergy,
but to the whole body of Christian men, and ought to be
exercised by the chief magistrate as the representative of the
society. When it was objected that Saint Paul had spoken of
certain persons whom the Holy Ghost had made overseers and
shepherds of the faithful, it was answered that King Henry
was the very overseer, the very shepherd, whom the Holy
Ghost had appointed, and to whom the expressions of Saint
Paul applied.*
These high pretensions gave scandal to Protestants as well
as to Catholics ; and the scandal was greatly increased when
the supremacy, which Mary had resigned back to the Pope, was
again annexed to the ci'own, on the accession of Elizabeth.
It seemed monstrous that a woman should be the chief bishop
of a Church in which an apostle had forbidden her even to let
her voice be heard. The Queen, therefore, found it necessary
expressly to disclaim that sacerdotal character which her father
had assumed, and which, according to Cranmer, had been
inseparably joined, by divine ordinance, to the regal function.
When the Anglican confession of faith was revised in her
reign, the supremacy was explained in a manner somewhat
different from that which had been fashionable at the court of
• See a very curious paper which Strype believed to be in Gardiner's band'
writing. EccleBiastical Memorials, Book I., Chap, xvii, ,
62 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
Henry. Cranmer had declared, in emphatic terms, that God
had immediately committed to Christian princes the whole cure
of all their subjects, as well concerning the administration of
God's word for the cure of souls, as concerning the administra-
tion of things political.* The thirty-seventh article of religion,
framed under Elizabeth, declares, in terms as emphatic, that
the ministering of Goil's word does not belong to princes. The
Queen, however, s'till had over the Church a visitatorial power
of vast and undefined extent. She was entrusted by Parlia-
ment with the office of restraining and punishing heresy and
every sort of ecclesiastical abuse, and was permitted to dele-
gate her authority to commissioners. The Bishops were little
more than her ministers. Rather than grant to the civil magis-
trate the absolute power of nominat ng spiritual pastors, the
Church of Rome, in the eleventh cei?tury, set all Europe on
fire. Rather than grant to the civil magistrate the absolute
power of nominating spiritual pastors, the ministers of the
Church of Scotland, in our time, resigned their livings by hun-
dreds. The Church of England had no such scruples. By
the royal authority alone her prelates were appointed. By the
royal authority alone her Convocations were summoned, regu-
lated, prorogued, and dissolved. Without the royal sanction her
canons had no force. One of the articles of her faith was that
without the royal consent no ecclesiastical council could law-
fully assemble. From all her judicatures an appeal lay, in the
last resort, to the sovereign, even when the question was
whether an opinion ought to be accounted heretical, or whether
the administration of a sacrament had been valid. Nor did the
Church grudge this extensive power to our princes. By them
she had been called into existence, nursed through a feeble in-
fancy, guarded from Papists on one side and from Puritans on
the other, protected against Parliaments which bore her no
good will, and avenged on literary assailants whom she found
it hard to answer. Thus gratitude, hope, fear, common attach-
ments, common enmities, bound her to the throne. All her
•The.se are Cranmer's own words. See tlie Appendix to Burnet's History
of the Refonnation, Parti. Book III. No. 21. Questjoa 9,
BEKORK THE RESTORATION. 63
traditions, an her tastes, were monarchical. Loyalty became a
point of professional honour among her clergy, the peculiar
badge which distinguished them at once from Calvinists and
from Papists. Both the Calvinists and the Papists, widely as
they differed in other respects, regarded with extreme jealousy
all encroachments of the temporal power on the domain of the
spiritual power. Both Calvinists and Papists maintained that
subjects might justifiably draw the sword against ungodly rulers.
In France Calvinists resisted Charles the Ninth: Papists re-
sisted Henry the Fourth : both Papists and Calvinists resisted
Henry the Third. In Scotland Calvinists led Mary captive.
On the north of the Trent Papists took arms against the Eng-
lish throne. The Church of England meantime condemned
both Calvinists and Papists, and loudly boasted that no duty
was more constantly or earnestly inculcated by her than that of
submission to princes.
The advantages which the crown derived from this close
alliance with the Established Church were great ; but they
were not without serious drawbacks. The compromise arranged
by Cranmer had from the first been considered by a large
body of Protestaats as a scheme for serving two masters, as an
attempt to unite the worship of the Lord with the wprship of
Baal. In the days of Edward the. Sixth the scruples of this
party had repeatedly thrown great difficulties in the way of the
government. When Elizabeth came to the throne, those diffi-
culties were much increased. Violence naturally engenders
violence. The spirit of Protestantism was therefore far fiercer
and more intolerant after the cruelties of Mary than before
them. Many persons who were warmly attached to the new
opinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in Switzerland
and Germany. They had been hospitably received by their
brethren in the faith, had sate at the feet of the great doctors of
Strasbui'g, Zurich, and Geneva, and had been, during some
years, accustomed to a more simple worship, and to a more
democratical form of church government, than England had yet
seen. These men returned to their country convinced that the
reform which had been effected under King Edward had been
^4. HISTORr OP ENGLAND.
far less searching and extensive than the interests of pure re-
ligion required. But it was in vain that they attempted to ob-
tain any concession from Elizabeth. Indeed her system, where-
ever it differed from her brother's, seemed to them to differ for
the worse. They were little disposed to submit, in matters of
faith, to any human authority. They had recently, in reliance
on their own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against a
Church strong in immemorial antiquity and catholic consent. It
was by no common exertion of intellectual energy that they
had thrown off the yoke of that gorgeous and imperial supersti-
tion ; and it was vain to expect that, immediately after such an
emancipation, they would patiently submit to a new spiritual
tyranny. Long accustomed, when the priest lifted up the
host, to bow down with their faces to tlie earth, as before a
present God, they had learned to treat the mass as an idola-
trous mummery. Long accustomed to regard the Pope as the
successor of the chief of the apostles, as the bearer of the keys
of earth and heaven, they had learned to regard him as the
Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of Sin. It was not to be expect-
ed that they would immediately transfer to an upstart authority
the homage which they had withdrawn from the Vatican ; that
they would submit their private judgment to the authority of a
Church founded on private judgment alone ; that they would
be afraid to dissent from teachers who themselves dissented
from what had lately been the universal faith of western Chris-
tendom. It is easy to conceive the indignation which must
have been felt by bold and inquisitive spirits, glorying in newly
acquired freedom, when an institution younger by many years
than themselves, an institution which had, under their own
eyes, gradually received its form from the passions and interests
of a court, began to mimic the lofty style of Rome.
Since these men could not be convinced, it was determined
that they should be persecuted. Persecution produced its natu-
ral effect on them. It found them a sect : it made them a
faction. To their hatred of the Church was now added hatred
of the Crown. The two sentiments were intermingled ; and
each embittered the other. The opinions of the Puritan con-
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 65
cerulng the relation of ruler and subject were widely different
from those which were inculcated in the Homilies. His favour-
ite divines had, both by precept and by example, encouraged
resistance to tyrants and persecutors. His fellow Calvinists
in France, in Holland, and in Scotland, were in arms against
idolatrous and cruel princes. His notions, too, respecting the
government of the state took a tinge from his notions respect-
ing the government of the Church. Some of the sarcasms
which were popularly thrown on episcopacy might, without much
difficulty, be turned against royalty ; and many of the arguments
which were used to prove that spiritual power was best lodged
in a synod seemed to lead to the conclusion that temporal power
was best lodged in a parliament.
Thus, as the priest of the Established Church was, from
interest, from principle, and from passion, zealous for tlie royal
prerogatives, the Puritan was, from interest, from principle,
and from passion, hostile to them. The power of the discontented
sectaries was great. They were found in every rank : but they
were strongest among the mercantile classes in the towns, and
among the small proprietors in the country. Early in the reign
of Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of
Commons. And doubtless, had our ancestors been then at
liberty to fix their attention entirely on domestic questions, the
strife between the C)'own and the Parliament would instantly
have commenced. But that was no season for internal dissen-
sions. It might, indeed, well be doubted whether the firmest
union among all the orders of the state could avert the common
danger by which all were threatened. Roman Catholic Europe
and reformed Europe were struggling for death or life. France
divided against herself, had, for a time, ceased to be of any
account in Christendom. The Enirlish Government was at the
head of the Protestant interest, and, while persecuting Presby-
terians* at home, extended a powerful protection to Presbyte-
rian Churches abroad. At the head of the opposite party was
the mightiest prince of the age, a prince who ruled Spain,
Portugal, Italy, the East and the West Indies, whose ar.uies
repeatedly marched to Paris, and whose fleets kept the coasts of
66 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Devonshire and Sussex in alarm. It long seemed probable
that Englishmen would have to fight desperately on English
ground for their religion and independence. Nor were they
ever for a moment free from apprehensions of some great trea-
son at home. For in that age it had become a point of con-
science and of honour with many men of generous natures to
sacrifice their country to their religion. A succession of dark
plots, formed by Roman Catholics against the life of the Queen
and the existence of the nation, kept society in constant alarm.
Whatever might be the faults of Elizabeth, it was plain that,
to speak humanly, the fate of the realm and of all reformed
Churches was staked on tho security of her person and on the
success of her administration. To strengthen her hands was,
therefore, the first duty of a patriot and a Protestant ; and
that duty was well performed. The Puritans, even in the
depths of the prisons to which she had sent them, prayed, and
with no simulated fervour, that she might be ke[)t from the dag-
ger of the assassin, that rebellion might be put down under her
feet, and that her arms might be victorious by sea and land.
One of the most stubborn of the stubborn sect, immediately
after his hand had been lopped off for an offence into which he
had been hurried by his intemperate zeal, waved his hat with
the hand which was still left him, and shouted " God save the
Queen ! " The sentiment with which these men regarded her has
descended to their posterity. The Nonconformists, rigorously
as she treated them, have, as a body, always venerated her
memory.*
During the greater part of her reign, therefore, the Puritans
in the House of Commons, though sometimes mutinous, felt no
disposition to array themselves in systematic opposition to the
* The Puritan historian, Neal, after censuring the cruelty with which she
treated the sect to which he belonged, concludes tlius : " However, notwithstand-
ing all these blemishes. Queen Elizabeth stands upon record as a wise and politic
princess, for dtdivering her kingdom from the difficulties in which it was in-
volved at her accession, for preserving the Protestant reformation against thepo^
tent attempts of the Pope, tlie Emperor, and King of Spain abroad, ai;d the Queen
of Scots and her Popish subjects at home. . . . She was the glory of the F<^e in
which she lived, and will be the admiration of posterity." — History of the i?uri-
'ians, Part I. Chap. viii.
BEFORK THE RESTORATION. 67
government. But. when the defeat of the Armada, the snecess-
ful resistance of the United Provinces to the Spanish jjower, tlie
firm establishment of Henry the Fourth on the throne of France,
and the death of Philip the Second, had secured the State and
the Church against all danger fi'om abroad, an obstinate strug-
gle, destined to last during several generations, instantly began
at home.
It was in the Parliament of 1601 that the opposition which
had, during forty years, been silently gathering and husbanding
strength, fought its first great battle and won its first victory.
The ground was well chosen. The English Sovereigns had al-
ways been entrusted with the supreme direction of commercial
police. It was their undoubted prerogative to regulate coin,
weights, and measures, and to appoint fairs, markets, and ports.
The line which bounded their authoritv over trade had, as usual,
been but loosely drawn. They therefore, as usual, encroached
on the province which rightfully belonged to the legislature.
The encroachment was, as usual, patiently borne, till it became
serious. But at length the Queen took upon herself to grant
patents of monopoly by scores. There was scarcely a family in
the realm which did not feel itself aggrieved by the oppression
and extortion which this abuse naturally caused. Iron, oil, vine-
gar, coal, saltpetre, lead, starch, yarn, skins, leather, glass, could
be bought only at exorbitant prices. The House of Commons
met in an angry and determined mood. It was in vain that a
courtly minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts of
the Queen's Highness to be called in question. The language of
the discontented party was high and menacing, and was echoed
by the voice of the whole nation. The coach of the chief min-
ister of the crown was surrounded by an indignant populace, who
cursed the monopolies, and exclaimed that the prerogative should
not be suffered to touch the old liberties of England. There
seemed for a moment to be some danger that the long and glo-
rious reign of Elizabeth would have a shameful and disastrous
end. She, however, with admirable judgment and temper, de-
clined the contest, put herself at the head of the reforming par-
ty, redressed the grievance, thanked the Commons, in touching
68 HISTOKY OI-' KNGLANO.
raid dignified language, for tiieir tender care of the general weal,
brought back to herself the hearts of the people, and left to her
successors a memorable example of the way in which it behoves
a ruler to deal with public movements which he has not the
means of resisting.
In the year 1603 the great Queen died. That year is, on
many accounts, one of the most important epochs in our history.
It was then that both Scotland and Ireland became parts of the
same empire with England. Both Scotland and Ireland, indeed,
had been subjugated by the Plantagenets ; but neither country
had been patient under the yoke. Scotland had, "with heroic
energy, vindicated her independence, had, from the time of Rob-
ert Bruce, been a separate kingdom, and was now joined to the
southern part of the island in a manner which rather gratified
than wounded her national pride. Ireland had never, since the
days of Henry the Second, been able to expel the foreign invad-
ers ; but she had struggled against them long and fiercely. Dur-
ing the fourteenth and fifteenbli centuries the English power in
that island was constantly declining, and in the days of Henry
the Seventh, sank to the lowest point. The Irish dominions of
that prince consisted only of the counties of Dublin and Louth,
of some parts of Meath and Kildare, and of a few seaports
scattered along the coast. A large portion even of Leinster
was not yet divided into counties. Munster, Ulster, and Con-
naught were ruled by petty sovereigns, partly Celts, and partly
degenerate Normans, who had forgotten their origin and had
adopted the Celtic language and manners. But during the six-
teenth century, the English power had made great progress.
The half savage chieftains who reigned beyond the pale had sub-
mitted one after another to the lieutenants of the Tudors. At
fcngth, a few weeks before the death of Elizabeth, the conquest,
which had been begun more than four hundred years before by
Strongbow, was completed by Mountjoy. Scarcely had James
the First mounted the Engrlish throne when the last O'Donnel and
O'Neil who have held the rank of independent princes kissed
his hand at "Whitehall. Thenceforward his writs ran and his
judges held astsizes in every ^jart of Ireland ; and the English
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 69
law superseded the customs which had prevailed among the
aboriginal tribes.
In extent Scotland and Ireland were nearly equal to each
other, and were together nearly equal to England, but were
much less thickly peopled than England, and were very far
behind Enoland iu wealth and civilisation. Scotland had been
kept back by the sterility of her soil ; and, in the midst of
light, the thick .darkness of the middle ages still rested on Ire-
land.
The population of Scotland, with the exception of the Cel-
tic tribes which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides and
over the mountainous parts of the northern shires, was of the
same blood with the population of England, and spoke a
tongue which did not differ from the purest English more than
the dialects of Somersetshire and Lancasliire differed from each
other. Iu Ireland, on the contrary, the population, with the
exception of the small English colony near the coast, was Cel-
tic, and still kept the Celtic speech and manners.
In natural courao'e and intelliijence both the nations which
now became connected with England ranked high. In perse-
verance, in selfcommand, in forethought, in all the virtues
which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been
surpassed. The Irish, on the other hand, were distinguished
by qualities which tend to make men interesting rather than
prosperous. They were an ardent and impetuous race, easily
moved to tears or to laughter, to fury or to love. Alone among
the nations of northern Eurojie they had the susceptibility, the
vivacity, the natural turn for acting and rhetoric, which are
indiiienous on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In mental
cultivation Scotland had an indisputable superiority. Though
that kingdom was then the poorest in Christendom, it already
vied in every branch of learning with the most favoured coun-
tries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food were as
wretched as those of the Icelanders of our time, wrote Latin
verse with more than the delicacy of Vida, and made discoveries
in science which would have added to the renown of Galileo.
Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or Napier. The genius,
70 • HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
with which her aboriginal inhabitants were largely endo^fed,
showed '"^self as yet only in ballads which, wild and rugged as
they w^'fe, seemed to the judging eye of Spenser to contain a
portio"^ of the pure gold of poetry.
S''otland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, pre-
served her dignity. Having, during many generations, cour-
ageously withstood the English arms, she was now joined to
her stronijer neijjhbour on the most honourable terms. She
gave a King instead of receiving one. She retained her own
constitution and laws. Her tribunals and parliaments remained
entirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments which
sate at Westminster. The administration of Scotland was in
Scottish hands ; for no Englishman had any motive to emigrate
northward, and to contend with the shrewdest and most perti-
nacious of all races for what was to be scraped together in the
poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland by no means
escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected,
but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.
Though in name an independent kmgdom, she was, during more
than a century, really treated, in many respects, as a subject
province.
Ireland was undisguisedly governed as a dependency won
by the sword. Her rude national institutions had perished.
The Enirlish colonists submitted to the dictation of the mother
country, without whose support they could not exist, and in-
demnified themselves by trampling on the people among whom
they had settled. The parliaments which met at Dublin could
pass no law which had not been previously approved by the
English Privy Council. The authority of the English legisla-
ture extended over Ireland. The executive administration was
entrusted to men taken either from England or from the English
pale, and, in either case, regarded as foreigners, and even as
enemies, by the Celtic population.
But the circumstance which, more than any other, has made
Ireland to differ from Scotland remains to be noticed. Scotland
was Protestant. In no jiart of Europe had the movement of
the popular mind against the Roman Catholic Church been so
HKKORE THE UESTORATION. • 71
rapid and violent. The Reformers liad vanquished, deposed,
and imprisoned their idolatrous sovereign. They would not
endure even such a compromise as had been effected in England.
They had established the Calvinistic doctrine, discipline, and
worship ; and they made little distinction between Popery and
Prelacy, between the Mass and the Book of Common Prayer.
Unfortunately for Scotland, tlie prince whom she sent to govern
a fairer inheritance had been so much annoyed by the pertinacity
with which her theologians had asserted against him the privi-
leges of the synod and the pulpit that he hated the ecclesiastical
polity to which she was fondly attached as much as it was in his
effeminate nature to hate anything, and nad no sooner mounted
the Enirlish throne than he beijan to show an intolerant zeal
for the government and ritual of the English Church.
The Irish were the only peo.')le of northern Europe who
had i-emained true to the old religion. This is to be partly as-
cribed to the circumstance that they were some centuries behind
their neighbours in knowledge. But other causes had coope-
rateil. The Reformation had been a national as well as a moral
revolt. It had been, not only an insurrection of the laity
against the clergy, but also an insurrection of all the branches
of the great German race against an alien domination. It is a
most significant circumstance that no large society of which the
tongue is not Teutonic has ever turned Protestant, and that,
wherever a lancruaije derived from that of ancient Rome is
spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this day prevails. The
patriotism of the Irish had taken a peculiar direction. The ob-
ject of their animosity was not Rome, but England ; and they
had especial reason to abhor those English sovereigns who had
been the chiefs of the great schism, Henry the Eighth and Eliz-
abeth. Durinij the vain stru2,<rle which two generations of Mi-
lesian princes riiaintained against the Tudors, religious enthusi-
asm and national enthusiasm became inseparably blended in the
minds of the vanquished race. The new feud of Protestant and
Papist inflamed tlie old feud of Saxon and Celt. The English
conquerors, meanwhile, neglected all legitimate means of con
version. No care was taken to provide the vanquished natiou
72 • HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
with instructors capable of making themselves understood. No
translation of the Bible Was put forth in the Irish language.
The government contented itself wiih setting up a vast hierai-chy
of Protestant archbishops, bishops, and rectors, who did nothing,
and who, for doing nothing, were paid out of the spoils of a
Church loved and revered by the great body of the jieople.
There was much in the state both of Scotland and of Ireland
which might well excite the painful apprehensions of a farsighted
statesman. As yet, however, there was the appearance of tran-
quillity. For the first time all the British isles were peaceably
united under one sceptre. '
It should seem that the weight of England among European
nations ought, from this epoch, to have greatly increased. The
territory which her new King governed was, in extent, nearly
double that which Elizabeth had inherited. His empire was the
most complete'within itself and the most secure from attack that
was to be found in the world. The Plantag-enets and Tudors
had been repeatedly under the necessity of defending them-
selves against Scotland while they were engaged in continental
war. The long conflict in Ireland had been a severe and per-
petual drain on their resources. Yet even under such disadvan-
tages those sovereigns had been highly considered throughout
Christendom. It might, therefore, not unreasonably be expect-
ed that England, Scotland, and Ireland combined would form a
state second to none that then existed.
All such expectations were strangely disappointed. On the
day of the accession of James the First England descended
from the rank which she had hitherto held, and began to be re-
garded as a power hardly of the second order. During many
yeats the great British monarchy, under four successive princes
of the House of Stuart, was scarcely a more important member
of the European system than the little kingdom of Scotland had
previously been. This, however, is little to be regretted. Of
James the First, as of John, it may be said that, if his adminis-
tration had been able and splendid, it would probably have been
fatal to our country, and that we owe more to his weakness and
■weanness than to the wisdom and courage of much better sever*
BKFORE THE RESTORATION. 73
eiffiis. He came to the throne at a critical moment. The time
was fast approaching when either the King must become abso-
hite, or the Parliament must control the whole executive ad-
ministration. Had James been, like Henry the Fourth, like
Maurice of Nassau, or like Gustavus Adolphus, a valiant, ac-
tive, and politic ruler, had he put himself at the head of the
Protestants of Europe, had he gained great victories over Tilly
and Spinola, had he adorned Westminster with the spoils of Ba-
varian monasteries and Flemish cathedrals, had he hung Austrian
and Castilian banners in Saint Paul's, and had he found himself,
after great achievements, at the head of fifty thousand troops,
brave, well disciplined, and devotedly attached to his person,
the English Parliament would soon have been nothing more
than a name. Happily he was not a man to play such a part.
He began his administration by putting an end to the war which
had raged during many years between England and Spain ; and
from that time he shunned hostilities with a caution which was
proof against the insults of his neighbours and the clamours of his
subjects. Not till the last year of his life could the influence of
his son, his favourite, his Parliament, and his people combined,
induce him to strike one feeble blow in defence of his family and
of his religion. It was well for those whom he governed that
he in this matter disregarded their wishes. The effect of his pa-
cific policy was that, in his time, no regular troops were needed,
and that, while France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany
swarmed with mercenary soldiers, the defence of our island was
still confided to the militia.
As the King had no standing army, and did not even at-
tempt to form one, it would have been wise in him to avoid any
conflict with his people. But such was his indiscretion that,
while he altogether neglected the means which alone could make
him really absolute, he constantly put forward, in the most
offensive form, claims of which none of his predecessors had
ever dreamed. It was at this time that those strange theories
which Filmer afterwards formed into a system, and which be-
came the badge of the most violent class of Tories and high
churchmen, first emerged into notice. It was gravely main-
74 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
tained that the Supreme Being regarded hereditary monarchy, as
opposed to other forms of government, with peculiar favour;
that the rule of succession in order of primogeniture was a
divine institution, anterior to the Christian, and even to the
Mosaic dispensation ; that no human power, not even that of
the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it
extended to ten centuries, could deprive a legitimate prince of
his rights ; that the authority of such a prince was necessarily
always despotic; that the laws, by which, in England and in
other countries, the prerogative was limited, were to be re-
garded merely as concessions which the sovereign had freely
made and might at his j^leasure resume ; and that any treaty
which a king might conclude with his people was merely a
declaration of his present intentions, and not a contract of which
the performance could be demanded. It is evident that this
theory, though in-tended to strengthen the foundations of
government, altogether unsettles them. Does the divine and
immutable law of primogeniture admit females, or exclude
them ? On either supposition half the sovereigns of Europe
must be usurpers, reignmg in defiance of the law of God, and
liable to be dispossessed by the rightful heirs. The doctrine
that kingly government is peculiarly favoured by Heaven
receives no countenance from the Old Testament ; for in the
Old Testament we read that the chosen people were blamed
and punished for desiring a king, and that they were afterwards
commanded to withdraw their allegiance from him. Their
whole history, far from countenancing the notion that succession
in order of primogeniture is of divine institution, would rather
seem to indicate that younger brothers are under the especial
protection of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham,
nor Jacob of Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse,
nor Solomon of David Nor does the system of Filmer receive
any countenance from those passages of the New Testament
which describe government as an ordinance of God : for the
government under which the writers of the New Testament
lived was not a hereditary monarchy. The Roman Emperors
R'ere repabllean magistrates^ named by fche senate* None oi
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 75
them pretended to rule by right of birth ; aud, in fact, both
Tiberius, to whom Christ commanded that tribute should be
given, and Nero, whom Paul directed the Romans to obey,
were, according to the patriarchal theory of government,
usurpers. In the middle ages the doctrine of indefeasible hered-
itary right would have been regarded as heretical : for it was
altogether incompatible with the high pretensions of the Church
of Rome. It was a doctrine unknown to the founders of the
Church of England. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion had strong-
ly, and indeed too strongly, inculcated submission to constituted
authority, but had made no distinction between hereditary and
elective monarchies, or between monarchies and republics. Indeed
most of the predecessors of James would, from personal motives,
have regarded the patriarchal theory of government with aver-
sion. William Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry
the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the
Third, and Henry the Seventh, had all reigned in defiance of
the strict rule of" descent. A grave doubt hung over the
legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It was impossible
that both Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have
been lawfully married to Henry the Eighth ; and the highest
authority in the realm had pronounced tliat neither was so. The
Tudors, far from considering the law of succession as a divine
and unchangeable institution, were constantly tampering with
it. Henry the Eighth obtained an act of parliament, giving
him power to leave the crown by will, and actually made a will
to the prejudice of the royal family of Scotland. Edward the
Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a similar power,
with the full approbation of the most eminent Reformers.
Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to grave ob-
jection, and unwilling to admit even a reversionary right in her
rival and enemy the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament to
pass a law, enacting that whoever should deny the competency
of the reigning sovereign, with the assent of the Estates of the
realm, to alter the succession, should suffer death as a traitor.
But the situation of James was widely different from that of
Elizabeth. Far inferior to her in abilities and in popularity,
76 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
regarded by the English as an alien, and excluded from the
throne by the testament of Henry the Eighth, tlie King of Scots
was ye^ the undoubted heir of William the Conqueror and of
Egbert. He had, therefore, au 'obvious interest in inculcating
the superstitious notion that birth confers rights anterior to law,
and unalterable by law. It was a notion, moreover, well suited
to his intellect and temper. It soon found many advocates
among those who aspired to his favour, and made rapid pro-
gress among the clergy of the Established Church.
Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit began
to manifest itself strongly in the Parliament and in the country,
the claims of the monarch took a monstrous form which would
have disgusted the proudest and most arbitrary of those who
had preceded him on the throne.
James was always boasting of his skill in what he called
kingcraft ; and yet it is hardly possible even to imagine a course
more directly opposed to all the rules of kingcraft, than that
which he followed. The policy of wise rulers has always been
to disguise strong acts under poi^ular forms. It was thus that
Augustus and Napoleon established absolute monarchies, while
the public regarded them merely as eminent citizens invested
with temporary magistracies. The policy of James was the di-
rect reverse of theirs. He enraged and alarmed his Parliament
by constantly telling them that they held their privileges merely
during his pleasure, and that they had no more business to
inquire what he might lawfully do than what the Deity might
lawfully do. Yet he quailed before them, abandoned minister
after minister to their vengeance, and suffered them to tease
him into acts directly opposed to his strongest inclinations.
Thus the indignation excited by his claims and the scorn
excited by his concessions went on growing together. By his
fondness for worthless minions, and by the sanction which he
gave to their tyranny and rajiacity, he kept discontent constantly
alive. His cowardice, his childishness, his jiedantry, his ungainly
person, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision.
Even in his virtues and accomplishments there was something
eminently unkingly. Throughout the whole course of his reign,
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. (1
all the venerable associations by which the throne had long been
fenced were gradually losing their strength. During two hun-
dred years all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the
exception of Henry the Sixth, had been strong-minded, highspir-
ited, courageous, and of princely bearing. Almost all had pos-
sessed abilities above the ordinary level. It was no light thing
that on the very eve of the decisive struggle between our Kings
and their Parliaments, royalty should be exhibited to the world
stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a
drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of a buffoon
and of a pedagogue.
In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from
the days of Edward the Sixth, the Protestant body had been
distracted, had become more formidable than ever. The inter-
val which had separated the first generation of Puritans from
Cranmer and Jewel was small indeed when compared with the
interval which separated the third generation of Puritans from
Laud and Hammond. While the recollection of Mary's cruelties
was still fresh, while the powers of the Roman Catholic party
still inspired apprehension, while Spain still retained ascendency
and aspired to universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew
that they had a strong common interest and a deadly common
enemy. The animosity which they felt towards each other was
languid when compared with the animosity which they all felt to-
wards Rome. Conformists and Nonconformists had heartily joined
in enacting penal laws of extreme severity against the Papists.
But when more than half a century of undisturbed possession
had given confidence U the Established Church, when nine
tenths of the nation had become heartily Protestant, when Eng-
land was at peace with all the world, when there was no danger
that Popery would be forced by foreign arms on the nation,
when the last confessors who had stood before Bonner had
passed away, a change took place in the feeling of the Angli-
can clergy. Their hostility to the Roman Catholic doctrine and
discipline was considerably mitigated. Their dislike of the Puri-
tans, on the other hand, increased daily. The controversies
which had from the beginning divided the Protestant party took
78 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
such a form as made reconciliation hopeless ; and new controver-
sies of still greater importance were added to the old subjects of
dispute.
The founders of the Anglican Church had retained episco-
pacy as an ancient, a decent, and a convenient ecclesiastical
polity, but had not declared that, form of church government
to be of divine institution. We have already seen how low an
estimate Craumer had formed of the office of a Bishop. In tha
reign of Elizabeth, Jewel, Cooper, Whitgift, and other eminent
doctors defended prelacy, as innocent, as useful, as what the
state might lawfully establish, as what, when established by the
state, was entitled to the respect of every citizen. But they
never denied that a Christian community without a Bishop
might be a pure Church.* On the contrary, they regarded the
Protestants of the Continent as of the same household of faith
with themselves. Englishmen in England were indeed bound
to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop, as they were bound
to acknowledge the authority of the Sheriff and of the Coroner *
but the obligation was purely local. An English churchman .
nay even an English prelate, if he went to Holland, conformed
without scruple to the established religion of Holland. Abroad
the ambassadors of Elizabeth and James went in sta^e to the^
very worship which Elizabeth and James persecuted it home,,
* On thia subject, Bishop Cooper's language is remarkably cle-" I and strong.
He maintains, in bis Answer to Martin Marprelate, printed in ISSt, tliat no form
of cbureh government is divinely ordained ; that Protestant communities, in
establishing different forms, have only made a' legitimate use ol their Christian
liberty ; and that episcopacy is peculiarly suited to England, be-^ause the English
constitution is monarchical. "All those Churches," says the bishop, " in which
the Gospel), in these dales, after great darknesse, was firs* renewed, and th(*
learned men whom God sent to instruct them, I doul)t not bu* have been directed
by the Spirite of God to retaine this liberty, that, in exter lal government and
other outward orders, they might choose such as they thoi'^ht in wisedome and
godlinesRO to be most oonvenieTit for the state of their cov ntrey and disposition
of their jr ople. Why then should this liberty that otheT countreys h.ive used
under anie colour be wrested from us? I think it therefore great presumption
and boldnesse that some of our nation, and those, whatever they may think of
themselves, not of the greatest wisedome and skill, should take ujion them to
controUc the whole realnie, and to binde botn prince and people in respect of
conscience to alter the present stato, and tie themselves to a certain platforme
devised by some of our iieighboui s. which, in the judgment of many wise and
godly persons, Is most untit for the state of a Kingdome."
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 79
and carefully abstained from decorating their private chapels
after the Anglican fashion, ]e;t scandal should be given to
weaker brethren. An instrument is still extant by which the
Primate of all England, in the year 1582, authorised a Scotch
minister, ordained, accordinij to the laudable forms of the Scotch
Church, by the Synod of East Lothian, to preach and administer
the sacraments in any part of the province of Canterbury.* In
the year 1603, the Convocation solemnly recognised the Church
of Scotland, a Church in which episcopal control and episcopal
ordination were then unknown, as a branch of the Holy Catholic
Church of Christ. t It was even held that Presbyterian minis-
ters were entitled to place and voice in oecumenical councils.
When the States General of the United Provinces convoked at
Dort a synod of doctors not episcopally ordained, an English
Bishop and an English Dean, commissioned by the head of the
English Church, sate with those doctors, preached to them, and
voted with them on \he gravest questions of theology, t Nay,
many English benefices were held by divines who had been
admitted to the ministry in the Calvinistic form used on the
Continent ; nor was reordination by a Bishop in such cases then
thought necessary, or even lawful. §
But a new race of divines was already rising in the Church
of England. In their view the episcopal office was essential to
the welfare of a Christian society and to the efficacy of the
most solemn ordinances of religion. To that office belonged
certain high and sacred privileges, which no human power could
* Strype's Life of Grindal, Appendix to Book II. No. xvii.
t Canon 55, of 1603.
+ Joseph Hall, then dean of "Worcester, and afterwards bishop of Norwich,
■was one of the commissioners. In his life of himself, he says: " My unworthi-
iiess was named for one of the assistants of that honourable, grave, and reverend
meeting." To high churchmen this humility will seem not a little out of place.
§ It was by the Act of Uniformity, passed after the Restoration, that persons
not episcopally ordained were, for the first time, made incapable of holding
benetices. No man was more zealous for this law than Clai-endon. Yet Jie says :
" This was new ; for there hnd been many, and at present there were some, who
possessed benefices with cure of souls and other ecclesiastical promotions, who
had never received orders but in France or Holland ; and these men must now
receive new ordination, which had been always held unlawful in theChurch, or by
this act of parliament must be deprived of their livelihood wbicli tlie^ eiijoyed
In tbo wost flourlfiblug and peficeable time of the CliurcU,"
80 HISTOKY OF KNGLAND.
give or take away. A church might as well be without the
doctrine of the Trinity, or the doctrine of the Incarnation, as
without the apostolical orders ; and the Church of Rome, which,
in the midst of all her corruptions, had retained the apostolical
orders, was nearer to primitive purity than tliose reformed
societies which had rashly set up, in opposition to the divine
model, a system invented by men.
In the days of Edward the Sixth and of Elizabeth, the
defenders of the Anglican ritual had generally contented them-
selves with saying that it might be used without sin, and that,
thei'efore, none but a perverse and iindutiful subject would
refuse to use it when enjoined to do so by the magistrate. Now,
however, that rising party which claimed for the polity of the
Church a celestial origin began to ascribe to her services a new
dignity and importance. It was hinted that, if the established
worship had any fault, that fault was extreme simplicity, and
that the Reformers had, in the heat of their quarrel with Rome,
abolished many ancient ceremonies which might with advantage
have been retained. Days and places were again held in
mysterious veneration. Some practices which had long been
disused, and which were commonly regarded as superstitious
mummeries, were revived. Paintings and carvings, which had
escaped the fury of the first generation of Protestants, became
the objects of a respect such as to many seemed idolatrous.
No part of the system of the old Church had been more
detested by the Reformers than the honour paid to celibacy.
They held that the doctrine of Rome on this subject had been
prophetically condemned by the apostle Paul, as a doctrine of
devils ; and they dwelt much on the crimes and scandals which
seemed to prove the justice of this awful denunciation. Luther
had evinced his own opinion in the clearest manner, by espousing
a nun. Some of the most illustrious bishops and priests who
had died by fire during the reign of Mary had left wives and
children. Now, however, it began to be rumoured that the old
monastic spirit had reappeared in the Churqh of England ; that
there was in high quarters a prejudice against married priests ;
that even laymen, who called themselves Protestants, had made
BKFOUE THE KESTORATION. 81
resolutions of celibacy which almost amounted to vows ; nay,
that a minister of the established religion had set up a nunnery,
in which the psalms were chaunted at midnight, by a company
of virgins dedicated to God.*
Nor was 'this all. A class of questions, as to which the
founders of the Anglican Church and the first generation of
Puritans had differed little or not at all, began to furnish
matter for fierce disputes. The controversies which had divided
the Protestant body in its infancy had related almost exclusively
to Church government and to ceremonies. There had been no
serious quarrel between the contending parties on points of
metaphysical theology. The doctrines held by the chiefs of the
hierarchy touching original sin, faith, grace, predestination, and .
election, were those which are popularly called Calvinistic.
Towards the close of Elizabeth's reign her favourite prelate.
Archbishop Whitgift, drew up, in concert with the Bishop of
London and other theologians, the celebrated instrument known
by the name of the Lambeth Articles. In that instrument the
most startlhig of the Calvinistic doctrines are affirmed with a
distinctness which would shock many who, in our age, are
reputed Calvinists. One clergyman, who took the opposite side,
and spoke harshly of Calvin, was arraigned for his presumption
by the University of Cambridge, and escaped punishment only
by expressing his firm belief in the tenets of reprobation and
final perseverance, and his sorrow for the offence which he had
given to pious men by reflecting on the great French reformer.
The school of divinity of which Hooker was the chief occupies
a middle place between the school of Cranmer and the school of
Laud ; and Hooker has, in modern times, been claimed by the
Arminians as an ally. Yet Hooker pronounced Calvin to have
been a man superior in wisdom to any other divine that France
had produced, a man to whom thousands were indebted for the
knowledge of divine truth, but who was himself indebted to God
alone. When the Arminian controversy arose in Holland, the
* reckard's Life of Ferrar ; The Arminian Nunnery, or a Brief Description
of the late erected monastical Place called the Arminian Nunnery, at Little
Gidding in Huntingdonshire, 1641.
6
82 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
English government -and the English Church lent strong support
to the Calvinistic party ; nor is the English name altogether
free from the stain which has been left on that party by the
imprisonment of Grotius and the judicial murder of Barneveldt.
But, even before the meeting of the Dutch synod, that part
of the Anglican clergy which was peculiarly hostile to the Cal-
vinistic Church government and to the Calvinistic worship had
begun to regard with dislike the Calvinistic metaphysics ; and
this feeling was very naturally strengthened by the gross injus-
tice, insolence, and cruelty of the party which was prevalent at
Dort. The Anninian doctrine, a doctrine less austerely logical
than that of the early Reformers, but more agreeable to the
popular notions of the divine justice and benevolence, spread
fast and wide. The infection soon reached the court. Opin-
ions which at the time of the accession of James, no clergyman
could have avowed without imminent risk of being strij^ped of
his gown, were now the best title to preferment. A divine of
that age, who was asked by a simple country gentleman what
the Arminians lield, answered, with as much truth as wit, that
they held all the best bishoprics and deaneries in England.
While the majority of the Anglican clergy quitted, in one
direction, the position which they had originally occupied, the
majority of the Puritan body departed, in a direction diametri-
cally opposite, from the principles and practices of their fathers.
The persecution which the separatists had undergone had been
severe enough to irritate, but not severe enough to destroy.
They had been, not tamed into submission, but baited into
savageness and stubborness. After the fashion of oppressed
sects, they mistook their own vindictive feelings for emotions of
piety, encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation a
disposition to brood over their wi'ongs, and, when they had
worked themselves up into hating their enemies, imagined that
they were only hating the enemies of heaven. In the New
Testament there was little indeed which, even wh«n perverted
by the most disingenuous exposition, could seem to countenance
the indulgence of malevolent passions. But the Old Testament
coataJned the history of a race selected by God to be witnesses
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 83
of his unity and ministers of his vengeance, and specially com«
manded by him to do many things which, if done without his
special command, would have been atrocious crimes. In such a
history it was not difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to find
much that might be distorted to suit their wishes. The extreme
Puritans therefore began to feel for the Old Testament a pref-
erence, which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avow even to
themselves; but which showed itself in all their sentiments and
habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which they
refused to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the
epistles of Paul have come down to us. They baptized their
children by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew
patriarchs and warriors. In defiance of the express and reit-
erated declarations of Luther and Calvin, they turned the weekly
festival by which the Church had, from the prim'tive times,
commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into a Jewish Sab-
bath. They sought for principles of jurisprudence in the
Mosaic law, and for precedents to guide their ordinary conduct,
in the books of Judges and Kings. Their thoughts and dis-
course ran much on acts which were assuredly not recorded as
examples for our imitation. The prophet who hewed in pieces
a captive king, the rebel general who gave the blood of a queen
to the dogs, the matron who, in defiance of plighted faith, and
of the laws of eastern hospitality, drove the nail into the brain
of the fugitive ally who had just fed at her board, and who was
sleeping under the shadow of her tent, were proposed as models
to Christians suffering under the tyranny of princes and pre-
lates. Morals and manners were subjected to a code resembling
that of the synagogue, when the synagogue was in its worst
state. The dress, the deportment, tlie language, the studies, the
amusements of the rigid sect were regulated on principles not
unlike those of the Pharisees who, proud of their washed hands
and broad phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbath-
breaker and a wiuebibber It was a sin to han<j ijarlands on a
Maypole, to drink a friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a
stag, to play at chess, to wear love-locks, to put starch into a
ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules
S4 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
such as these, rules which would have appeared insupportable
to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, and contemptible to the
serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingle, threw over all
life a more than monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence
by which the great Reformei's had been eminently distinguished,
and to which they had been, in no small measure, indebted for
their success, were regarded by the new school of Protestants
with suspicion, if not with aversion. Some precisians had scru-
ples about teaching the Latin grammar, because the names of
Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo occurred iu it. The fine arts were
all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ was super-
stitious. The light music of Ben Jonsou's masques was disso-
lute. Half the line paintings in England were idolatrous, and
the other half indecent. The extreme Puritan was at once
known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the
Bour solemnity of his face, the upturned white of his eyes, the
nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all, by his peculiar
dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the imagery and
style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced into the
English language, and metaphors borrowed from the boldest
lyric poetry of a remote age and country, and applied to the
common concerns of English life, were the most striking pecu-
liarities of this cant, which moved, not without cause, the de-
rision both of Prelatists and libertines.
Thus the political and religious schism which had originated
in the sixteenth century was, during the first quarter of the seven-
teenth century, constantly widening. Theories tending to Turk-
ish despotism wei^e in fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending
to republicanism were in favour with a large portion of the
House of Commons. The violent Prelatists who were, to a man,
zealous for prerogative, and the violent Puritans who were, to
a man, zealous for the privileges of Parliament, regarded each
other with animosity more intense than that which, in the pre-
ceding generation, had existed between Catholics and Protes-
tants.
While the minds of men were in this state, the country, after
a peace of many years, at length engaged in a war which re-
BEI^OHET THE RESTOKATIOK. 85
quired strenuous exertions. This war hastened the approach of
the great constitutional ciisis. It was necessary that the King
should have a large military force. He could not have such a
force without money. He could not legally raise money with-
out the consent of Parliament. It followed, therefore, that h-*
either must administer the government "in conformity with the
sense of tlie House of Commons, or uuist venture on such a vio
lation of the fundamental laws of the land as had been unknown
during several centuries. The Plantagenets and the Tudors
had, it is true, occasionally supplied a deficiency in their revenue
by a benevolence or a forced loan : but these expedients were
always of a temporary nature. To meet the regular charge of
a long war by regular taxation, imposed without the consent of
the Estates of the realm, was a course which Henry the Eighth
himself would not have dared to take. It seemed, therefore, that
the decisive hour was approaching, and that tl^^^ English Parlia-
ment would soon either share the fate of the senates of the
Continent, or obtain supreme ascendency in the state.
Just at this conjuncture James died. Charles the First suc-
ceeded to the throne. He had received from nature a far better
understaudino;, a far stronger will, and a far keener and firmer
temper than his father's. He had inherited his father's political
theories, and was much more disposed than his father to carry
them into practice. He was, like his father, a zealous Episco-
palian. He was, moreover, what his father had never been,
a zealous Arminian, and, though no Papist, liked a Papist much
better than a Puritan. It would be unjust to deny that Charles
had some of the qualities of a good, and even of a great prince.
He wrote and spoke, not, like his father, with the exactness of
a professor, but after the fashion of intelligent and well educa-
ted gentlemen. His taste in literature and art was excellent,
his manner dignified, though not gracious, his domestic life with-
out blemish. Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters,
and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in truth, im-
pelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways. It
may seem strange that his conscience, which, on occasions of
little moment was suffisiently sensitive, should never have
86 HISTORY OF ENGIxA-ND.
reproached him with this great vice. But there is reason to be-
lieve that he was perfidious, not only from constitution and from
habit, but also on principle. He seems to have learned from the
theologians wliom he most esteemed that between him and his
subjects there could be nothing of the nature of mutual contract;
that he could not, even if he would, divest himself of his despotic
autliority , and that, in every promise which he made, there
was an implied reservation that such promise might be broken
in case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole
judge.
And now besfan that hazardous game on which were staked
the destinies of the English people. It was played on the side
of the House of Commons with keenness, but with admirable
dexterity, coolness, and perseverance. Great statesmen who
looked far behind them and far before them were at the head of
that assembly. They were resolved to place the King in such
a situation that he must either conduct the administration in con-
formity with the wishes of his Parliament, or make outrageous
attacks on the most sacred principles of the constitution. They
accordingly doled out supplies to him very sparingly. He found
that he must govern either in harmony with the House of Com-
mons, or in defiance of all law. His choice was soon made.
He dissolved liis first Parliament, and levied taxes by his own
authority. He convoked a second Parliament, and found it
more intractable than the first. He aga»n resorted to the expe-
dient of dissolution, raised fresh taxes without any show of
legal right, and threw the chiefs of the opposition into prison. At
the same time a new grievance, which the peculiar feelings and
habits of the English nation made insupportably painful, and
which seemed to all discerning men to be of fearful augury, ex-
cited general discontent and alarm. Companies of soldiers were
billeted on the people ; and martial law was, in some places,
substituted for the ancient jurisprudence of the realm.
The King called a third Parliament, and soon perceived that
the opposition was stronger and fiercer than ever. He now de-
termined on a change of tactics. Instead of opposing an inflex-
ible resistance to the demands of the Commons, he, after much
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 87
Altercation and many evasions, agreed to a compromise which,
if he had faithfully adhered to it, would have averted a long
series of calamities. The Parliament granted an ample supply.
The King ratified, in the most solemn manner, that celebrated
law, which is known by the name of the Petition of Right, and
which is the second Great Charter of the liberties of England.
By ratifying that law he bound himself never again to raise
money without the consent of the Houses, never again to im-
prison any person, except in due course of law, and never again
to subject his people to the jurisdiction of courts martial.
The day on which the royal sanction was, after many de-
lays, solemnly .given to this great Act, was a day of joy and
hope. The Commons, who crowded the bar of the House of
Lords, broke forth into loud acclamations as soon as the clerk
had pronounced the ancient form of words by which our princes
have, during many ages, signified their assent to the wishes of
the Estates of the realm. Those acclamations were reechoed
by the voice of the capital and of the nation ; but within three
weeks it became manifest that Charles had no intention of ob-
serving the compact into which he had entered. The supply
given by the representatives of the nation was collected. The
promise by which that supply had been obtained was broken.
A violent contest followed. The Parliament was dissolved with
every mark of royal displeasure. Some of the most distinguished
members were imprisoned ; and one of them. Sir John Eliot,
after years of suffering, died in confinement.
Charles, however, could not venture to raise, by his own
authority, taxes sufficient for carrying on war. He accordingly
hastened to make peace with his neighbours, and thenceforth
gave his whole mind to British politics.
Now commenced a new era. Many English Kings had oc-
casionally committed unconstitutional acts : but none had ever
systematically attempted to make himself a despot, and to re-
duce the Parliament to a nullity. Such was the end which
Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From March 1629 to
April 1640, the Houses were not convoked. Never in our his«
lory had ther© been m li4t©ryai of §i©?©a ymvik h^iwma Parlia'
88 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ment and Parliament. Only once had there been an interval of
even half that length. This fact alone is sufficient to refute
those who represent Charles as having merely trodden in the
footsteps of the Plantagenets and Tudors.
It is proved, by the testimony of the King's most strenuous
supporters, that, during this part of his reign, the provisions of
the Petition of Right were violated by him, not occasionally,
but constantly, and on system ; that a large part of the revenue
was raised without any legal authority ; and that persons ol>
noxious to the government languished for years in prison, with-
out being ever called upon to plead before any tribunal.
For these things history nuist hold the King himself chieflj
responsible. From the time of his third Parliament he was his
own prime minister. Several persons, however, whose temper
and talents were suited to his purposes, were at the head of dif-
ferent departments of the administration.
Thomas Wentworth, successively created Lord Wentworth
and Earl of Strafford, a man of great abilities, elociueuce, and
courage, but of a cruel and imperious nature, was the counsellor
most trusted in political and military affairs. He had been one
of the most distinguished members of the opposition, and felt
towards those whom he had deserted that peculiar malignity
which has, in all ages, been characteristic of apostates. He
perfectly understood the feelings, the resources, and the policy
of the party to which he had lately belonged, and had formed
a vast and deeply meditated scheme which very nearly con-
founded even the able tactics of the statesmen by whom the
House of Commons had been directed. To this scheme, in his
confidential correspondence, he gave the expressive name of
Thorough. His object was to do in England all, and more than
all, that Richelieu was doing in France ; to make Charles a
monarch as absolute as any on the Continent ; to put the estates
and the personal liberty of the whole people at the disposal of
the crown ; to deprive the courts of law of all independent au-
thority, even in ordinary questions of civil right between m.an
and man ; and to punish with merciless rigour all who mur-
mured at the acts of the government, or who applied, even in
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. • 89
the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal for relief
against those acts.*
This was his end ; and he distinctly saw in what manner
alone this end could be attained. There was, in truth, about all
his notions a clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he
had not been pursuing an object pernicious to his country and
to his kind, would have justly entitled him to liigh admiration.
He saw that there was one instrument, and only one, by which
his vast and daring projects could be carried into execution.
That instrument was a standing army. To the forming of such
an army, therefore, he directed all the energy of his strong
mind. In Ireland, where he was viceroy, he actually succeeded
in establishing a military despotism, not only over the aborigi-
nal population, but also over the English colonists, and was
able to boast that, in that island, the King was as absolute as
any prince in the whole world could be.f
The ecclesiastical administration was, in the meantime, prin-
cipally directed by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Of all the prelates of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed
farthest from the principles of the Reformation, and had drawn
nearest to Rome. His theology was more remote than even
that of the Dutch Arminians from the theology of the Calvinists.
His passion for ceremonies, his reverence for holidays, vigils,
and sacred places, his ill concealed dislike of the marriage of
ecclesiastics, the ardent and not altogether disinterested zeal
with which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence
of the laity, would have made him an object of aversion to the
Puritans, even if he had used only legal and gentle means for
the attainment of his en Is. But his understanding was narrow ;
and his commerce with the world had been small. He was by
* The correspondence of Wentworth seems to me fully to bear out what I have
said in the text. To transcribe all the passages which have led me to the conclu-
sion at which I have arrived, would be impossible ; nor would it be easy to make
a better selection than has already been made by Mr. Hallam. I may, however,
direct the attention of the reader particularly to the very able paper which Went'
worth drew up respecting the affairs of the Palatinate. The date is March 31,
1637.
t These are Wentworth's own woMs. See his letter to Laud, dated Dec. 16,
1684.
90 . HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
nature rash, irritable, quick to feel for his own dignity, slow to
sympathise with the sufferings of others, and prone to the error,
common in superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevish
and malignant moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his di-
rection every corner of the realm was subjected to a constant
and minute inspection. Every little congregation of separatists
was tracked out and broken up. Even the devotions of private
families could not escape the vigilance of his spies. Such fear
did his rigour inspire that the deadly hatred of the Church,
which festered in innumerable bosoms, was generally disguised
under an outward show of conformity. On the very eve of
troubles, fatal to himself and to his order, the Bishops of several
extensive dioceses were able to report to him that not a sino-le
dissenter was to be found within their jurisdiction.*
The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against the
civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of
the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure of
the King, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they
were, they were less ready and less efTicient instruments of
arbitrary power than a class of courts, the memory of which is
still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep
abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts in
power and in infamy were the Star Chamber and the High
Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious inqui-
sition. Neither was a part of the old constitution of England.
The Star Chamber had been remodelled, and the High .Commis-
sion created, by the Tudors, The power which these boards
had possessed before the accession of Charles had been extensive
and formidable, but had bee i small indeed when compared with
that which they now usui ped. Guided chiefly by the violent
spirit of the primate, and freed from the control of Parliament,
they displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which
had been unknown to any former age. The government was
able through their instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory,
and mutilate without restraint- A separate council which sate
* See Ills report to Charles tor the year 1639.
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 91
M York, under the presidency of Wentworth, was armed, in de-
faance of law, by a pure act of prerogative, with ahiiost bound-
less power over the northern counties. All these tribunals in-
sulted and defied the authority of Westminster Hall, and daily
committed excesses which the most distinguished Royalists have
warmly condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that there
was hardly a man of note in the realm who had not personal
experience of the harshness and greediness of the Star Chamber,
that the High Commission had so conducted itself that it had
scarce a friend left in the kingdom, and that the tyranny of the
Council of York had made the Great Charter a dead letter on
the north of the Trent.
The government of England was now, in all points but one,
as despotic as that of France. But that one point was all im-
portant. There was still no standing army. There was therefore,
no security that the whole fabric of tyranny might not be sub-
verted in a single day ; and, if taxes were imposed by the royal
authority for the support of an army, it was probable that there
would be an immediate and irresistible explosion. This was
the difficulty Avhich more than any other perplexed Wentworth.
The Lord Keeper Finch, in concert with other lawyers who
were emploved by the government, recommended an expedient
which was eagerly adopted. The ancient princes of England,
as they called on the inhabitants of the counties near Scotland
to arm and array themselves for the defence of the border, had
sometimes called on the maritime counties to furnish ships for
the defence of the coast. In the room of ships money had
sometimes been accepted. Tliis old practice it was now deter-
mined, after a long interval, not only to revive but to extend.
Former princes had raised shipmoney only in time of war : it
was now exacted in a time of profound peace. Former princes,
even in the most perilous wars, had raised shipmoney only
along the coasts : it wa" now exacted from the inland shires.
Former princes had raised shipmoney only for the* maritime
defence of the country : it was now exacted, by the admission
of the Royalists themselves, with the object, not of maintaining
a navy, but of furnishing the King wit-li supplies which might
92 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
be increased at his discretion to any amount, and expended at
his discretion for any purpose.
Tlie wliole nation was alarmed and incensed. John Haihp'
den, an opulent and well born gentleman of Buckinghamshire,
highly considered in his own neighbourhood, but as yet little
known to the kingdom generally, had the courage to step for-
ward, to confront the whole power of the government, and take
on himself the cost and the risk of disputing the prerogative
to which the King laid claim. The case was argued before the
judges in the Exchequer Chamber. So strong were the argu-
ments against the pretensions of the crown that, dependent and
servile as the judges were, the majority against Hampden was
the smallest possible. Still there was a majority. The inter-
preters of the law had pronounced that one great and produc-
tive tax might be imposed by the royal authority. Wentworth
justly observed that it was impossible to vindicate their judg-
mei:t except by reasons directly leading to a conclusion which
they had not ventured to draw. If monev mioht lejjallv be
raised w^ithout the consent of Parliament for the support of a
ileet, it was not easy to deny that money might, without con-
sent of Parliament, be legally raised for the support of an
army.
Tlie decision of the judges increased the irritation of
the people. A century earlier, irritation less serious would
have produced a general rising. But discontent did not
now so readiljr as in an earlier age take the form of rebel-
lion. The nation had been long steadily advancing in wealth
and in civilisation. Since the great northern Earls took up
arms against Elizabeth seventy years had elapsed ; and during
those seventy years there had been no civil war. Never, dur-
ing the whole existence of the English nation, had so long a
period passed without intestine hostilities. Men had become
accustomed to the pursuits of peaceful industry, and, exasperated
as they were, hesitated long before they drew the sword.
This was the conjuncture at which the liberties of the na-
tion were in the greatest peril. The opponents of the govern-
ment began to despair of the destiny of their country ; and
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 93
many looked to the American wilderness as the only asylum in
which they could enjoy civil and spiritual freedom. There a
few resolute Puritans, who, in the cause of their religion, feared
neither the rage of the ocean nor the hardships of uncivilised
life, neither the fangs of savage beasts nor the tomahawks of
more savage men, had built, amidst the primeval forests, vil-
lages which are now great and opulent cities, but which have,
through every change,, retained some trace of the character
derived from their founders. The government regarded these
infant colonies with aversion, and attempted violently to stop
the stream of emigration, but could not prevent the population
of New England from being largely recruited by stouthearted
and Godfearing men from every part of the old England.
And now Wentworth exulted in the near prospect of Thorough.
A few years might probably suffice for the execution of his great
design. If strict economy were observed, if all collision with
foreign powers were carefully avoided, the debts of the crown
would be cleared off : there would be funds available for the
support of a large military force ; and that force would soon
break the refractory spirit of the nation.
At this crisis an act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the
whole face of public affairs. Had the King been wise, he
would have pursued a (cautious and soothing policy towards
Scotland till he Wiis master in the South. For Scotland was of
all his kingdoms that in which there was the greatest risk that
a spark might produce a flame, and that a flame might become
a conflagration. C^onstitutional opposition, indeed, such as he
had encountered at Westminster, he had not to apprehend at
Edinburgh. The Parliament of his northern kingdom was a
very different body from that which bore the same name in
England. It was ill constituted : it was little considered ; and
it had never imposed any serious restraint on any of his prede-
cessors. The three Estates sate in one house. The commis-
sioners of the burghs were considered merely as retainers of the
great nobles. No act could be introduced till it had been
approved by the Lords of Articles, a committee which was
really, though not in form, nominated by the crown. But,
94 HISTORY OK ENGLAND.
thouo-h the Scottish Parliament was obsequious, the Scottish
people had always been singularly turbulent and ungovernable.
They had butchered their first James in his bedchumoer: they
had repeatedly arrayed themselves in arms against James the
Second ; they had slain James the Third on the field of battle :
their disobedience had broken the heart of James the Fifth •
they had deposed and imprisoned Mary : they had. led her son
captive ; and their temper was still as intractable as ever.
Their habits were rude and martial. All along the southern
border, and all along the line between the higlihiuds and the
lowlands, raged an incessant predatory war. In every part of
the country men were accustomed to redress their wrongs by
the strong hand. Whatever loyalty the nation had anciently
felt to the Stuarts had cooled during their long absence. The
supreme influence over the public mind was divided between
two classes of malecontents, the lords of the soil and the
preachers ; lords animated by the same spirit which had often
impelled the old Douglasses to withstand the royal house, and
preachers who had inherited the republican opinions and the
unconquerable spirit of Knox. Both the national and religious
feelings of the population had been wounded. All orders of
men complained that their country, that country which had, with
so much glory, defended her independence against the ablest and
bravest Plantagenets, had, through the instrumentality of her
native princes, become in effect, though not in name, a province
of England. In no part of Europe had tlie Calvin istic doctrine
and discipline taken so strong a hold on the public mind. The
Church of Rome was regarded by the great body of the people
with a hatred which might justly be called ferocious ; and the
Church of England, which seemed to be every day becoming
more and more like the Church of Rome, was an object of
scarcely less aversion.
The government had long wished to extend the Anglican
system over the whole island, and had alread}^, with this view,
made several changes highly distasteful to every Presbyterian.
One innovation, however, the most hazardous of all, because it
was directly cognisable by the senses of the common jjeople,
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 95
had not yet been attempted. The public worship of God was
still couducted in the manner acceptable to the nation. Now,
however, Charles and Laud determined to force on the Scots
the English liturgy, or rather a liturgy which, wherever it
differed l^-om that of England, differed, in the judgment of all
riofid Protestants, for the worse.
To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and
in criminal ignorance or more criminal c )utempt of public
feeling, our country owes her freedom. The first performance
of the foreign ceremonies produced a riot. The riot rapidly
became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were
mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation was in
arms. The power of England was indeed, as appeared some
years later, sufficient to coerce Scotland : but a large part of the
English people sympathised with the religious feelings of the
insurgents ; and many Englishmen who had no scruple about
antiphonies and genuflexions, altars and surplices, saw with
pleasure the progress of a rebellion which seemed likely to
confound the arbitrary projects of the court, and to make the
calling of a Parliament necessary.
For the senseless freak which had produced these effects
"Wentworth is not responsible.* It had, in fact, thrown all his
plans into confusion. To counsel submission, however, was not
in his nature. An attempt was made to put down the insurrec-
tion by the sword : but the King's military means and military
talents were unequal to the task. To impose fresh taxes on
England in defiance of law, would, at this conjuncture, have
been madness. No resource was left but a Parliament ; and
in the spring of 1640 a Parliament was convoked.
The nation had been put into good humour by the prospect
of seeing constitutional government restoi'ed, and grievances
redressed. The new House of Commons was more temperate
and more respectful to the throne than any which had sate
since the death of Elizabeth. The moderation of this assembly
has been highly extolled by the most distinguished Royalists,
and seems to have caused no small vexation and disappointment
* See his letter to the Earl of Northumberland, dated July 30, 1638.
96 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
to the chiefs of the opposition : but it was the uniform practice
of Charles, a practice equally impolitic and ungenerous, to re-
fuse all compliance with the desires of his people, till those
dasires were expressed in a menacing tone. As soon as the
Commons showed a disposition to take into consideAtiou the
grievances under which the country had suffered during eleven
years, the King dissolved the Parliament with every mark of
displeasure.
Between the dissolution of this shortlived assembly aud the
meeting of that ever memorable body known by the name of
the Long Parliament-, intervened a few months, during which
the yoke was pressed down more severely than ever on the na-
tion, while the spirit of the nation rose up more angrily than
ever against the yoke. Members of the House of Commons
were questioned by the Privy Council touching their parliamen-
tary conduct, and thrown into prison for refusing to reply.
Shipmoney was levied with increased rigour. The Lord Mayor
and the Sheriffs of London were threatened with imj^risonment
for remissness in collecting the payments. Soldiers were en-
listed by force. Money for their support was exacted from their
counties. Torture, which had always been illegal, and which
had recently been declared illegal even by the servile judges of
that age, was inflicted for the last time in England in the month
of May, 1610.
Everything now depended on the event of the King's mili-
tary operations against the S'^ots. Among his troops there was
little of that feeling which soparates professional soldiers from
the mass of a nation, and attaches them to their leaders. His
army, composed for the most part of recruits, who regretted the
plough from which they had been violently taken, and who
were imbued with the religious and political sentiments then
prevalent throughout the country, was more formidable to him-
self than to the enemy. The Scots, encouraged by the heads
of the English opposition, aud feebly resisted by the English
forces, marched across the Tweed and the T^'ne, and encamped
on the borders of rurkshire. And now the murmurs of dis-
content swelled uito an uproar by which all spirits save one
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 97
were overawed. But the voice of Strafford was still for
Thorouofh ; and he even, in this extremity, showed a nature so
cruel and despotic, that his own pikemen were ready to tear him
in pieces.
There was yet one last expedient which, as the King flat
tered himself, might save him from the misery of facing another
House of ('ommous. To the House of Lords he was less
averse. The Bishops were devoted to him ; and though the
temporal peers were generally dissatisfied with his administra-
tion, they were, as a class, so deeply interested in the mainte-
nance of order, and in the stability of ancient institutions, that
they were not likely to call for extensive reforms. Departing
from the uninterrupted practice of centuries, he called a Great
Council consisting of Lords alone. But the Lords were too
prudent to assume the unconstitutional functions with which he
wished to invest them. Without money, without credit, with-
out authority even in his own camp, he yielded to the pressure
of necessity. The Houses were convoked ; and the elections
proved that, since the spring, the distrust and hatred with which
the government was regarded had made fearful progress.
In November, 1640, met that renowned Parliament which,
in spite of many errors and disasters, is justly entitled to the
reverence and gratitude of all who, in any part of the world,
enjoy the blessings of constitutional government.
During the year which followed, no very important division
of opinion appeared in the Houses. The civil and ecclesiasti-
cal administration had, through a period of nearly twelve years,
been so oppressive and so unconstitutional that even those
classes of which the inclinations are generally on the side of
order and authority were eager to promote popular reforms,
and to bring the instruments of tyranny to justice. It was en-
acted that no interval of more than three years should ever
elapse between Parliament and Parliament, and that, if writs
under the Great Seal were not issued at the proper time, the
returning officers should, without such writs, call the constit-
uent bodies together for the choice of representatives. The
Star Chamber, the High Commission, the Council of York were
*J8 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
swept away. Men who, after suffering cruel mutilations, had
been confined in remote dungeons, regained their liberty. On
the chief ministers of the crown the vengeance of the nation
was unsparingly wreaked. The Lord Keeper, the Primate, the
Lord Lieutenant were impeached. Finch saved himself by
flight. Laud was flung into the Tower. Straffoi'd was put to
death by act of attainder. On the day on which this act passed,
the King gave his assent to a law by which he bound himself
not to adjourn, prorogur, or dissolve the existing Parliament
without its own consent.
After ten months of assiduous toil, the Houses, in Septem
ber 1641, adjourned for a short vacation ; and the King visited
Scotland. He with difRculty pacified that kingdom by consent-
ing, not only to relinquish his plans of ecclesiastical reform,
but even to pass, with a very bad grace, an act declaring that
episcopacy was contrary to the word of God.
The recess of the Euirlish Parliament lasted six weeks.
The day on which the Houses met again is one of the most
remarkable epochs in our histor3\ From that day dates the
corporate existence of the two great parties which have ever
.mce alternately governed the country. In one sense, indeed,
the distinotion which then became obvious had always existed,
and always must exist. For it has its origin in diversities of
temper, of understanding, and of interest, which are found in,
all societies, and which will be found till the human mind ceases
to be drawn in opposite directions by the charm of habit and
by the charm of novelt3^ Not only in politics but in literature,
in art, in science, in surgery ^d mechanics, in navigation and
agriculture, nay, even in mathematics, we find this distinction.
Everywhere there is a class of men who cling with fondness to
whatever is ancient, and who, even when convinced by over-
powering reasons that innovation would be beneficial, consent
to it with many misgivings and forebodings. We find also
everywhere another class of men, sanguine in hope, bold in
speculation, always pressing forward, quick to discern the im»
perfections of v/iiatever exists, disposed to think lightly of the
risks and inconveniences which attend improvements, and disr
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 99
posed to give every change credit for being an improvement.
In the sentiments of both chxsses there is something to approve.
But of both the best specimens will be found not far from the
common i^rontier. The extreme section of one class consists
of bigoted dotards : the extreme section of the other consists of
shallow and reckless empirics.
There can be no doubt that in our very first Parliaments
might have been discerned a body of members anxious to jjre-
serve, and a body eager to reform. But, while the sessions of
the legislature were short, these bodies did not take definite
and permanent forms, array themselves under recognised leaders,
or assume distinguishing names, badges, and war cries. iTuring
the first months of the Long Parliament, the indignation excited
by many years of lawless oppression was so strong and general
that the House of Commons acted as one man. Abuse after
abuse disappeared without a struggle. If a small minority of
the representative body wished to retain the Star Chamber and
the High Commission, that minority, overawed by the enthusiasm
and by the numerical superiority of the reformers, contented
itself with secretly regretting institutions which could not, with
any hope of success, be openly defended. At a later period the
Royalists found it convenient to antedate the separation between
themselves and their oj^yponents, and to attribute the Act which
restrained the King from dissolving or proroguing the Parlia-
ment, the Triennial Act, the impeachment of the ministers, and
the attainder of Strafford, to the faction which afterwards made
war on the Kinij. But no artifice could be more disinjxenuous.
Every one of those strong measures was actively promoted by
the men who Avere afterwards foremost among the Cavaliers.
No republican spoke of the long misgovernment of Charles
more severely than Colepepper. The most remarkable speech
in favour of the Triennial Bill was made by Digby. The im-
peachment of the Lord Keeper was moved by Falkland. The
demand that the Lord Lieutenant should be kept close prisoner
was made at the bar of the Lords * by Hyde. Not till the law
attainting Sti-afford was proposed did the signs of serious dis-
union become visible. Even against that law, a law which
100 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
nothing but extreme necessity could justify, only about sixty
members of the House of Commons voted. It is certain that
Hyde was not in the minority, and that Falkland not only
voted with the majority, but spoke strongly for the bilL Even
the few who entertained a scruple about inflictmg death by a
retrospective enactment thought it necessary to express the
utmost abhorrence of Strafford's character and administration.
But under this apparent concord a great schism was latent ;
and when, in October, 1641, the Parliament reassembled after
a short recess, two hostile parties, essentially the same with those
which, under different names, have ever since contended, and a'-e
still contending, for the direction of public affairs, appeared con-
fronting each other. Daring some years they were designated
as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were subsequently called
Tories and Whigs i nor does it seem that these appellations are
likely soon to become obsolete.
It would not bcdifficul'-. to compose a lampoon or panegyric
on either of these renowned factions. For no man not utterly
destitute of judgment .. ^1 candor will deny that there are many
deep stains on the fame of the party to which he belongs, or that
the party to which he is opposed may justly boast of many illus-
trious names, of many heroic actions, and of many great services
rendered to the state. The truth is that, though both parties
have often seriously erred. 'and could have spared neither.
If, in her institutions, freedom and order, the advantages arising
from innovation and the advantages arising from prescription,
have been combined to an extent elsewhere unknown, we may
attribute this happy peculiarity to the strenuous conflicts and al-
ternate victories of two rival confederacies of statesmen, a con-
federacy zealous for authority and antiquity, and a confederacy
zealous for liberty and progress.
It ought to be remembered that the difference between the
two great sections of English politicians has always been a dif-
ference rather of degree than of principle. There were certain
limits on the right and on the left, which were very rarely over-
stepped. A few enthusiasts on one side were ready to lay all
our laws and franchises at the fefet of our Kings. A few enthu'
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 101
siasts on the other side were bent on pursuing, through endless
civil troubles, their darling phantom of a republic. But the
great majority of those who fought for the crown were averse to
despotism ; and the great majority of the champions of popular
rights were averse to anarchy. Twice, in the course of the sev-
enteenth century, the two parties suspended their dissensions,
and united their strength in a common cause. Their first coa-
lition restored hereditary monarchy. Their second coalition res-
cued constitutional freedom.
It is also to be noted that these two parties have never been
i\},q whole nation, nay, that they have never, taken together,,
made up a majority of the nation. Between them has always
been a great mass, which has not steadfastly adhered to either,
which has sometimes remained inertly neutral, and which has
sometimes oscillated to and fro. That mass has more than once
passed in a few years from one extreme to the other, and back
again. Sometimes it has changed si.^ec, merely because it was
tired of supporting the same men, sometimes because it was dis-
mayed by its own excesses, rometimes because it had expected
imjaossibilities, and had been disappointed. But whenever it
has leaned with its whole wei t in either direction, that weight
has, fftr the time, been irresisti
When the rival parties first appeared in a distinct form, they
seemed to be not unequally matched. On the side of the
government was a large ma 'ty of the nobles, and of those op;
ulent and well descended gentlemen to whom nothing was want-
ing of nobility but the name. These, with the dependents whose
support they could command, were no small power in the state.
On the same side were the great body of the clergy, both the
Universities, and all those laymen who were strongly attached
to episcopal government and to the Anglican ritual. These
respectable classes found themselves in the company of some
allies much less decorous than themselves. The Puritan aus-
terity drove to the King's faction all who made pleasure their
business, who affected gallantry, sj^lendour of dress, or taste in
the higher arts. With these went all who live by amusing the
leisure of others, from the painL^^^nd the comic poet, down t'-
OTATB TEACHERS COCL
.dANTA BARBARA. CALlfo^,,
/ D // ^ rf
102 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ihe ropedancer and the Merry Andrew. For these artists well
knew that they might thrive under a superb and luxurious des-
potism, but must starve under the rigid rule of the precisians.
In the same interest were the Roman Catholics to a man. The
Queen, a daughter of France, was of their own faith. Her hus-
band was known to be strongly attached to her, and not a little
in awe of her. Though undoubtedly ar Protestant on conviction,
he regarded the professors of the old religion with no ill-will,
and would gladly have granted them a much larger toleration
than he was disposed to concede to the Presbyterians. If the
opposition obtained the mastery, it was probable that the san-
guinary laws enacted against Papists, in the reign of Elizabeth,
would be severely enforced. The Roman Catholics were there-
fore induced by the strongest motives to espouse the cause ol
the court. They in general acted with a caution which brought
on them the reproach of cowardice and lukewarmness ; but it is
probable that, in maintaining great reserve, they consulted the
King's interest as well as their own. It was not for his service
that they should be conspicuous among his friends.
The main strength of .the opposition lay among the small
freeholders in the country, and among the merchants and shop-
keepers of the towns. But these were headed by a formidable
minority of the aristocracy, a minority which included the rich
and powerful Earls of Northumberland, Bedford, Warwick,
. Stamford, and Essex, and several other Lords of great wealth
and influence. In the same ranks was found the whole body
of Protestant Nonconformists, and most of those members of
the Established Church who still adhered to the Calvinistic
opinions which, forty years before, had been generally held by
the prelates and clergy. The municipal corporations took, with
few exceptions, the same side. In the House of Commons the
opposition preponderated, but not very decidedly.
Neither i)arty wanted strong arguments for the course which
it was disposed to take. The reasonings of the most enlightened
Royalists may be summed up thus : — " It is true that great
abuses have existed ; but they have been redressed. It is true
that precious rights have been invaded ; but they have beeo
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 103
vindicated and surrounded with new securities. The sittings of
the Estates of the realm liave been, in defiance of all precedent
and of the spirit of the constitution, intermitted during eleven
years ; but it has now been provided that henceforth three years
shall never elapse without a Parliament. The Star Chamber,
the High Connnission, the Council of York, oppressed and plun-
dered us ; but those hateful courts have now ceased to exist.
The Lord Lieutenant aimed at establishing military despotism ;
but he has answered for his treason witli his head. The Pri-
mate tainted our worship with Popish rites and punished our
scruples with Popish cruelty ; but he is awaiting in the Tower
the judgment of his peers. The Loid Keeper sanctioned a plan
by which the pro2:)erty of every man in England was placed at
the mercy of the Crown ; but he has been disgraced, ruined, and
compelled to take refuge in a foreign land. The ministers of
tyranny have expiated their crimes. The victims of tyranny
have been compensated for their sufferings. It would therefore
be most unwise to persevere further in that course which was
justifiable and necessary when we first met after a long interval,
and found the whole administration one mass of abuses. It is
time to take heed that we do not so pursue our victory over
despotism as to run into anarchy. It was not in our power to
overturn the bad institutions which lately afflicted our country,
without shocks which have loosened the foundations of Govern-
ment. Now that those institutions have fallen, we must ha. t:;n
to prop the edifice which it was lately our duty to batter.
Henceforth it will be our wisdom to look with jealousy on
schemes of innovation, and to guard from encroachment all the
prerogatives with which the law has, for the public good, armed
the sovereign."
Such were the views of those men of whom the excellent
Falkland may be regarded as the leader. It was contended on
the other side with not less force, by men of not less ability
and virtue, that the safety which the liberties of the English
people enjoyed was rather appai'ent than real, and that the
arbitrary projects of the court would be resumed as soon as the
vigilance of the Commons was relaxed. True it was, — such was
104 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the reasoning of Pym, of Hollis, and of Hampden, — that many
good laws had been passed ■ but, if good laws had been sufficient
to restrain the King, his subjects would have had little reason
ever to complain of his administration. Tlie recent statutes
were surely not of more authority than the Great Charter or
the Petition of Right. Yet neither the Great Charter, hal-
lowed by the veneration of four centuries, nor the Petition of
Right, sanctioned, aftei' mature reflection, and for valuable con-
sideration, by Charles himself, had been found effectual for the
protection of the people. If once the check of fear were with-
drawn, if once the spirit of opposition were suffered to slumber,
all the securities for English freedom resolved themselves into
a single one, the roy;.l word ; and it had been proved by a long
and severe experience that the royal word could not be trusted.
The two parties were still regarding each other with cau-
tious hostility, and had not yet measured their strength, when
news arrived which inflamed the passions and confirmed the
opinions of both. The great chieftains of Ulster, who, at the
time of the accession of James, had, after a long struggle, sub-
mitted to the royal authority, had not long brooked the humili-
ation of dependence. They had conspired against the English
government, and had been attainted of treason. Their immense
domains had been forfeited to the crown, and had soon been
peopled by thousands of English and Scotch emigrants. The
new settlers were, in civilisation and intelligence, far superior
to the native population, and sometimes abused their superiority.
The animosity produced by difference of race was increased by
difference of religion. Under the iron rule of Wentworth,
scarcely a murmur was heard i but, when that strong pressure
was withdrawn, when Scotland had set the example of success-
ful resistance, when England was distracted by internal quarrels,
the smothered rage of the Irish broke forth into acts of fearful
violence. On a sudden, the aboriginal population rose on the
colonists. A war, to which national and theological hatred
gave a character of . peculiar ferocity, desolated Ulster, and
spread to the neighbouring jjrovinces. The castle of Dublin
was scarcely thought secure. Every post brought to London
BEFORE THE RESTORATIOX. ' 1 U J
exaggerated accounts of outrages which, without any exag-
geration, were sufficient to move pity and horror. These evil
tidings roused to the height the zeal of both the great parties
which were marshalled against each other at Westminster. The
Royalists maintained that it was the first duty of every good
Englishman and Protestant, at such a crisis, to strengthen the
hands of the sovereign. To the opposition it seemed that there
were now stronojer reasons than ever for thwartinjj and restrain-
ing him. That the commonwealth was in danger was undoubt-
edly a good reason for giving large powers to a trustworthy
magistrate : but it was a good reason for taking away powers
from a magistrate who was at heart a public enemy. To raise a
great army had always been the King's first object. A great
army must now be raised. It was to be feared that, unless some
new securities were devised, the forces levied for the reduction
of Ireland would be employed against the liberties of England.
Nor was this all. A horrible suspicion, unjust indeed, but not
altogether unnatural, had arisen in many minds. The Queen
was an avowed Roman Catholic : the King was not regarded
by the Puritans, whom he had mercilessly persecuted, as a
sincere Protestant ; and so notorious was his duplicity, that
tliuere was no treachery of which his subjects might not, with
some show of reason, believe him capable. It was soon
whispered that the rebellion of the Roman Catholics of Ulster
was part of a vast work of darkness which had been planned at
Whitehall.
After some weeks of prelude, the first great parliamentary
conflict between the parties, which have ever since contended,
and are still contending, for the government of the nation, took
place on the twenty-second of November, 1G41. "It was moved
by the opposition, that the House of Commons should present
to the King a remonstrance, enumerating the faults of his
administration from the time of his accession, and expressing"
the distrust with which his policy was still regarded by his
people. That assembly, which a few months before had been
unanimous in calling for the reform of abuses, was now divided
into two fierce and eager factions of nearly equal strength.
106 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
After a hot debute of many hours, the remonstrance was carried
b}'^ only eleven votes.
The result of this struggle was highly favourable to the
conservative party. It could not be doubted that only some
great indiscretion could prevent them from shortly obtaining the
predominance in the Lower House. The Upper House was
already their own. Nothing was wanting to ensure their suc-
cess, but that the King should, in all his conduct, show respect
for the laws and scrupulqus good faith towards his subjects.
His first measures promised well. He had, it seemed, at
last discovered that an entire change of system was necessary,
and had wisely made up his mind to what could no longer be
avoided. He declared his determination to govern in harmony
with the Commons, and, for that end, to call to his councils men
in whose talents and character the Commons might place con-
fidence. Nor was the selection ill made. Falkland, Hyde, and
Colepepper, all three distinguished by the part which they had
taken in reforming abuses and in punishing evil ministers, were
invited to become the confidential advisers of the Crown, and
were solemnly assured by Charles that he would take no step
in any way affecting the Lower House of Parliament without
their privity.
Had he kept this promise, it cannot be doubted that the
reaction which was already in progress would very soon have
become quite as strong as the most respectable Royalists would
have desired. Already the violent members of the opposition
had begun to despair of the fortunes of their party, to tremble
for their own safety, and to talk of sell g their estates and
emigrating to America. That the fair prospects which had
begun to open- before the King were suddenly overcast, that his
life was darkened by adversity, and at length shortened by
violence, is to be attributed to his own faithlessness and con-
"tempt of law.
The truth seems to be that he detested both the parties into
which the House of Commons was divided : nor is this strange ;
for in both those parties the love of liberty and the love of or-
der were mingled, though in different proportions. The advis*
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 107
ers whom necessity had compelled him to call round him were
by no means after his own heart. They had joined in condemn-
ing his tyranny, in abridging his power, and in punishing his
instruments. They were now indeed prepared to defend in a
strictly legal way his strictly legal prerogative ; but they would
have recoiled with horror from the thousfht of reviving Went-
worth's projects of Thorough. They were, therefore, in the
King's opinion, traitors, who differed only in the degree of their
seditious malignity from Pym and Hampden.
He accordingly, a few days after he had promised the chiefs
of the constitutional Royalists that no step of importance should
be taken without their knowledge, formed a resolution the most
momentous of his whole life, carefully concealed that resolution
from them, and executed it in a manner which overwhelmed
tliem with shame and dismay. He sent the Attorney General
to impeach iPym, Hollis, Hampden, and other members of the
House of Commons of high treason at the bar of the Plouse of
Lords. Not content with this flagrant violation of the Great
Charter and of the uninterrupted practice of centuries, he went
in person, accompanied by armed men, to seize the leaders of
the opposition within the walls of Parliament.
The attempt failed. The accused members had left the
House a short time before Charles entered it. A sudden and
violent revulsion^of feeling, both in the Parliament and in the
country, followed. The most favourable view that has ever been
taken of the King's conduct on this occasion by his most partial
advocates is that he had weakly suffered himself to be hurried
into a gross indiscretion by the evil counsels of his wife and of
his courtiers. But the general voice loudly charged him with
far deeper guilt. At the very moment at which his subjects,
after a long estrangement produced by his maladministration,
were returning to him with feelings of confidence and affection,
he had aimed a deadly blow at all their dearest rights, at the
privileges of Parliament, at the very principle of trial by jury.
He had shown that he considered opposition to his arbi-
trary designs as a crime to be expiated only by blood.
He had broken faith, not only with his Great Council and with
108 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
his people, but with his own adherents. He had done what, but
for an unforeseen accident, would probably have produced a
bloody conflict round the Speaker's chair. Those who had the
chief sway in the Lower House now felt that not only their
power and popularity, but their lands and their necks, were
staked on the event of the struggle in which they were engaged.
The flagging zeal of the party opposed to the court revived in an
instant. During the night which followed the outrage the wdiole
city of London was in arms. In a few hours the roads leading
to the capital were covered with multitudes of yeomen spurring
hard to Westminster with the badges of the parliamentary cause
in their hats. In the House of Commons the opposition became
at once irresistible, and carried, by more than two votes to one,
resolutions of unprecedented violence. Strong bodies of the
trainbands, regularly relieved, mounted guard round Westmin-
ter Hall. The gates of the King's palace were daily besieged
by a furious multitude whose taunts and execrations were heard
even in the presence chamber, and who could scarcely be kept
out of the royal apartments by the gentlemen of the household.
Had Charles remained much longer in his stormy capital, it is
probable that the Commons would have fou;:d a plea for making
him, under outward forms of respect, a state prisoner.
He quitted London, never to return till the day of a terrible
and memorable reckoning had arrived. A negotiation began
wlxich occupied many months. Accusations and recriminations
passed backward and forward between the contending parties.
All accommodation had become impossible. The sure punish-
ment which waits on habitual perfidy had at length overtaken the
King. It was to no purpose that he now j^awned his royal word,
and invoked heaven to witness the sincerity of his j^rofessions.
The distrust with which his adversaries i-ejjarded him was not
to be removed by oaths or treaties. They were convinced that
they could be safe only when he was utterly helpless. Their
demand, therefore, was, that he should surrender, not only those
prerogatives which he had usurped in violation of ancient laws
and of his own recent promises, but also other prerogatives
which the English Kings had always possessed, and continue to
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 109
possess at the present day. No minister must be appointed, no
peer created, without the consent of the Houses. Above all,
the sovereign must resign that supreme military authority which,
from time beyond all memory, had appertained to the regal
office.
That Charles would comply with such demands while he
had any means of resistance, was not to be expected. Yet it
will be difficult to show that the Houses could safely have
exacted less. They were truly in a most embarrassing position.
The great majority of the nation was firmly attached to heredi-
tary monarchy. Those who held republican opinions were as
yet few, and did not venture to speak out. It was therefore
impossible to abolish kingly government. Yet it was plain that
no confidence could be placed in the King. It would have been
absurd in those who knew, by recent proof, that he was bent ou
destroying them, to content themselves with presenting to him
another Petition of Right, and receiving from him fresh promises
similar to those which he had repeatedly made and broken.
Nothing but the want of an army had prevented him from
entirely subverting the old constitution of the realm. It was
now necessary to levy a great regular army for the conquest of
Ireland ; and it would therefore have been mere insanity to
leave him m possession of that plenitude of military authority
which his ancestors had enjoyed.
When a country is in the situation in which England then was,
when the kingly office is regarded with love and veneration, but
the person who fills that ofiice is hated and distrusted, it should
seem that the course which ought to be taken is obvious. Tlie dig-
nity of the ofiice should be preserved : the person should be discard-
ed. Thus .our ancestors acted in 1399 and in 1689. Had there
been, in 1642, any man occupying a position similar to that which
Henry of Lancaster occupied at the time of the deposition of
Richard the Second, and which William of Orange occupied at
the time of the deposition of James th e Second, it is probable
that the Houses would have changed the dynasty, and would
have made no formal change in the constitution. The new
King, called to the throne by their choice, and dependent on
110 HISTORY OF ENGLAND,
their support, would have been under the necessity of governing
in conformity with their wishes and opinions. But there was
no prince of the blood royal in the parliamentary party ; and,
though that party contained many men of high rank and many
men of eminent ability, there was none who towered so conspic-
uously above the rest that he could be proposed as a candidate
for the crown. As there was to be a King, and as no new King
could be found, it was necessary to leave the regal title to
Charles Only one course, therefore, was left: and that was to
disjoin the regal title from the regal prerogatives.
The change which the Houses proposed to make in our in-
stitutions, though it seems exorbitant, when distinctly set fort-h
and digested into articles of capitulation, really amounts to
little more than the change which, in the next generation, was
effected by the Revolution. Tt is true that, at the Revolution,
the sovereign was not deprived 1 y law of the jiower of naming
his ministers : but it is equally true that, since the Revolution,
no minister has been able to retain office six months in opposi-
tion to the sense of the House of Commons. It is true that the
sovereign still possesses the power of creating peers, and the
more important jjower of the sword : but it is'equally true that
in the exercise of these powers the sovereign has, ever since the
Revolution, been guided by advisers who possess the confidence
of the representatives of the nation. In fact, the leaders of the
Roundhead party in 1642, and the statesmen who, about half a
century later, effected the Revolution, had exactly the same
object in view. That object was to terminate the contest
between the Crown and the Parliament, by giving to the Par-
liament a supi'eme control over the executive administration.
The statesmen of the Revolution effected this indirectly by
changing the dynasty. The Roundheads of 1 642, being unable
to change the dynasty, were comj^elled to take a direct course
towards their end.
We cannot, however, wonder that the demands of the oppo-
sition, importing as they did a complete and formal transfer to
the Parliament of powers which had always belonged to the
Crown, should have shocked that great party of which the
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. Ill
characteristics are respect for constitutional authority and dread
of violent innovation. That party had recently been in hopes
of obtaining by peaceable means the ascendency in the House
of Commons ; but every such hope had been blighted. The
duplicity of Charles liad made his old enemies irreconcileable,
had driven back into the ranks of the disaffected a crowd of
moderate men who were in the very act of coming over to his
side, and had so cruelly mortified his best friends that they had
for a time stood aloof in silent shame and resentment. Now,
however, the constitutional Royalists were forced to make their
choice between two dangers ; and they thought it their duty
rather to rally round a prince whose past conduct they con-
demned, and whose word inspired them with little confidence,
ihan to suffer thevt^egal office to be degraded, and the polity of
the realm to be entirely remodelled. With such feelings, many
men whose virtues and abilities would have done honour to any
cause, ranged themselves on the side of the King.
In August 1642 the sword was at length drawn ; and soon,
in almost every shire of the kingdom, two hostile factions
appeared in arms against each other. It is not easy to say
which of the contending parties was at first the more formid-
able. The Houses commanded London and the counties round
London, the fleet, the navigation of the Thames, and most of
the large towns and seaports. They had at their disposal
almost all the military stores of the kingdom, and were able to
raise duties, both on goods imported from foreign countries, and
on some important products of domestic industry. The King
was ill provided with artillery and ammunition. The taxes
which he laid on the rural districts occupied by his troops jjro-
duced, it is probable, a sum far less than that which the Parlia-
ment drew from the city of London alone. He relied, indeed,
chiefly, for pecuniary aid, on the munificence of his opulent
adherents. Many of these mortgaged their land, pawned their
jewels, and broke up their silver chargers and christening
bowls, in order to assist him. But experience has fully proved
that the voluntary liberality of individuals, even in times of the
greatest excitement, is a poor financial resource when compared
112 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
with severe and methodical taxation, which presses on the
willing and unwilling alike.
Charles, however, had one advantage, which, if he had used
it well, would have more than compensated for the want of
stores and money, and which, notwithstanding his mismanage-
ment, gave him, during some months, a superiority in the war.
His troops at first fought much better than those of the Parlia-
■ ment. Both armies, it is true, were almost entirely composed
of men who had never seen a field of battle. Nevertheless, the
difference was great. The Parliamentary ranks were filled
with hirelings whom want and idleness had induced to enlist.
Hampden's regiment was regarded as one of the best; and even
Hampden's regiment was described by Cromwell as a mere
rabble of tapsters and serving men out of 'place. The royal
army, on the other hand, consisted in great part of gentlemen,
high spirited, ardent, accustomed to consider dishonour as more
terrible than death, accustomed to fencing, to the use of fire
arms, to bold riding, and to manly and perilous sport, which
has been well called the image of war. Such gentlemen,
mounted on their favourite horses, and commanding little bands
composed of their younger brothers, grooms, gamekeepers, and
huntsmen, were, from the very first day on whicli they took the
field, qualified to play their part with credit in a skirmish. The
steadiness, the prompt obedience, the mechanical precision of
movement, which are characteristic of the regular soldier, these
gallant volunteers never attained. But they were at first
opposed to enemies as undisciplined as themselves, and far less
active, athletic, and daring. For a time, therefore, the Cava-
liers were successful in almost every encounter.
The Houses had also been unfortunate in the choice of a
general. The rank and wealth of the Earl of Essex made him
one of the most important members of the parliamentary party.
He had borne arms on the Continent with credit, and, when
the war began, had as high a military reputation as any man in
the country. Bu*: it soon appeared that he was unfit for the
post of Commander in Chief. He had little energy and no
originality. The methodical tactics which he had learned in
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. i:3
tte war of the Palatinate did not save him from the disiirate
of being surjDrised and baffled by such a Captain as Rupert,
who could claim no higher fame than that of an enterprising
partisan.
Nor were the officers who held the chief commissions under
Essex qualified to supply what was wanting in him. For this,
indeed, the Houses are scarcely to be blamed. In a country
which had not, within the memory of the oldest person livinr,
made war on a great scale by land, generals of tried skill an,!
valour were not to be found. It was necessary, therefore, ia
the first instance, to trust untried men ; and the preference was
naturally given to men distinguished either by their station, or
by the abilities which they had displayed in Parliament. In
scarcely a single instance, however, was the selection fortunate.
Neither the grandees nor the orators proved good soldiers. The
Earl of Stamford, one of the greatest nobles of England, was
routed by the Royalists at Stratton. Nathaniel Fiennes,
inferior to none of his contemporaries in talents for civil busi-
ness, disgraced himself by the pusillanimous surrender of Bristol
Indeed, of all the statesmen who at this juncture accepted liiglj
military commands, Hampden alone appears to have carried
into the camp the capacity and strength of mind wliich had
made him eminent in politics.
When the war had lasted a year, the advantage was decid-
edly with the Royalists. They were victorious, both in the
western and in the northern counties. They had wrested
Bristol, the second city in the iiingdom, from the Parliament.
They had won several battles, and had not sustained a single
serious or ignominious defeat. Among the Roundheads adver-
sity had begun to produce dissension and discontent. Tlic
Parliament was kept in alarm, sometimes by plots, and son.e-
times by riots. It was thought necessary to fortify London
against the royal army, and to hang some disaffected citizeaj
at their own doors. Several of the most distinguished pccri
who had hitherto remained at Westminster fled to the court at
Oxford ; nor can it be doubted tliat, if the operations of the
Cavaliers had, at this season, been directed by a sagacious and
8
114 HISTORY OF ENGLAND,
powerful mina, Charles would soon have marched iii triumjjh
to Whitehall.
But the King suffered the auspicious moment to pass away;
and it never returned. In August 1643 he sate down before
the city of Gloucester. That city was defended by the inhab-
itants and by the garrison, with a determination such as had
not, since the commencement of the war, been shown by the
adherents of the Parliament. The emulation of London was
excited. The trainbands of the City volunteered to march
wherever their services might be recpiired. A great force was
speedily collected, and began to move westward. The siege of
Gloucester was raised : the Royalists in every part of the king-
dom were disheartened: the spirit of the iiarliamentary party re-
vived : and the apostate Lords, who had lately fled from West-
minster to Oxford, hastened back from Oxford to Westminster.
And now a new and alarming class of symptoms began to
appear in the distempered body politic. There had been, from
the first, in the parliamentary party, some men whose m.inds
were set on objects from which the majority of that party
would have shrunk with horror. These men were, in religion.
Independents. They conceived that every Christian congrega-
tion had, under Christ, supreme jurisdiction in things spiritual ;
that appeals to provincial and national synods were scarcely
less unscriptural than appeals to the Court of Arches, or to the
Vatican ; and that Popery, Prelacy, and Presbyterianism were
merely three forms of one great apostasy. In politics, the
Independents were, to use the phrase of their time, root and
branch men, of, to use the kindred phrase of our own time,
radicals. Not content Avitli limiting the power of the monarch,
they were desirous to erect a commonwealth on the ruins of the
old English polity. At first they had been inconsiderable, both
in numbers and in weight ; but before the war had lasted two
years they became, not indeed the largest, but the most powerful
faction in the country. Some of the old parliamentary leaders
had been removed by death ; and others had forfeited the
public confidence. Pym had been borne, with princely honours,
to a grave among the Plantagenets. Hampden had fallen, as
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 115
became hira, wnile vainly endeavouring, by his hei'oic example,
to inspire his followers with courage to face the fiery cavalry
of Rupert. Bedford had been untrue to the cause. Northum-
berland was known to be lukewarm. Essex and his lieutenants
had shown little vigour and ability in the conduct of military
operations. At such a conjuncture it was that the Independent
party, ardent, resolute, and uncompromising, began to raise its
head, both in the camp and in the House of Commons.
The soul of that party was Oliver Cromwell. Bred to
peaceful occupations, he had, at more than forty ^ears of age,
accepted a commission in the parliamentary army. No sooner
had he become a solaier than he discerned, with the keen glance
of genius, what Essex, and men like Essex, with all their
experience, were unable to perceive. He saw precisely where
the strength of the Royalists lay, and by what means alone that
strength could be overpowered. He saw that it was necessary
to reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He saw also that
there were abundant and excellent materials for the purj^ose,
materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than those of
which the gallant squadrons of the King were composed. It
was necessary to look for recruits who were not mere merce-
naries, for recruits of decent station and grave character, fearing
God and zealous for public liberty. With such men he filled
his own regiment, and, while he subjected them to a discipline
more rigid than had ever before been known in England, he
administered to their intellectual and moral nat e stimulants
of fearful potency.
The events of the year 1644 fully proved the superiority
of his abilities. In the south, where Essex held the command,
the parliamentary forces underwent a succession of sliameful
disasters ; but in the north the victory of Marston Moor fully
compensated for all that had been lost elsewhere. That vic-
tory was not a more serious blow to the Royalists than to the
party which had hitherto been dominant at Westminster ; for
it was notorious that the day, disgracefully lost by the Presby-
terians, had been retrieved by the energy of Cromwell, and by
the steady valour of the warriors whom he had trained.
116 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
These events produced the Selfdenyiug Ordinance and the
new model of the army. Under decorous pretexts, and with
every mark of respect, Essex and most of those who had held
high posts under him were removed ; and the conduct of the
war was intrusted to very different hands. Fairfax, a brave
soldier, but of mean understanding and irresolute temper, was
the nominal Lord General of the forces ; but Cromwell was
their real head.
Cromwell made haste to organise the whole army on the
same principles on which he had organised his own regiment.
As soon as this process was complete, the event of the war was
decided. The Cavaliers had now to encounter natural courage
equal to their own, enthusiasm stronger than their own, and
discipline such as was utterly wanting to them. It soon became
a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax and Cromwell were men
of a different breed from the soldiers of Essex. At Naseby
took place the fti'st great encounter between the Royalists and
the remodelled army of the Houses. The victory of the Round-
heads was complete and decisive. It was followed by other
triumphs in rapid succession. In a few months the authority
of the Parliament was fully established over the whole king-
dom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was by them, in a manner
which did not much exalt their national character, delivered up
to his English subjects.
While the eveiiD of the war was still doubtful, the Houses
had put the Primate to death, had interdicted, within the sphere
of their authority, the use of the Liturgy, and had required all
men to subscribe that renowned instrument known by the name
of the Solemn League and Covenant. Covenanting woi-k, as
it was called, went on fast. Hundreds of thousands affixed
their names to the rolls, and, with hands lifted up towards
heaven, swore to endeavour, without respect of persons, the ex-
tirpation of Popery and Prelacy, heresy and schism, and to
bring to public trial and condign punishment all who should
hinder the reformation of religion. When the struggle was
over, the work of innovation and revenge was pushed on with
increased ardour. The ecclesiastical polity of the kingdom was
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 117
remotlelled. Most of the old clergy were ejected from their
benefices. Fines, often of ruinous amount, were laid on the
Royalists, already impoverished by large aids furnished to the
King. Many estates were confiscated. Many proscribed Cav-
aliers found it exfjedient to purchase, at an enormous cost, the
protection of eminent members of the victorious party. Large
domains, belonging to the crown, to the bishops, and to the
chapters, were seized, and either granted away or put up to
auction. "In consequence these spoliations, a great part of
the soil of England was at once offered for sale. As money
was scarce, as the market was glutted, as the title was insecure,
and as the awe inspired by powerful bidders prevented free
competition, the prices were often merely nominal. Thus many
old and honourable families disappeared and were heard of no
more ; and many new men rose rapidly to affluence.
But, while the Houses were employing their authority thus,
it suddenly passed out of their hands. It had been obtained by
calling into existence a power which could not be controlled.
In the summer of 1647, about twelve months after the last for-
tress of the Cavaliers had submitted to the Parliament, the
Parliament was compelled to submit to its own soldiers.
Thirteen years followed, during which England was, under
various names and forms, really governed by the sword. Never
before that time, or since that time, was the civil power in our
country subjected to military dictation.
The army which now became supreme in the state was an
army very different from any that has since been seen among
us. At present the pay of the common soldier is not such as
can seduce any but the humblest class of English labourers
from their calling. A barrier almost impassable separates him
from the commissioned officer. The great majority of those
who rise high in the service rise by purchase. So numerous
and extensive are the remote dependencies of England, that
every man who enlists in the line must expect to pass many
years in exile, and some years in climates unfavourable to the
health and vigour of the European race. The army of the
Long Parliament was raised for home service. The pay of
'»
118 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the private soldier was much above the wages earned by the
great body of the people ; and, if he distinguished himself by
intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high com-
mands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons
superior in station and education to the multitude. These per-
sons, sober, moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been
induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by
the love of novelty and license, not by the arts of recruiting
officers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with the
desire of distinction and promotion. The boast of the soldiers,
as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was that they
had not been forced into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly
for the sake of lucre, that they were no janissaries, but freeborn
Englishmen, who had, of their own accord, put their lives in
jeopardy for the liberties and religion of England, and whose
right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation
which they had saved.
A force thus composed might, without injury to its eflliciency,
be indulged in some liberties fvhich, if allowed to any other
troops, would have proved subversive of all discipline. In gen-
eral, soldiers who should form themselves into political clubs,
elect delegates, and pass resolutions on high questions of state,
would soon break loose from all control, would cease to form an
army, and would become the worst and most dangerous of mobs.
Nor would it be safe, in our time, to tolerate in any regiment
religious meetings, at which a corporal versed in Scripture
should lead the devotions of his less gifted colonel, and admon-
ish a backsliding major. But such was the intelligence, the
gravity, and the selfcommand of the warriors whom Cromwell
had trained, that in their camp a political organisation and a
religious organisation could exist without destroying military
organisation. The same men, who, off duty, were noted as
demagogues and field preachers, were distinguished by steadi-
ness, by the spirit of order, and by prompt obedience on watch;
on drill, and on the field of battle.
In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn
courage characteristic of the English people was, by the system
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 119
of Cromwell, at once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders
have maintained orders as strict. Other leaders have inspired
their followers with zeal as ardent. But in his camp alone the
most rigid discipline was found in company with the fiercest en-
thusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the precision of
machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of Crusad-
ers. From the time when the army was remodelled to the time
when it was disbanded, it never found, either in the British
islands or on the Continent, an enemy who could stand its
onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan
warriors, often surrounded by dilFiculties, sometmies contending
against threefold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but
never failed to destroy and break in pieces whatever force was
opposed to them. They at length came to regard the day of
battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the
most renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence.
Turenne was startled by the shout of stern exultation with
which hie English allies advanced to the combat, and expressed
the delight of a true soldier, when he learned that it was ever
the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to rejoice greatly when they
beheld the enemy ; and the banished Cavaliers felt an emotion
of national pride, when they saw a brigade of their countrymen,
outnumbered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it
in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a pas-
sage into a counterscarp which had just been pronounced im-
pregnable by the ablest of the Marshals of France.
But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell
from other armies was the austere morality and the fear of God
which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most
zealous Royalists that, in that singular camp, no oath was heard,
no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that, during the long
dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen
and the honour of woman were held sacred. If outrages were
committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from
those of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No ser-
vant girl comj)lained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats.
Not an ounce of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths.
120 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
But a Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and
Child were painted, j^roduced in tlie Puritan ranks an excite-
ment which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to
quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain his
musketeers and dragoons from invading by main force the pul-
pits of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that
time, were not savoury ; and too many of our cathedrals still
bear the marks of the hatred with which those stern spirits re-
garded every vestige of Popery.
To keep down the English people was no light task even
for that army. No sooner was the first pressure of military
tyranny felt, than the nation, unbroken to such servitude, began
to struggle fiercely. Insurrections broke out even in those
counties which, during the recent war, had been the most sub-
missive to the Parliament. Indeed, the Parliament itself ab-
horred its old defenders niore than its old enemies, and was der
sirous to come to terms of accommodation with Charles at the
expense of the troops. In Scotland at the same time, a coali-
tion was formed between the Royalists and a large body of
Presbyterians who regarded the doctrines of the Independents
tvith detestation. At length the storm burst. There were ris-
ings in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, "Wales. The fleet in the
Thames suddenly hoisted the royal colours, stood out to sea, and
menaced the southern coast. A great Scottish force crossed the
frontier and advanced into Lancashire. It misht well be sus-
pected that these movements were contemplated with secret com-
placency by a majority both of the Lords and of the Commons.
But the yoke of the army was not to be so shaken off.
While Fairfax suppressed the risings in the neighbourhood of
the capital, Oliver routed the Welsh insurgents, and, leaving
their castles in ruins, marched against the Scots. His troops
were few, when compared with the invaders ; but he was little
in the habit of counting his enemies. The Scottish army was
utterly destroyed. A change in the Scottish government fol-
lowed. An administration, hostile to the King, was formed at
Edinburgh ; and Cromwell, more than ever the darling of his
soldiers, returned in triumph to Loudon.
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 121
And now a design, to which, at the commencement of the
civil war, no man would have dared to allude, and which was
not less inconsistent with the Solemn League and Covenant
than with the old law of England, began to take a distinct form.
The austere warriors who ruled the nation had, during some
months, meditated a fearful vengeance on the captive King.
When and how the scheme originated ; whether it spread from
the general to the ranks, or from the ranks to the general ;
whether it is to be ascribed to policy using fanaticism as a tool,
or to fanaticism bearing down policy with headlong impulse, are
questions which, even at this day, cannot be answered with per-
fect confidence. It seems, however, on the whole, probable that
he who seemed to lead was really forced to follow, and that, on
this occasion, as on another great occasion a few years later, he
sacrificed his own judgment and his own inclinations to the
wishes of the army. For the power which he had called into
existence was a power which even he could not always control ;
and, that he might ordinarily command, it was necessary that
he should sometimes obey. He publicly protested that he was
no mover in the matter, that the first steps had been taken with-
out his privity, that he could not advise the Parliament to strike
the blow, but that he submitted his own feelings to the force of
circumstances which seemed to him to indicate the purposes of
Providence. It Ji is been the fashion to consider these profes-
sions as instances of the hypocrisy which is vulgarly imputed to
him. But even those who pronounce him a hypocrite will
scarcely venture to call him a fool. Tliey are therefore bound
to show that he had some purpose to serve by secretly stimula-
ting the army to take that course which he did not venture
openly to recommend. It would be absurd to suppose that he
who was never by his respectable enemies represented as wan-
tonly cruel or implacably vindictive, would have taken the most
important step of his life under the influence of mere malevolence.
He was far too wise a man not to know, when he consented to
shed that august blood, that he was doing a deed which was
inexpiable, and which would move the grief and horror, not
only of the Royalists, but of nine tenths of those who had stood
122 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
by the Parliament. Whatever visions may have deluded others,
he was assuredly dreaming neither of a republic on the antique
pattern, nor of the millennial reign of the Saints. If he already
aspired to be himself the founder of a new dynasty, it was plain
that Charles the First was a less formidable competitor than
Charles the Second would be. At the moment of the death of
Charles the First the loyalty of every Cavalier would be trans-
ferred, unimpaired, to Charles the Second. Charles the First
was a captive : Charles the Second would be at liberty. Charles
the First was an object of suspicion and dislike to a large pro>
portion of those who yet shuddered at the thought of slaying
him : Charles the Second would excite all the interest which
belongs lo distressed youth and innocence. It is impossible to
believe that considerations so obvious, and so important, es-
caped the most'profound politician of that age. The truth is
that Cromwell had, at one time, meant to mediate between the
throne and the Parliament, and fco reorganise the distracted
State by the power of the sword, imder the sanction of the royal
name. In this design he persisted till he was compelled to
abandon it by the refractory temper of the soldiers, and by the
incurable duplicity of the King. A party in the camp began to
clamour for the head of the traitor, who was for treating with
Agag. Conspiracies were formed. Threats of impeachment
were loudly uttered. A mutiny broke out, which all the vigour
and resolution of Oliver could hardly quell. And though, by a
judicious mixture of severity and kindness, he succeeded in
restoring order, he saw that it would be in the highest degree dif-
ficult and perilous to contend against the rage of warriors, who
regarded the fallen tyrant as their foe, and as the foe of their
God. At the same time it became more evident than ever that
the King could not be trusted. The vices of Charles had grown
upon him. They were, indeed, vices which difficulties and per-
plexities generally bring out in the strongest light. Cunning is
the natural defence of the weak. A prince, therefore, who is
habitually a deceiver when at the height of power, is not likely
to learn frankness in the midst of embarrassments and distresses.
Charles was not only a most unscrupulous but a most unlucky
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 123
dissembler. There never was a politician to whom so mahy
frauds and falsehoods were brought home by undeniable evidence.
He publicly recognised the Houses at Westminster as a legal
Parliament, and, at the same time, made a private minute in
council declaring the recognition null. He publicly disclaimed
■all thought of calling in foreign aid against his peo^jle : he pri-
vately solicited aid from France, from Denmark, and from Lor-
raine. He publicly denied that he employed Papists : at the
same time he privately sent to his generals directions to employ
every Papist that would serve. He publicly took the sacrament
at Oxford, as a pledge that he never would even connive at
Popery. He privately assured h*is wife, that he intended to
tolerate Popery in England ; and he authorised Lord Glamor-
gan to promise that Popery should be established in Ireland.
Then he attempted to clear himself at his agent's expense.
Glamorgan received, in the Royal handwriting, reprimands
hitended to be read by others, and eulogies which were to be seen
only by himself. To such an extent, indeed, had insincerity
now tainted the King's whole nature, that his most devoted
friends could not refrain from complaining to each other^ with
bitter grief and shame, of his crooked politics. His defeats,
they said, gave them less pain than his intrigues. Since he had
been a prisoner, there was no section of the victorious party
-lyhich had not been the object both of his flatteries and of his
machinations ; but never was he more unfortunate than when
he attempted at once to cajole and to undermine Cromwell.
Cromwell had to determine whether he would put to hazard
the attachment of his party, the attachment of his army, his own
greatness, nay his own life, in an attempt which would probably
have been vain, to save a prince whom no engagement could
bind. With many struggles and misgivings, and probably not
without many prayers, the decision was made. Charles was
left to his fate. The military saints resolved that, in defiance
of the old laws of the realm, and of the almost universal senti-
ment of the nation, the King should expiate his crimes with his
blood. He for a time expected a death lik^ that of his unhappy
predecessors, Edward the Second and Richard the Second. But
224 J^ISTORT OF ENGLAND.
h'fe was in no danger of such treason. Those who had him in
their gripe were not midnight slabbers. What they did they
did in order thai it might be a spectacle to heaven and earth,
and that it might be held in everlasting remembrance. They
enjoyed keenly the very scandal which they gave. That the
ancient constitution and the public opinion of England were
directly opposed to regicide made i-egicide seem strangely fascina-
ting to a party bent on effecting a, complete political and social
revolution. In order to accomplish their purpose, it was neces^
sary that they should first break in pieces every part of the
machinery df the government ; and this necessity was rather
agreeable than painful to them. The Commons passed a vote
tending to accommodation with the King. The soldiers ex-
cluded the majority by force. The Lords unanimously rejected
the proposition that the King should be brought to trial. Their
house was instantly closed. No court, known to the law, would
take on itself the office of judging the fountain of justice. A
revolutionary tribunal was created. That tribunal pronounced
Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a ^mblic enemy ;
and his head was severed from his shoulders, before thousands
of spectators, in front of the banqueting hall of his own palace.
In no long time it became manifest that those political and
religious zealots, to whom this deed is to be ascribed, had
committed, not only a crime, but an error. They had given to
a prince, hitherto known to his people chiefly by his faults, an
opportunity of displaying, on a great theatre, before the eyes of
all nations and all ages, some qualities which irresistibly call
forth the admiration and love of mankind, the high spirit of a
gallant gentleman, the patience and meekness of a penitent
Christian. Nay, they had so contrived their revenge that the
very man whose life had been a series of attacks on the liberties
of England now seemed to die a martyr in the cause of those
liberties. No demagogue ever produced such an impression on
the public mind as the captive King, who, retaining in that
extremity all his regal dignity, and cpnfronting death with
dauntless courage, gave utterance to the feelings of his oppressed
people, manfully refused to plead before a court unknown to
BEFORE THK RESTORATION. 125
the law, appealed from military violence to the principles of
the constitution, asked by what right the House of> Commons
had been purged of its most respectable members and the
House of Lords deprived of its legislative functions, and told
liis weeping hearers that he was defending, not only his own
cause, but theirs. His long misgovernment, his iimumerable
perfidies, were forgotten. His memory was, in the minds of
the great majority of his subjects, associated with those free
institutions which he had, during many years, laboured to
destroy : for those free institiitions had perished with him, and,
amidst the mournful silence of a community kept down by
arms, had been defended by his voice alone. From that day
began a reaction in favour of monarchy and of the exiled house,
a reaction which never ceased till the throne had again been
set up in all its old dignity.
At first, however, the slayers of the King seemed to have
derived new energy from that sacrament of blood by which
they had bound themselves closely together, and separated
themselves for ever from the great body of their countrymen.
England was declared a commonwealth. The House of Com-
mons, reduced to a small number of members, was nominally
the supreme jDower in the state. In fact, the army and its
great chief governed everything. Oliver had made his choice.
He had kept the hearts of his soldiers, and had broken with
almost every other class of his fellow citizens. Beyond the
limits of his camps and fortresses he could scarcely be said to
have a party. Those elements of force which, when the civil
war broke out, had appeared arrayed against each otheV, were
combined against him ; all the Cavaliers, the great majority of
the Roundheads, the Anglican Church, the Presbyterian Church,
the Roman Catholic Church, England, Scotland, Ireland. Yet
such was Ills genius and resolution that he was able to over-
power and crush everything that crossed his path, to make
himself more absolute master of his country than any of her
legitimate Kings had been, and to make his country more
dreaded and respected than she had been during many genera-
tions under the rule of her legitimate Kings.
126 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
i
England had already ceased to struggle. But the two
other kingdoms which had been governed by the Stuarts were
hostile to the new republic. The Independent party was
equally odious to the Roman Catholics of Ireland and to the
Presbyterians of Scotland. Both those countries, lately in
rebellion against Charles the First, now acknowledged the
authority of Charles the Second.
But everything yielded to the vigour and ability of Crom-
well. In a few months he subjugated Ireland, as Ireland had
never been subjugated during the five centuries of slaughter
which had elapsed since the landing of the first Norman
settlers. He resolved to put an end to that conflict of races
and religions which had so long distracted the island, by making
the English and Protestant population decidedly predominant.
For this end he gave the rein to the fierce enthusiasm of his
followers, waged war resembling tliat which Israel waged on
the Canaanites, smote the idolaters with the edge of tlie sword,
so that great cities were left without inhabitants, drove many
thousands to the Continent, shipped off many thousands to the
West Indies, and supplied the void thus made by pouring in
numerous colonists, of Saxon blood, and of Calvinistic faith.
Strange to say, under that iron rule, the conquered country
began to wear an outward face of prosperity. Districts, which
had recently been as wild as those where the first white settlers
of Connecticut were contending with the red men, were in a few
years transformed into the likeness of Kent and Norfolk.
New buildings, roads, and plantations were everywher« seen.
The r*nt of estates rose fast ; and soon the English landowners
began to complain that they were met in every market by the
products of Ireland, and to clamour for protecting laws.
From Ireland the victorious chief, who was now in name,
as he had long been in reality. Lord General of the armies of
the Commonwealth, turned to Scotland. The Youns KinffM-as
there. ,He had consented to profess himself a Presbyterian,
and to subscribe the Covenant ; and, in return for these con-
cessions, the austere Puritans who bore sway at Edinburgh had
permitted him to assume the crown, and to hold, under their
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 127
inspection and control, a solemn and melancholy court. This
mock royalty was of short duration. In two great battles
Cromwell annihilated the military force of Scotland. Charles
fled for his life, and, with extreme difficulty, escaped the fate
of his father. The ancient kingdom of the Stuarts was reduced,
for the first time, to profound submission. Of that independ-
ence, so manfully defended against the mightiest and ablest of
the Plantagenets, no vestige was left. The English Parliament
made laws for Scotland. English judges held assizes in Scot-
land. Even that stubborn Church, which has held its own
against so many governments, scarce dared to utter an audible
murmur.
Thus far there had been at least the semblance of harmony be-
tween the warriors who had subjugated Ireland and Scotland and
the politicians who sate at Westminster : but the alliance which
had been cemented by danger was dissolved by victory. The
Parliament forgot that it was but tb.e creature of the army. The
army was less disposed than ever to submit to the dictation of the
Parliament. Indeed the few members who made up what was
contemptuously called the Rump of the House of Commons had
no more claim than the military chiefs to be esteemed the rep-
resentatives of the nation. The dispute was soon brought to a
decisive issue. Cromwell filled the House with armed men. The
Speaker was pulled out of his chair, the mace taken from the
table, the room cleared, and the door locked. The nation, which
loved neither of the contending parties, but which was forced,
in its own despite, to respect the capacity and resolution of the
General, looked ou with patience, if not with complacency.
King, Lords, and Commons, had now in turn been van-
quished and destroyed ; and Cromwell seemed to be left the
sole heir of the powers of all three. Yet were certain limitations
still imposed on him by the very army to which he owed his
immense authority. That singular body of men was, for the
most part, composed of zealous republicans. In the act of
enslaving their country, they had deceived themselves into the
belief that they were emancipating her. The book which they
most venerated furnished them with a precedent which was
128 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
frequently in their mouths. It was true that the ignorant and
ungrateful nation murmured against its deliverers. Even so
had another chosen nation murmured against the leader who
brought it, by painful and dreary paths, from the house of
bondage to the land flowing with milk and honey. Yet had
that leader rescued his brethren in spite of themselves ; nor had
he shrunk from making terrible examples of those who con-
tenined the proffered freedom, and pined for the fleshpots, the
taskmasters, and the idolatries of Egypt. The object of the
warlike saints who surrounded Cromwell was the settlement of
a free and pious commonwealth. For that end they were ready
to employ, without scruple, any means, however violent and
lawless. It was not impossible, therefore, to establish by their
aid a dictatorship such as no King had ever exercised : but it
was probable that their aid would be at once withdrawn from a
ruler who, even under strict constitutional restraints, should
venture to assume the kingly name and dignity.
The sentiments of Cromwell were widely different. He
was not what he had been ; nor would it be just to consider the
change which his views had undergone as the effect merely of
selfish ambition. He had, when he came up to the Long
Pai'liament, brought with him from his rural retreat little
knowledge of books, no experience of great affairs, and a tem-
per galled by the long tyranny of the government and of the
hierarchy. He had, during the thirteen years which followed,
gone through a political education of no common kind. He
had been a chief actor in a succession of revolutions. He had
been long the soul, and at last the head, of a party. He had
commanded armies, won battles, negotiated treaties, subdued,
pacified, and regulated kingdoms. It would have been strange
indeed if his notions had been still the same as in the days when
his mind was principally occupied by his fields and his religion,
and when the greatest events which diversified the course of
his life were a cattle fair or a prayer meeting at Huntingdon.
He saw that some schemes of innovation for which he had once
been zealous, whether good or bad in themselves, were oj^posed
to the general feeling of the country, and that, if he persevered
BEFORK THE RESTORATION. 129
in those schemes, he had uothiiig before him but constant
trouUcG, which must be suppressed by the constant use of the
sword. He therefore wished to restore, in all essentials, that
ancient constitution which the majority of the people had always
loved, and for which they now pined. The course afterwards
taken by Monk was not open to Cromwell. The memory of
one terrible day separated the great regicide for ever from the
House of S^trart. What remained was that he should mount
the ancient English throne, and reign according to the ancient
English polity. If he could effect this, he might hope that the
wounds of the lacerated State would heal fast. Great nunabers
of honest and quiet mon would speedily rally round him. Those
Royalists whose attachment was rather to institutions than
to persons, to the kingly office than to King Charles the First
or King Charles the Secmd, would soon kiss the hand of King
Oliver. The 23eers, who now remained sullenly at their country
houses, and refused to take any part in public affairs, would,
when summoned to their House by the writ of a King in pos-
session, gladly resume their ancient functions. Northumlxr-
land and Bedford, Manchester and Pembroke, would be prouct
to bear the crown and the spurs, the sceptre and the globe,
before the restorer of ai'istocracy. A sentiment of loyalty
would gradu.dly bind the people to the new dynasty ; and, on
the decease of the founder of that dynasty, the royal dignity
might descend with general acquiescence to his posterity.
The ablest Royalists were of opinion that these views were
correct, and that, if Cromwell had been permitted to follow
his own judgment, the exiled line would never have been re-
stored But his plan was directly opposed to the feelings of
the only class which he dared not offend. The name of
King was hateful to the soldiers. Some of them were indeed
unwilling to see the administration in the hands of any single
person. The great majority, however, were disposed to sup-
port their general, as elective first magistrate of a common-
wealth, against all factions which might resist his authority :
but they would not consent that he should assume the regal
title, or that the dignity, which was the just reward of his per-
130 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
sonal merit, should be declared hereditary in his famih^ Ali
that was left to him was to give to the new republic a constitu-
tion as like the constitution of the old monarchy as the army
would bear. That his elevation to power might not seem"to be
merely his own act, he convoked a council, composed partly
of persons on whose support he could depend, and jjartly of
persons whose opposition he might safely defy. Tliis assembly,
which he called a Parliament, and which the j^opulace nick-
named, from one of the most conspicuous members, Barebones's
Parliament, alter exposing itself during a short time to the
public contempt, surrendered back to the General the powers
which it had received from him, and left him at liberty to frame
a plan of government.
His plan bore, from the first, a considerable resemblance to
the old English" constitution: but, in a few years, he thought
it safe to proceed further, and to restore almost every part of
the ancient system under new names and forms. The title of
King was not revived ; but the kingly prerogatives were in-
trusted to a Lord Hicjh Protector. The sovereign was called
not His Majesty, but His Highness. He was not crowned and
anointed in Westminster Abbey, but was solemnly enthroned,
girt with a sword of state, clad in a robe of purple, and pre-
sented with a rich Bible, in Westminster Hall. His office was
not declared hereditary : but he was permitted to name his suc-
cessor ; and none could doubt that he would name his son.
A House of Commons was a necessary part of the new
polity. In constituting this body, the Protector showed a
wisdom and a public spirit which were not duly appreciated by
his contemporaries. The vices of the old representative sys-
tem, though by no means so serious as they afterwards became,
had already been remarked by farsighted men. Cromwell re-
formed that system on the same principles on which Mr. Pitt,
a hundred and thirty years later, attempted to reform it, and
on which it was at length reformed in our own times. Small
boroughs were disfranchised even more unsparingly than in 1832 ;
and the number of county members was greatly increased.
Very few unrepresented towns had yet grown into importance.
BEFORK THE RESTORATION 131
Of those towns the most considerable wore Manchester,
Leeds, and Halifax. Representatives were given to all three.
An addition was made to the number of the members for the
capital. The elective franchise was placed on such a footing
that every man of substance, whether possesfed of freehold
estates in laud or not, had a vote for the courty in which he
resided. A few Scotchmen and a few of the English colonists
settled in Ireland were summoned to the assembl} which was to
legislate, at Westminster, for every part of the Brtish isles.
To create a House of Lords was a less easy task. Democ-
racy does not require the support of prescription Monarchy
has often stood without that support. But a patrician order is
the work of time. Oliver found already existing a nobility,
opulent, highly considered, and as popular with the i ommonalty
as any nobility has- ever been. Had he, as King o.*^ England,
commanded the peers to meet him in Parliament according to
the old usage of the realm, many of them would undoubtedly
have obeyed the call. This he could not do ; :uid it was to no
purpose that he offered to the chiefs of illustriou _i.Tiil:es seats
in his new senate. They conceived that they could not accept
a nomination to an upstart assembly without renouncing their
birthright and betraying their order. The Protector was. there-
fore, under the necessity of filling his Upper House with new
men who, during the late stirring times, had made themselves
conspicuous. This was the least happy of his contrivances, and
displeased all parties. The Levellers were angry with him for
instituting a privileged class. The multitude, which felt re-
spect and fondness for the great historical names of the land-
laughed without restraint at a House of Lords, in which lucky
draymen and shoemakers were seated, to which few of the old
nobles were invited, and from which almost all those old noble?
who were invited turned disdainfully away.
How Oliver's Parliaments were constituted, however, was
practically of little moment : for he possessed the means of
conducting the administration without their support, and in de-
fiance of their opposition. His wish seems to have been to govern
constitutionally, and to substitute the empire of the laws for that
/
132 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
of the sword. But he soon fomid that, hated as he was, both by
Royalists and Presbyterians, he could be safe only by being ab-
solute. The first House of Commons which the people elected by
his command, questioned his authority, and was dissolved Avitliout
having passed a single act. His second House of Commons,
though it recognised him as Protector, and would gladly have
made him King, obstinately refused to acknowledge his new
Lords. He had no course left but to dissolve the Parliament.
" God," he exclaimed, at parting, " be judge between you and
me ! "
Yet was the energy of the Protector's administration in no-
wise relaxed by these dissensions. Those soldiers who would
not suffer him to assume the kingly title stood by him when he
ventured on acts of power, as high as any English King has
ever attempted. The government, therefore, though in form a
republic, was in truth a despotism, moderated only by the wis-
dom, the sobriety, and the magnanimity of the despot. The
country was divided into military districts. Those districts were
placed undp- the command of Major Generals. Every insur-
rectionary m.jvement was promptly j^ut down and punished.
The fear inspn'ed by the power of the sword, in so strong, steady,
and expert a hand, quelled the spirit both of Cavaliers and
Levellers. The loyal gentry declared that they were still as
ready as ever to risk their lives for the old government and the
old dynasty, if there were the slightest hope of success : but to
rush, at the head of their serving men and tenants, on the pikes
of brigades victorious in a hundred battles and sieges, would be
a frantic waste of innocent and honourable blood. Both Royal-
ists and Republicans, having no hope in open resistance, began
to revolve dark schemes of assassination : but the Protector's
intelligence was good: his vigilance was unremitting ; and, when-
ever he moved beyond the walls of his palace, the drawn swords
and cuirasses of his trusty bodyguards encompassed him thick
an every side.
Had he been a cruel, licentious, and rapacious prince, the
nation might have found courage in despair, and might have
made a convulsive effort to free itself from military domination.
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 133
But the grievances which the country suffered, though such as
excited serious discontent, were by no means such as impel great
masses of men to stake their lives, their fortunes, and the wel-
fare of their families against fearful odds. The taxation, though
heavier than it had been under the Stuarts, was not heavy when
compared with that of the neighbouring states and with, the re-
sjurces of England. Property was secure. Even the Cavalier,
who refrained from giving disturbance to the new settlement, en-
joyed in peace whatever the civil troubles had left him. The
laws were violated only in cases where the safety of the Protec-
tor's person and government was concerned. Justice was adminis-
tered between man and man with an exactness and purity not
before known. Under no English government since the Ref-
ormation, had thei-e been so little religious persecution. The
unfortunate Roman Catholics, indeed, were held to be scarcely
within the pale of Christian charity. But the clergy of the
fallen Anglican Church were suffered to celebrate their worship
on condition that they would abstain from preaching about poli-
tics. Even the Jews, whose public worship had, ever since the
thirteenth century, been interdicted, were, in spite of the strong
opposition of jealous traders and fanatical theologians, permit-
ted to build a synagogue in London.
The Protector's foreign policy at the same time extorted
the ungracious approbation of those who most detested him.
The Cavaliers could scarcely refrain from wishing that one
who had done so much to raise the fame of the nation had
been a legitimate King ; and the Republicans were forced to
own that the tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his
country, and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at
least given her glory in exchange. After half a century during
which England had been of scarcely more weight in European
politics than Venice or Saxony, she at once became the most
formidable power in the world, dictated terms of peace to the
United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christendom
on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land
and sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands, and
acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the
134 illSTORY OF ENGLAND.
national pride for tvje loss of Calais. She was supreme on the
ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest. All the
reformed Churches scattered over Roman Catholic kingdoms
acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The Huguenots of
Languedoc, the shepherds who, in the hamlets of the Alps,
professed a Protestantism older than that of Augsburg, were
secured from oppression by the mere terror of his great name.
The Pope himself was forced to preach humanity and modera-
tion to Popish princes. For a voice which seldom threatened
in vain had declared that, unless favour were shown to the
people of God, the English guns should be heard in the Castle
of Saint Angelo. In truth, there was notliing which Cromwell
had, for his own sake and that of his family, so much reason to
desire as a general religious war in Europe. In such a war he
must have been the captain of the Protestant armies. The
heart of England would liave been with him. His victories
would have been hailetl with an unanimous enthusiasm unknown
in the country since the rout of the Armada, and would have
effaced the stain which one act, condemned by the general
voice of the nation, has left on his splendid fame. Unhappily
for him he had no opportunity of displaying his admirable
military talents, except against the inhabitants of the British
isles.
While he lived his power stood firm, an object of mingled
aversion, admiration, and dread to his subjects. Few indeed
loved his government; but those who hated it most hated it.
less than they feared it. Had it been a worse government, it
might perhaps have been overthrown in spite of all its strength.
Had it been a weaker government, it would certainly have
been overthrown in spite of all its merits. But it had modera-
tion enough to abstain from those oppressions which drive men
mad ; and it had a force and energy which none but men
driven mad by oppression would venture to encounter.
It has often been affirmed, but with little reason, that
Oliver died at a time fortunate for his renown, and that, if his
life had been prolonged, it would probably have closed amidst
disgraces and disasters. It is^ certain that he was, to the last,
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 135
honoured by his soldiers, obeyed by the whole population of
the British islands, and dreaded by all foreign powers, that he
was laid among the ancient sovereigns of England with funeral
pomp such as London had never before seen, and that he was
succeeded by his son Richard as quietly as any King had ever
been succeeded by any Priuce of Wales.
During five months, the administration of Richard Crom-
well went on so tranquilly and regularly that all Europe
believed him to be firmly established on the chair of state. In
truth his situation was in some respects much more advanta-
geous than that of his father. The young man had made no
enemy. His hands were unstained by civil blood. The Cav-
aliers themselves allowed him to be an honest, good-natured
gentleman. The Presbyterian party, powerful both in numbers
and in wealth, had been at deadly feud with the late" Protector,
but was disposed to regard the present Protector with favour.
That party had always been desirous to see the old civil polity
of the realm restored with some clearer definitions and some
stronger safeguards for public liberty, but had many reasons
for dreading the restoration of the old family. Richard was
the very man for politicians of this description. His humanity,
ingenuousness, and modesty, the mediocrity of his abilities,
and the docility with which he submitted to the guidance of
persons wiser than himself, admirably qualified him to be the
head of a limited monarchy.
For a time it seemed highly probable that he would, under
the direction of able advisers, effect what his father had at-
tempted in vain. A Parliament was called, and the writs were
directed after the old fashion. The small boroughs which had
recently been disfranchised regained their lost privilege : Man-
chester, Leeds, and Halifax ceased to return members ; and
the county of York was again limited to two knights. It may
seem strange to a generation which has been excited almost to
madness by the question of parliamentary reform that great
shires and towns sho; .d have submitted with patience, and
men with complacency, to this change : but though speculative
■«en might, even m that age, discern the vices of the old repre-
136 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Bentative system, and predict that those vices would, sooner oi
later, produce serious practical evil, the practical evil had not
yet been felt. Oliver's representative system, on the other
hand, though constructed on sound principles, was not popular.
Both the events in which it originated, and the effects which it
had produced, prejudiced men against it. It had sprung from
military violence. It had been fruitful of nothing .but disputes.
The whole nation was sick of government by the sword, and
pined for government by the law. The restoration, therefore,
even of anomalies and abuses, which were in strict conformity
with the law, and which had been destroyed by the sword, gave
general satisfaction.
Among the Commons there was a strong opposition, con-
sisting partly of avowed Republicans, and partly of concealed
Royalists : but a large and steady majority appeared to be
favourable to the plan of reviving the old civil constitution
under a new dynasty. Richard was solemnly recognised as
first magistrate. The Commons not only consented to transact
business with Oliver's Lords, but passed a vote acknowledging
the right of those nobles who had, in the late troubles, taken
the side of public liberty, to sit in the Upper House of Parlia-
ment without any new creation.
Thus far the statesmen by whose advice Richard acted had
been successful. Almost all the parts of the govei'nment were
now constituted as they had been constituted at the commence-
ment of the civil war. Had the Protector and the Parliament
been suffered to proceed undisturbed, there can be little doubt
that an order of things similar to that which was afterwards
established under the House of Hanover would have been
established under the House of Cromwell. But there was in
the state a power more than sufficient to deal with Protector
and Parliament together. Over the soldiers Richard had no
authority except that which he derived from the great name
which he had inherited. He had never led them to victory.
He had never even borne arms. All his tastes and habits were
pacific. Nor were his opinions and feelings on religious sub-
jects approved by the military saints. That he was a goo(j
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 137
mau he evinced by proofs more satisfactory than deep groans
or long sermons, by humility and suavity when he was at the
height of human greatness, and by cheerful resignation under
cruel wrongs and misfortunes : but the cant then common iu
every guardroom gave him a disgust which he had not always
the prudence to conceal. The officers who had the principal
influence among the troops stationed near London were not
his friends. They were men distinguished by valour and con-
duct in the field, but destitute of the wisdom and civil courage
which had been conspicuous in their deceased leader. Some oi
them were honest, but fanatical, Independents and Republicans.
Of this class Fleetwood was the representative. Others were
impatient to be what Oliver had been. His rapid elevation, his
prosperity and glory, his inauguration in the Hall, and his
gorgeous obsequies in the Abbey, had inflamed their imagina-
tion. They were as well born as he, and as well educated :
they could not understand why they were not as worthy to
wear the purple robe, and to wield the sword of state ; and
they pursued the objects of their wild ambition, not, like him,
with patience, vigilance, sagacity, and determination, but with
the restlessness and irresolution characteristic of aspiring medi-
ocrity. Among these feeble copies of a great original the most
conspicuous was Lambert.
On the very day of Richard's accession the officers began to
conspire against their new master. The good understanding
which existed between him and his Parliament hastened the
crisis. Alarm and- resentment spread through the camp. Both
the religious and the i3rofessional feelings of the army were
deeply wounded. It seemed that the Independents wer-e to be
subjected to the Presbyterians, and that the men of the sword
were to be subjected to the men of the gown. A coalition was
formed between the military malecontents and the republican
minority of the House of Commons. It may well be doubted
whether Richard could have triumphed over that coalition, even
if he had inherited his father's clear judgment and iron courage.
It is certain that simplicity and meekness like his were not the
qualities which the conjuncture required. He fell ingloriously,
138 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
and without a struggle. He was used by the army as an in-
strument for the purpose of dissolving the Parliament, and
was then contemptuously thrown aside. The officers gratified
their republican allies by declaring that the expulsion of the
Rump had been illegal, and by inviting that assembly to resume
its functions. The old Speaker and a quorum of the old mem-
bers came together, and were proclaimed, amidst the scarcely
stifled derision and execration of the whole nation, the supreme
power in the commonwealth. It was at the same time ex-
pressly declared that there should be no first magistrate, and
no House of Lords.
But this state of things could not last. On the day on which
the long Parliament revived, revived also its old quarrel with the
army. Again the Rump forgot that it owed its existence to the
pleasure of the soldiers, and be ^an to treat them as subjects.
Again the doors of the House of Commons were closed by mil-
itary violence ; and a provisional government, named by the offi-
cers, assumed the direction of affairs.
Meanwhile the sense of great evils, and the strong apprehen-
sion of still greater evils close at hand, b.ad at length produced
an alliance between the Cavaliers and the Presbyterians. Some
Presbyterians had, indeed, been disposed to such an alliance even
before the death of Charles the First : but it was not till after
the fall of Richard Cromwell that the whole party became eager
for the restoration of the royal house. There was no longer any
reasonable hope that the old constitution could be reestablished
under a new dynasty. One clioice only was left, the Stuarts or
the army. The banished family had committed great faults ;
but it ha'd dearly expiated those faults, and had undergone a long,
and, it might be hoped, a salutary training in the school of ad-
versity. It was probable that Charles the Second would take
warning by the fate of Charles the First. But, be this as it
might, the dangers which threatened the country were such that,
in order to avert them, some opinions might well be comjjro-
mised, and some risks mi<;ht well be incurre J. It seemed but
too likely that England would fall under the most odious and
degrading of all kinds of government, under agovernment uniting
BEFORE THE RESTORATION. 139
all the evils of despotism to all the evils of anarchy. Anything
was preferable to the yoke of a succession of incapable and inglo-
rious tyrants, raised to power, like the Deys of Barbary, by mil-
itary revolutions recurring at short intervals. Lambert seemed
likely to be the first of these rulers ; but within a year Lambert
might give place to Desborough, and Desborough to Harrison.
As often as the truncheon was transferred from one feeble hand
to another, the nation would be pillaged for the purpose of be-
stowing a fresh donative on the troops. If the Presbyterians
obstinately stood aloof from the Royalists, the state was lost ; and
men might well doubt whether, by the combined exertions of
Presbyterians and Royalists, it could be saved. Eor the dread
of that invincible army was on all the inhabi*;:uits of the island ;
and the Cavaliers, taught by a hundred disastrous fields how
little numbers can effect against discipline, were even more com-
pletely cowed than the Roundheads.
While the soldiers remained united, all the plots and risings
of the malecontents were ineffectual. But a few days after the
'second expulsion of the Rump, came tidings which gladdened
the hearts of all who were attached either to monarchy or to lib-
erty. That mighty force which had, during many years, acted
as one man, and which, while so acting, had beeij found irresisti-
ble, was at length divided againsc itself. The army of Scotland
had done cood service to the Commonwealth, and was in the
highest state of efficiency. It had borne no part in the late i ev-
olutions, and had seen them with indignation resembling the
indignation which the Roman legions posted on the Danube and
the Euphrates felt, when they learned that the empire had been
put up to sale by the Prastorian Guards, It was intolerable tliat
certain regiments shouid, merely because they happened to be
quartered near Westminster, take on themselves to make and un-
make several governments in the course of half a year. If it
were fit that the state should be reo;ulated bv the soldiers, those
soldiers who upheld the English ascendency on the north of the
Tweed were as well entitled to a voice as those who garri-
soned the Tower of London. There appears to have been less
fanaticism among the troops stationed in Scotland than in any
140 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Other part of the army ; and their general, George Monk, was
himself the very opposite of a zealot. He had at the com-
mencement of the civil war, borne arms for the King, had been
made prisoner by the Roundheads, had then accepted a commis-
sion from the Parliament, and, with very slender pretensions to
saintship, had raised himself to high commands by his courage
and professional skill. He had been an useful servant to both
the Protectors, and had quietly acquiesced when the officers at
Westminster had pulled down Richard and restored the Long
Parliament, and would perhaps have acquiesced as quietly in
the second exjiulsion of the Long Parliament, if the provis-
ional government had abstained from giving him cause of
offence and apprehCiJ-'^ion. For his nature was cautious and some-
what sluggish ; nor was he at all disposed to hazai'd sure and
moderate advantages for the chance of obtaining even the most
splendid success. He seems to have been impelled to attack
the new rulers of the Commonwealth less by the hope that, if
he overthrew them, he should become great, than by the fear
that, if he submitted to them, he should not even be secure.
Whatever were feis motives, he declared himself the cham-
pion of the oppressed civil power, refused to acknowledge the
usurped authority of the provisional government, and, at the
head of seven thousand veterans, marched into England.
This step was the signal for a general explosion. The peo-
ple everywhere refused to pay taxes. The apprentices of the
City assembled by thousands and clamoured for a free Parlia-
ment. The fleet sailed up the Thames, and declared against
the tyranny of the soldiers. The soldiers, no longer under the
control of one commanding mind, separated into factions.
Every regiment, afraid lest it should be left alone a mark for
the vengeance of the oppressed nation, hastened to make a sep-
arate peace. Lambert, who had hastened northward to encoun-
ter the army of Scotland, was abandoned by his troops, and be-
came a prisoner. Daring thirteen years the civil power had, in
every conflict, been compelled to yield to the military power. The
military power now humbled itself before the civil power. The
Rump, generally hated and despised, but still the only body in
BEFORE THE KESTORATION. 141
the country which had auy show of legal authority, returned
again to the house from which it had been twice ignominiously
expelled.
In the mean time Monk was advancing towards London.
Wherever he came, the gentry flocked round him, imploring
him to use his power for the purpose of restoring peace and
liberty to the distracted nation. The General, coldblooded,
taciturn, zealous for no polity and for no religion, maintained
an impenetrable reserve. What were at this time his plans,
and whether he had any plan, may well be doubted. His great
object, apparently, was to keep himself, as long as possible, free
to choose between several lines of action. Such, indeed, is
commonly the policy of men who are, like him, distinguished
rather by wariness than by farsightedness. It was probably not
till he had been some days in the capital that he had made up
his mind. The cry of the whole people was for a free Parlia-
ment ; and there could be no doubt that a Parliament really
free would instantly restore the exiled family. The Rump and
the soldiers were still hostile to the House of Stuart. But the
Rump was universally detested and despised. The power of
the soldiers was indeed still formidable, but had been greatly
diminished by discord. They had no head. They had recently
been, in many parts of tbe country, arrayed against each other.
On the very day before Monk reached London, theie was a
fight in the Strand between the cavalry and the infantry. An
united army had long kept down a divided nation ; but the na-
tion was now united, and the army was divided.
During a short time the dissimulation or irresolution of
Monk kept all parties in a state of painful suspense. At length
he broke silence, and declared for a free Parliament.
As soon as his declaration was known, the whole nation
was wild with delight. ' Wherever he appeared thousands
thronged around him, shouting and blessing his name. The
bells of all England rang joyously : the gutters ran with ale ;
and, night after night, the sky five miles round London was
reddened by innumerable bonfires. Those Presbyterian mem-
bers of the House of Commons who had many years before
142 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
been expelled by the army, I'eturned to their seats, and were
hailed with acclamations by great multitudes, which filled
Westminster Hall and Palace Yard. The Independent leaders
no lonsrer dared to show their faces in the streets, and were
scarcely safe within their own dwellings. Temporary provision
was made for the government : writs were issued for a general
election ; and then that memorable Parliament, which had, in
the course of twenty eventful years, experienced every variety of
fortune, which had triumphed over its sovereign, which had been
enslaved and degraded by its servants, which had been twice
ejected and twice restored, solemnly decreed its own dissolu-
tion.
The result of the elections was such as might have been
expected from the temper of the nation. The new House of
Commons consisted, with few exceptions, of persons friendly to
the royal family. The Presbyterians formed the majority.
That there would be a restoration now seemed almost cei'-
tain ; but whether there would be a peaceable restoration was
matter of painful doubt. The soldiers were in a gloomy and
savage mood. They hated the title of King. They hated the
name of Stuart. They hated Presbyterianism much, and Prel-
acy more. They saw with bitter indignation that the close of
their long domination was approaching, and that a life of in-
glorious toil and penury was before them. They attributed
their ill fortune to the weakness of some generals, and to the
treason of others. One hour of their beloved Oliver mi<jht even
now restore the glory which had departed. Betrayed, dis-
united, and left without any chief in whom they could confide,
they were yet to be dreaded. It was no light thing to encounter
the rage and despair of fifty thousand fighting men, whose backs
no enemy had ever seen. Monk, and those with whom he
acted, were well aware that the crisis -was most perilous. They
employed every art to soothe and to divide the discontented
warriors. At the same time vigorous ^"•I'eparation was made
for a conflict. The army of Scotland, now quartered in London,
was kept in good humour by bribes, praises, and promises. The
wealthy citizens grudged nothing to a redcoat, and were indeed
BEFORE THE KESTORATION. lAt
80 liberal of their best wine, that warlike saints were some-,
times seen in a condition not verj honourable either to their
religious or to their military character. Some refractory regi-
ments Monk ventured to disband. In the mean time the greatest
exertions were made by the provisional government, with tlie
strenuous aid of the whole body of the gentry and magistracy,
to organise the militia. In every county the trainbands were
held ready to march ; and this force cannot be estimated at less
than a hundred and twenty thousand men. In Hyde Park
twenty thousand citizens, well armed and accoutred, passed in
review, and showed a spirit which justified the hope that, in
case of need, they would fight manfully for their shops and
firesides. The fleet was heartily with the nation. It was
a stirring time, a time of anxiety, yet of hope. The prevailing
opinion was that England ^fould be delivered, but not without
a desperate and bloody struggle, and that the class "which had so
long ruled by the sword would perish by the sword.
Happily the dangers of a conflict were averted. Thers
was indeed one moment of extreme peril. Lambert escaped
from his confinement, and called his comrades to arms. The
flame of civil war was actually rekindled ; but by prompt and
vigorous exertion it was trodden out before it had time to
spread. The luckless imitator of Cromwell was again a pris-
oner. The failure of his enterprise damped the spirit of the
soldiers ; and they sullenly resigned themselves to their fate.
The new Parliament, which, having been called without
the royal writ, is more accurately described as a Convention,
met at Westminster. The Lords repaired to the hall, from
which they had, during more than eleven years, been excluded
by force. Both Houses instantly invited the King to return to
his country. He was proclaimed with pomp nevor before
known. A gallant fleet convoyed him from Holland to the
coast of Kent When he landed, the cliffs of Dover were
covered by thousands of gazers, among whom scarcely one could
be found who was not weeping with delight. The journey to
London was a continued triumph. The whole road from
Rochester was bordered by booths and tents, and looked like
144 HISTOKV OF KNGLANU.
an interminable fair. Everywhere flags were flying, bells and
music sounding, wine and ale flowing in rivers to tlie health
of him whose return was the return of peace, of law, and of
freedom. But in the midst of the general joy, one sj^ot presented
a dark and threatening aspect.- On Blackheath the army
was drawn up to welcome the sovereign. He smiled, bowed, and
extended his hand graciously to the lips of the colonels and
majors. But all his courtesy was vain. The countenances of the
soldiers were sad and lowering ; and had they given way to their
feelings, the festive pageant of which they reluctantly made
a part would have had a mournful and bloody end. But there
was no concert among them. Discord and defection had left
them no confidence in their chiefs or in each other. The
whole array of the City of London was under arms. Numerous
companies of militia had assembled from various parts of the
realm, under the command of loyal noblemen and gentlemen,
to welcome the King. That great day closed in peace ; and
the restored wanderer reiiosc^ "^fe in the palace of his ances"
tAJJEK CUAKLK.-5 lllb oL:CO>'D 1 ia
CHAPTER II.
The history of England, during the seventeenth century, is the
history of the transformation of a limited monarchy, constituted
after the fashion of the middle ages, into a limited monarchy
suited to that more advanced state of society in which the pub-
lic charges can no longer be borne by the estates of the crown,
and in which the public defence can no longer be entrusted to a
feudal militia. We have seeu that the politicians who were at
the head of tlie Long Pai-liament made, in 1642, a great effort
to accomplish this change by transferring, directly and formally,
to the estates of the realm the choice of ministers, the command
of the army, and the superintendence of the whole executive
administration. This scheme was, perhaps, the best that could
then be contrived : but it was completely disconcerted by the
course which the civil war took. The Houses triumphed, it is
true ; but not till after such a struggle as made it necessary for
them to call into existence a power which they could not control,
and which soon began to domineer over all orders and all par-
ties. During a few years, the evils inseparable from military
government were, in some degree, mitigated by the wisdom and
magnanimity of the great man who held the supreme command.
But, when the sword, which he had wielded, with energy indeed,
but with energy always guided by good sense and generally
tempered by good nature, had passed to captains who possessed
neither his abilities nor his virtues, it seemed too probable that
order and liberty would perish in one ignominious ruin.
That ruin was happily averted. It has been too much the
practice of writers zealous for freedom to represent the Restor-
ation as a disastrous event, and to condemn the folly or baseness
of that Convention, which recalled the royal family without
10
T46 history of ENGLAND.
exacting new securities against maladministration. Those who
hold this language do not comprehend the real nature of the
crisis which followed the deposition of Richard Cromwell. Eng-
land was in imminent danger of falling under the tyranny of a
succession of small men raised up and pulled down by military
caprice. To deliver the country from the domination of the
soldiers was the first object of every enlightened patriot : but it
was an object which, while the soldiers were united, the most
sanguine could scarcely expect to attain. On a sudden a gleam
of hope appeared. General was opposed to general, army to
army. On the use which might be made of one auspicious
moment depended the future destiny of the nation. Our
ancestors used that moment well. They forgot old injuries,
waved petty scruples, adjourned to a more convenient season
all dispute about the reforms which our institutions needed, and
stood together, Cavaliers and Roundheads, Episcoi)alians and
Presbyterians, in firm union, for the old laws of the land against
military despotism. The exact partition of power among King,
Lords, and Commons might well be postponed till it had been
decided whether England should be governed by King, Lords,
and Commons, or by cuirassiers and pikemen. Had the states-
men of the Convention taken a different course, had they held
long debates on the principles of government, had they drawn
up a new constitution and sent it to Charles, had conferences
been opened, had couriers been passing and repassing during'
some weeks between Westminster and the Netherlands, with
projects and counterprojects, replies by Hyde and rejoinders by
Prynne, the coalition on which the public safety depended would
have been dissolved : the Presbyterians and Royalists would
certainly have quarrelled : the military factions might possibly
have been reconciled ; and the misjudging friends of liberty
might long have regretted, under a rule worse than that of the
worst Stuart, the golden opportunity which had been suffered
to escape.
The old civil polity was, therefore, by the general consent
of both the great parties, reestablished. It was again exactly
what it had been when Charles the First, eighteen years before,
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 147
withdrew from his capital. All those acts of the Long Parlia-
ment which had received the royal assent were admitted to be
still in full force. One fresh concession, a concession in which
the Cavaliers were even more deeply interested than the
Roundheads, was easily obtained from the restored King. The
military tenure of land had been originally created as a means
of national defence. But in the course of ages whatever was
useful in the institution had disappeared; and nothing was left
but ceremonies and grievances. A landed proprietor who held
an estate under the crown by knight service, — and it was thus
that most of the soil of England was held, — had to pay a large
fine on coming to his property. He could not alienate one acre
without purchasing a license. When he died, if his domains
descended to an infant, the sovereign was guardian, and was not
only entitled to great part of the rents during the minority, but
could require the ward, under heavy penalties, to marry any
person of suitable rank. The chief bait which attracted a needy
sycophant to the court was the hope of obtaining as the reward
of servility and flattery, a royal letter to an heiress. These
abuses had perished with the monarchy. That they should not
revive with it was the wish of every landed gentleman in the
kingdom. They were, therefore, solemnly abolished by statute;
and no relic of the ancient tenures in chivalry was allowed to
remain except those honorary services which are still, at a
coronation, rendered to the person of the sovereign by some
lords of manors.
The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men,
accustomed to the profession of arms, were at once thrown on
the world : and experience seemed to warrant the belief that
this change would produce much misery and crime, that the dis-
charged veterans would be seea begging in every street, or that
they would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no such result
followed. In a few months there remained not a trace indica-
ting that the most formidable army in the world had just been
absorbed into the mass of the community. The Royalists them-
selves confessed that, in every department of honest industry,
discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none
Ii8 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to
ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner at-
tracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all prob-
ability one of Oliver's old soldiers.
The military tyranny had passed away ; but it had left deep
and enduring traces in the public mind. The name of standing
army was long held in abhorrence : and it is remarkable that
this feelinw was even strdnsfer amonu- the Cavaliers than amonff
the Roundheads- It ought to be considered as a most fortunate
circumstance that, when our country was, for the first and last
time, ruled by the sword, the sword was in the hands, not of
legitimate princes, but of those rebels who slew the King and
demolished the Church. Had a prince with a title as good as
that of Charles, commanded an army as good as that of Crom-
well, there would have been little hope indeed for the liberties
of England. Happily that instrument by which alone the mon-
archy could be made absolute became an object of peculiar
hon-or and disgust to the monarchical jjarty, and long continued
to be insejjarably associated in the imagination of Royalists and
Prelatists with regicide and field preaching. A century after
the death of Cromwell, the Tories still continued to clamour
against every augmentation of the regular soldiery, and to sound
the praise of a national militia. So late as the year 178G, a min-
ister who enjoyed no common measure of their confidence found
it impossible to overcome their aversion to his scheme of fortify-
ing the coast : nor did they ever look with entire complacency
on the standing army, till the French Revolution gave a new
direction to their apprehensions.
The coalition which had restored the King terminated with
the danger from which it had sprung ; and two hostile parties
again appeared ready for conflict. Both, indeed, were agreed
as to the propriety of inflicting punishment on some unhappy
men who were, at that moment, objects of almost universal
hatred. Cromwell was no more ; and those who had fled be-
fore him were forced to content themselves with the miserable
satisfaction of digijing up. hanoring, quartering, and burning the
remains of the greatest prince that has ever ruled England.
IXDKU CIIARLKS TIIK SHCOND. 149
Other objects of vengeance, few indeed, yet too many, were found
among the, republican chiefs. Soon, however, the conquerors,
ghitted with the blood of the regicides, turned against each
other. The Roundheads, while admitting the virtues of the late
King, and while condemning the sentence passed upon him by
an illegal tribunal, yet maintained that his administration had
been, in many things, unconstitutional, and that the Houses had
taken arms against him from good motives and on strong
grounds. The monarchy,- these politicians conceived, had no
worse enemy than the flatterer who exalted prerogative above
the law, who condemned all opposition to regal encroachments,
and who reviled, not only Cromwell and Harrison, but Pym
and Hampden, as traitors. If the King v/ished for a quiet and
y)rosperous reign, he must confide in those who, though they
had drawn the sword in defence of the invaded privileges of Par-
yiament, had yet exposed themselves to the rage of the soldiers
in order to save his father, and had taken the chief part in
bringing back the royal family.
The feeling of the Cavaliers was widely different. During
eighteen years they had, through all vicissitudes, been faithful
to the Crown. Having shared the distress of their prince, were
they not to share his triumph? Was no distinction to be made
between them and the disloyal subject who had fought against
his rightful sovereign, who had adhered to Richard Cromwell,
and who had never concurred in the restoration of the Stuarts,
till it appeared that nothing else could save the nation from the
tyranny of the army ? Grant that such h man liad, by his re-
cent services, fairly earned his pardon. Yet were his services,
rendered at the eleventh hour, to be put in comparison with the
toils and sufferings of those wlio had borne th& burden and heat
of the day ? Was he t(j be ranked with men who had no need
of the royal clemency, with men who had, in every part of their
lives, merited the royal grr^titude ? Above all, was he to be suf-
fered to retain .. fortune raised out of tlie substance of the ruined
defenders of the throne ? Was it not enough that his head and his
patrimonial estate, a hundred times forfeited to justice, were
secure, and that he shared, with the rest of tlie nation, in the bless-
150 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
mgs of that mild government of whicli he had long been the foe ?
Was it necessary that he should be rewarded for his treason at
the expense of men whose only crime was the fidelity with which
they had observed their oath of allegiance. And what interest
had the King in gorging his old enemies with prey torn from his
old friends ? What confidence could be placed in men who had
opposed their sovereign, made war on him, imprisoned him, and
who, even now, instead of hanging down their heads in shame
and contrition, vindicated all that they had done, and seemed to
think that they had given an illustrious proof of loyalty by just
stopping short of regicide ? It was true they had lately assisted
to set up the throne : but it was not less true that they had pre-
viously pulled it down, and that they still avowed principles
which might impel them to pull it down again. Undoubtedly
it might be fit that marks of royal approbation should be be-
stowed on some converts who had beeia eminently useful : but
policy, as well as justice and gratitude, enjoined the King to give
the highest place in his regard to those who, from first to last,
through good and evil, had stood by his house. On these grounds
the Cavaliers very naturally demanded indemnity for all that
they had suffered, and preference in the distribution of the
favours of the Crown. Some violent members' of the party
went further, and clamoured for large categories of proscrip-
tion.
The political feud was, as usual, exasperated by a religious
feud. The King found the Church in a singular state. A short
time before the commencement of the civil war, his father had
given a reluctant assent to a bill, strongly supported by Falk-
land, which deprived the Bishops of their seats in the House of
Lords : but Episcopacy and the Liturgy had never been abol-
ished bj law. The Long Parliament, however, had passed or-
dinances which had made a complete revolution in Church
government and in public worship. The new system was, in
principle, scarcely less Erastian than that which it displaced.
The Houses, guided chiefly by the counsels of tlie accomplished
Selden, had determined to keep the spiritual power strictly
subordinate to the temporal power. They tiad refused to declare
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 151
that any form of ecclesiastical polity was of divine origin ; and
they had provided that, from all the Church courts, an appeal
should lie in the last resort to Parliament. With this highly
important reservation, it had been resolved to set up in England
a hierarchy closely resembling that which now exists in Scotland.
The authority of councils, rising one above another in regular
gradation, was substituted for the authority of Bishojjs and
Archbishops. The Liturgy gave place to the Presbyterian
Directory. T5ut scarcely had the new regulations been framed,
.>'hen the Independents rose to supreme- influence in the state.
The Independents had no disposition to enforce the ordinances
touching classical, provincial, and national synods. Those or-
dinances, therefore, were never carried into full execution. The
Presbyterian system was fully established nowhere but in Mid-
dlesex and Lancashire. In the other fifty counties almost every
parish seems to have beei\ unconnected with the neighbouring
parishes. In some districts, indeed, the ministers formed them-
selves into voluntary associations, for the purpose of mutual
help and counsel ; but these associations had no coercive power.
The patrons of livings, being now checked by neither Bishop
nor Presbytery, would have been at liberty to confide the cure
of souls to the most scandalous of mankind, but for the ar-
bitrary intervention of Oliver. He established, by his own
authority, a board of commissioners, called Triers. Most of
these persons were Independent divines ; but a few Presbyterian
ministers and a few laymen had seats. The certificate of the
Triers stood in the place both of institution and of induction ;
and without such a certificate no person could hold a benefice.
This was undoubtedly one of the most despotic acts ever done
by any English ruler. Yet, as it was generally felt that, with-
out some such precaution, the country would be overrun by
ignorant and drunken reprobates, bearing the name and receiv-
ing the pay of ministers, some highly respectable persons, who
were not in general friendly to Cromwell, allowed that, on this
occasion, he had been a public benefactor. The presentees
whom the Triers had approved took possession of the rectories,
cultivated the glebe lands, collected the tithes, prayed without
152 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
book or surplice, and administered the Eucharist to communi-.
cants seated at long tables.
Thus the ecclesiastical polity of the realm was in inextri-
cable confusion. Episcopacy was the form of government pre-
scribed by the old law which was still unrepealed. The form
of government prescribed by parliamentary ordinance was
Presbyterian. But neither the old law nor the parliamentary
ordinance was practically in force. The Church actually estab-
lished may be described as an irregular body made up of a few
Presbyteries and many Independent congregations, which were
all held down and held together by the authority of the govern-
ment.
Of those who had been active in bringing back the King,
many were zealous for Synods and for the Directory, and many
were desirous to terminate by a compromise the religious dis-
sensions which had long agitated England. Between the big-
oted followers of Laud and the bigoted followers of Knox there
could be neither peace nor truce : but it did not seem impossible
to effect an accommodation between the moderate Episcopalians
of the school of Usher and the moderate Presbyterians of the
school of Baxter. The moderate Episcopalians would admit
that a Bishop might lawfully be assisted by a council. The
moderate Presbyterians would not deny that each provincial
assembly might lawfully have a permar'^nt president, and that
this president might lawfully be called a Bishop. There might
be a revised Liturgy which should not exclude extempc^aneous
prayer, a baptismal service in which the sign of the crgfes might
be used or omitted at discretion, a communion service at which
the faithful might sit if their conscience fori ade them to kneel.
But to no such plan could the great bodies of the Cavaliers
listen with patience. The religious members of that party were
conscientiously attached to the whole system of tlieir Church.
She had been dear to their murdered King. She had consoled
them in defeat and penury. Her service, so often whispered in
an inner chamber dui-ing the season of trial, had such a charm
for them that they were unwilling to part with a single response.
Other Eoj-alists, who made little pretence to piety, yet loved
tJNDEK CHARLKS THE SECOND. 158
the episcoi al church because she was the foe of their foes.
They valued a prayer or a ceremony, not on account of the
comfort which it conveyed to themselves, but on account of the
vexation which it gave to the Roundheads, aud were so far from
bein<^ disposed to purchase union by concession that they ob-
jected to concession chiefly because it tended to produce union.
Such feelings, though blamable, were natural, and not wholly
inexcusable. The Puritans had undoubtedly, in the day of their
power, given cruel provocation. They ought to have learned,
if from nothing else, yet from their own discontents, from their
own struggles, from their own victory, from the fall of that
proud hierarchy by which they had been so heavily oppressed,
that, in England, and in the seventeenth century, it was not in
the power of tlie civil magistrate to drill the minds of men into
conformity with his own system of theology. They proved,
however, as intolerant and as meddling as ever Laud had been.
They interdicted under heavy penalties the use ©f the Book of
Common Prayer, not- only in churches, but even in private
houses. It was a crime in a child to read by the bedside of a
sick parent one of those beautiful collects which had soothed
the griefs of forty generations of Christians. Severe punish-
ments were denounced against such as should presume to blame
the Calvinistic mode of worship. Clergymen of respectable
character were not only ejected from their benefices by thou-
sands, but were frequently exposed to the outrages of a fanatical
rabble. Churohes and sepulchres, fine works of art and curious
remains of antiquity, were brutally defaced. The Parliament
resolved that all pictures in the royal collection which contained
representations of Jesus or of the Virgin Mother should be
burned. Sculpture fared as ill as painting. Nymphs and
Graces, the work of Ionian chisels, were delivered over to Puri-
tan stonemasons to be made decent. Against the lighter vices
tUe ruling faction waged war with a zeal little tempered by
humanity or by common sense. Sharp laws were passed against
betting. It was enacted that adultery should be punished with
death. The illicit intercourse of the sexes, even where neither
violence nor seduction was imputed, where no public scandal
154 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
was given, where no conjugal right was violated, was made a
misdemeanour. Public amusements, from the masques which
were exhibited at the mansions of the great down to the wrest-
ling matches and grinning matches on village greens, were vig-
orously attacked. One ordinance directed that all the May-
poles in England should forthwith be hewn down. Another
proscribed all theatrical diversions. The playhouses were to be
dismantled, the spectators fined, the actors whipped at the cart's
tail. Rope-dancing, puppet-shows, bowls, horse-racing, were re-
garded with no friendly eye. But bearbaiting, then a favourite
diversion of high and low^ was the abomination which most
strongly stirred the wrath of the austere sectaries. It is to be
remarked that their antipathy to this sport had nothing in com-
mon with the feeling which has, in our own time, induced the
legislature to interfere for the purpose of protecting beasts
against the wanton cruelty of men. The Puritan hated bear-
baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave
pleasure to the spectators. Indeed, he generally contrived to
enjoy the double pleasure of tormenting both spectators and
bear.*
Perhaps no single circumstance more strongly illustrates
the temper of the precisians than their conduct respecting
* How little compassion for the bear liad to do with the m itter is sufflcieutly
proved by the following extract from a paper entitled A perfect Diurnal of some
Passages of Parliament, and from other Parts of the Kingdom, from Monday
July 24th, to Monday July 31st, 1643. " Upon the Queen's coming from Holland,
she brought with her, besides a company of savage-like ruffians, a company of
savage bears, to what purpose you may judge by the sequel. Those bears were
left about Newark, and were brought into country towns constantly on the Lord's
day to be Imted, such is the religion those here related would settle amongst us;
and, if any went about to hinder or but speak against their damnable profana-
tions, they were presently noted as Roundheads and Puritans, and sure to be
plundered for it. But some of Colonel Cromwell's forces coming by accident into
Uppingham town, in Rutland, on the Lord's day, foujid these bears playing there
in the usual manner, and, in the height of their sport, causod them to be seized
upon, tied to a tree and shot." This was by no means a solitary instance. Colonel
Pride, when Sheriff of Surrey, ordered the beasts in the bear garden of Sottth-
wark to be killed. He is represented by a loyal satirist as defending the act
thus : "The first thing that is upon my spirits is the killing of the bears, for
which the people hate me, and call me all the names in the rainbow. But did not
David kill a bear ? Did not the Lord Deputy Ireton kill a bear ? Did not anoth-
er lord of ours kill five bears?"— Last Speech and Dying Words of Thomaa
Fride.
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, 155
Christmas da3^ Christmas had been, from time immemorial,
the season of joy and domestic aflPection, the; season when fami-
lies assembled, when children came home from school, when
quarrels were made up, when carols were heard in every street,
when every house w^as decorated with evergreens, and every
table was loaded with good cheer. At that season all hearts
not utterly destitute of kindness were enlarged and softened.-
At that season the poor were admitted to partake largely of the
overflowings of the wealth of the rich, whose bounty was pecu-
liarly acceptable on account of the shortness of the days and
of the severity of the weather. At that season, the interval be-
tween landlord and tenant, master and servant, was less marked
than through the rest of the year. Where there is much
enjoyment there will be some excess : yet, on the w^hole, the
spirit in which the holiday was kept was not unworthy of a
Christian festival. The long Parliament gave ordersi-in 164i,
that the twenty-fifth of December should be strictly observed
as a fast, and that all men should pass it in humbly bemoan-
ing the great national sin which they and their fathers had
to often committed on that day by romping under the mistle-
toe, eating boar's head, and drinking ale flavored with roasted
apples. No public act of that time seems to have irritated
the common people more. On the next anniversary of the fes-
tival formidable riots broke out in many places. The consta-
bles were resisted, the magistrates insulted, the houses of noted
zealots attacked, and the prescribed service of the day openly
read in the churches.
Such was the spirit of the extreme Puritans, both Presby-
terian and Independent. Oliver, indeed, was little disposed to
be either a persecutor or a meddler. But Oliver, the head of
a party, and consequently, to a great extent, the slave of a party,
could not govern altogether according to his own inclinations.
Even under his administration many magistrates, within their
own jurisdiction, made themselves as odious as Sir Iludibras,
interfered with all the pleasures of the neighbourhood, dispersed
festive meetings, and put fiddlers in the stocks. Still more
formidable was the zeal of the soldiers, lu every village where
156 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
they appeared there was an end of dancing, belh-inging. and
hockey. In London they several times interrupted theatrical
performances at which the Protector had the judgment and good
nature to connive.
With the fear and hatred inspired by such a tyranny con-
tempt was largely mingled. The peculiarities of the Puritan,
his look, his dress, his dialect, his strange scruples, had been,
ever since the time of Elizabeth, favourite subjects with mock-
ers. But these peculiarities appeared far more grotesque in a
faction which ruled a great empire than in obscure and perse-
cuted congregations. The cant, which had moved laughter
when it was heard on the stage from Tribulation Wholesome
and Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, was still more laughable when it
proceeded from the lips of Generals and Councillors of State.
It is also to be noticed that during the civil troubles several
sects ha4 sprung into existence, whose eccentricities surpassed
anything that had before been seen in England. A mad tailor,
named Lodowick Muggleton, wandered from pothouse to pot-
house,tippling ale, and denouncing eternal torments against those
who refused to believe, on his testimony, that the Supreme Being
was only six feet high, and that the sun was just four miles from
the earth.* George Fox had raised a tempest of derision by pro-
claiming that it was a violation of Christian sincerity to desig-
nate a single pei-son by a plural pronoun, and that it was an
idolatrous homage to Janus and Woden to talk about January
and Wednesday. His doctrine, a few years later, was embraced
by some eminent men, and rose greatly in the public estima-
tion. But at the time of the Restoration the Quakers were
popularly regarded as the most despicable of fanatics. By the
Puritans they were treated with severity here, and were perse-
cuted to the death in New England. Nevertheless the public,
which seldom makes nice distinctions, often confounded the
Puritan with the Quaker. Both were schismatics. Both hated
episcopacy and the Liturgy. Both had what seemed extrava-
gant whimsies about dress, diversions, and postures. Widely as
• See Peim'sNew-Witnesses proved Old Heretics, and Muggleton's works, ;>^5S}w».
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. lo7
the two differed in opinion, they were popularly classed together
as canting schismatics ; and whatever was ridiculous or odious
in either increased the scorn and aversion which the multitude
felt for both.
Before the civil wars, even those who most disliked the
opinions and manners of the Puritan were forced to admit
that his moral conduct was generjilly, in essentials, blameless ;
but this praise was now no longer bestowed, and, unfortunately,
was no longer deserved. The general fate of sects is to obtain
a high reputation for sanctity while they are oppressed, and to.
lose it as soon as they become powerful : and the reason is obvi-
ous. It is seldom that a man enrolls himself in a proscribed
body from any but conscientious motives. Such a body, there-
fore, is composed, with sci^rcely an exception, of sincere persons.
The most rigid discipline tliat can be enforced within a religious
society is a very feeble instrument of purification, when com-
pared with a little sharp persecution from without. We may
be certain that very few persons, not seriously impressed by
religious convictions, applied for baptism while Diocletian was
vexing the Church, or joined themselves to Protestant con-
sreoations at the risk of benig burned by Bonner. But, when
a sect becomes powerful, when its favour is the road to riches
and dignities, worldly and ambitious men crowd into it, talk its
language, conform strictly to its ritual, mimic its peculiarities,
and frequently go beyond its honest members in all the outward
indications of zeal. No discernment, no watchfulness, on the
part of ecclesiastical rulers, can pi'event the intrusion of such
false brethren. The tares and wheat must grow together.
Soon the world begins to find out that the godly are not better
than other men, and argues, with some justice, that, if not better,
they must be much worse. In no long time all those signs
which were formerly regarded as characteristic of a saint are
regarded as characteristic of a knave.
Thus it was with the English Nonconformists. They had
been oppressed ; and oppression had kept them a pure body.
They then became supreme in the state. No man could hope
to rise to eminence and command but By their favour. Their
158 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
favour was to be gained only by exchanging with them the
signs and passwords of spiritual fraternity. One of the first
resolutions adopted by Barebones' Parliament, the mostintensely
Puritanical of all our political assemblies, was that no person
should be admitted into the public service till the House should
be satisfied of his real godliness. What were then considered
as the signs of real godliness, the sadcoloured dress, the sour
look, the straight hair, the nasal whine, the speech interspersed
with quaint texts, the Sunday, gloomy as a Pharisaical Sabbath,
were easily imitated by men to whom all religions were the
same. The sincere Puritans soon found themselves lost in a
multitude, not merely of men of the world, but of the very worst
sort of men of the world. For the most notorious libertine who
had fought under the royal standard might justly be thought
virtuous when compared with some of those who, while they
talked about sweet experiences and comfortable scriptures, lived
in the constant practice of fraud, rapacity, and secret de-
bauchery. The people, with a rashness which we may justly
lament, but at which we cannot wonder, formed their estimate
of the whole body from these hypocrites. The theology, the
manners, the dialect of the Puritan were ihm associated in the
public mind with the darkest and meanest vices. As soon as
the Restoration had made it safe to avow enmity to the party
which had so long been predominant, a general outcry against
Puritanism rose from every corner of the kingdom, and was
often swollen by the voices of those very dissemblers whose
villany had brought disgrace on the Puritan name.
Thus the two great parties, which, after a long contest, had for
a moment concurred in restoring monarchy, were, both in poli-
tics and in religion, again opposed to each other. The great
body of the nation leaned to the Royalists. The crimes of
Straiford and Laud, the excesses of the Star Chamber and of
the High Commission, the great services which the Long Par-
liament had, during the first year of its existence, rendered to
the state, had faded from the minds of men. The execution of
Charles the First, the syllen tyranny of the Rump, the violence
of the army, were remembered with loathing ; and the nudti-
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 159
tude was inclined to hold all who had withstood the late King,
responsible for his death and for the subsequent disasters.
The House of Commons, having been elected while the
Presbyterians were dominant, by no means represented the gen-
eral sense of the people. Most of the members, while execra-
ting Cromwell and Bradshaw, reverenced the memory of Essex
and of Pym. One sturdy Cavalier, who ventured to declare
that all who had drawn the sword against Charles the First
were as much traitors as those who had aut off his head, was
called to order, placed at the bar, and reprimanded by the
Speaker. The general wish of the House undoubtedly was to
settle the ecclesiastical disputes in a manner satisfactory to the
moderate Puritans. But to such a settlement both the court
and the nation were avei'se.
The restored King was at this time more loved by the peo-
ple than any of his predecessors had ever been. The calamities
of his house, the heroic death of his father, his own long suffer-
ings and romantic adventures, made him an object of tender inter-
est. His return had delivered the country from an intolerable
bondage. Recalled by the voice of both the contending factions,
he was in a position which enabled him to arbitrate between
them ; and in some respects he was well qualified for the task.
He had received from nature excellent parts and a happy tem-
per. His education had been such as might have been expected"
to develope his understanding, and to form him to the practice
of every public and private virtue. He had passed through all
varieties of fortune, and had seen both sides of human nature.
He had, while very young, been driven forth from a palace to a life
of exile, penury, and danger. He had, at the age when the mind
and body are in their highest perfection, and when the first
effervescence of boyish passions should have subsided, been re-
called from his wanderings to wear a crown. He had been
taught by bitter experience how much baseness, perfidy, and
ingratitude may lie hid under the obsequious demeanor of
courtiers. He had found, on the other hand, in the huts of the
poorest, true nobility of soul. When wealth was offered to any
who would betray him, when death was denounced against all
160 «ISTORY OF ENGLAND.
who should shelter him, cottagers and serving men haa Kept his
secret truly, and had kissed his hand under his naean disguises
with as much reverence as if he had been seated on his ancestral
throne. From such a school it might have been expected that
a young man who wanted neither abilities nor amiable qualities
would have come forth a great and good King. Charles came
forth from that school with social habits, with polite and engaging
manners, and with some talent for lively conversation, addicted
beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond of sauntering and
of frivolous amusements, incapable of selfdenial and of exer-
tion, without faith in human virtue or in human attachment,
without desire of renown, and without sensibility to re-
proach. According to him, every person was to be bought : but
some people haggled more about their price than others ; and
when this haggling was very obstinate and very skilful it was
called by some fine name. The chief trick by which clever men
kept up the price of their abilities was called integrity. The
chief trick by which handsome women kept up the price of their
beauty was called modesty. The love of God, the love of coun-
try, the love of family, the love of friends, were phrases of the
same sort, delicate and convenient synonymes for the love of
self. Thinking thus of mankind, Charles naturally cared very
little what they thought of him. Honour and shame were
scarcely more to him than light and darkness to the blind. His
contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems,
when viewed in connection with the rest of his character, to de-
serve no commendation. It is possible to be below flattery as well
as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants.
One who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.
It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought
of his species, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little
in men but what was hateful. Yet l>e did not hate them. Nay,
hg was so far humane that it was highly disagreeable to him to
see their sufferings or to hear their complaints. This, how-
ever, is a sort of humanity which, though amiable and laudable
in a private man whose power to help or hurt is bounded by a
narrow circle, has in princes often been rather a vice than a
TJNDER CIIARLKS THK SECOND, 161
virtue. More than one well disposed ruler has given up whole
provinces to rapine and oppression, merely from a wish to see
none but happy faces round his own board and in his own
walks. No man is fit to govern great societies who hesitates
about disobliging the few who have access to him, for the sake
of the many whom he will never see. The facility of Charles
was such as has perhaps never been found in any man of equal
sense. He was a slave without being a dupe. Worthless men
and women, to the very bottom of whose hearts he saw, and
whom he knew to be destitute of affection for him and unde-
serving of his confidence, could easily wheedle him out of titles,
places, domains, state secrets and pardons. lie bestowed much;
yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired the fame of
beneficence. lie never gave spontaneously; but it was painful
to him to refuse. The consequence was that his bounty gen-
erally went, not to those who deserved it best, nor even to
those whom he liked best, bui to the most shameless and im-
portunate suitor who could obtain an audience.
The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles
the Second differed widely from those by which his predeces-
sor and his successor were actuated. He was not a man to be
imposed upon by the patriarchal theory of government and the
doctrine, of divine right. He was utterly without ambition.
Pie detested business, and wolild sooner have abdicated his
crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the
administration. Such was his aversion to toil, and such his
ignorance of affairs, that the very clerks who attended him
when he sate in council could not refrain from sneering at his
frivolous remarks, and at his childish impatience. Neither
gratitude nor revenge had any share in determining his course ;
for never was there a mind on which both services and injuries
left such faint and transitory impressions. He wished merely
to be a King such as Lewis the Fifteenth of France afterwards
was ; a King who could draw without limit on the treasury for
the gratification of his private tastes, who could hire with
wealth and honours persons capable of assisting him to kill the
time, and who, even when the state was brought by maladmin-
162 HISTORY or ENGLAND.
istration to the depths of humiliation and to the brink of ruin,
could still exclude unwelcome truth from the purlieus of his
own - seraglio, and refuse to see and hear whatever might dis-
turb his luxurious repose. For these ends, and for these ends
alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could be ob-
tained without risk or trouble. In the religious disputes which
divided his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at all in-
terested. For his opinions oscillated in contented suspense be-
tween infidelity and Popery. But, though his conscience was
neutral in the quarrel between the Episcopalians and the Pres-
byterians, his taste was by no means so. His favourite vices
were precisely those to which the Puritans were least indul-
gent. He could not get through one day without the help of
diversions which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As a man
eminently well bred, and keenly sensible of the ridiculous, he
was moved to contemptuous mnth by the Puritan oddities. He
had indeed some reason to dislike the rigid sect. He had, at
the age when the passions are most impetuous and when levity
is most pardonable, spent some months in Scotland, a King in
name, but in fact a state prisoner in the hands of austere Pres-
byterians. Not content with requiring him to conform to their
worship and to subscribe their Covenant, they had watched all
his motions, and lectured him on all his youthful follias. He
had been compelled to give reluctant attendance at endless
prayers and sermons, and might think himself fortunate when
he was not insolently reminded from the pulpit of his own frail-
ties, of his father's tyranny, and of his mother's idolatry. In-
deed he had been so miserable during this part of his life that
the defeat which made him again a wanderer might be regarded
as a deliverance rather than as a calamity. Under the influ-
ence of such feelings as these Charles was desirous to depress
the party which had resisted his father.
The King's brother, James Duke of York, took the same
side. Though a libertine, James was diligent, methodical,
and fond of authority and business. His understanding was
singularly slow and narrow, and his temper obstinate, harsh,
and unforgiving. That such a prince should have looked with
UNDER CHARLES THE SECON 163
no good will on the free institutions of England, and on the
party which was peculiarly zealous for those institutions, can
excite no surprise. As yet the Duke professed himself a mem'
ber of the Anglican Church : but he had already shown inclina-
tions which liad seriously alarmed good Protestants.
The person on wjiom devolved at this time the greatest part
of the labour oi governing was Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the
x'ealm, who was soon created Earl of Clarendon. The respect
which we justly feel for Clarendon as a writer must not blind
us to the laults which he committed as a statesman. Some of
those faults, however, are explained and excused by the unfor-
tunate position in which he stood. He liad, during the first year
of the Long Parliament, been honourably distinguished among
the senators who laboured to redress the grievances of the
nation. Oneof the most odious of those grievances, the Coun-
cil of York, had been removed in consequence chiefly of his
exertions. When the great schism took place, when the reform-
ing party and the conservative party first appeared marshalled
against each other, he, with many wise and good men, took
the conservative side. He thenceforward followed the fortunes
of the court, enjoyed as large a share of the confidence of Charles
the First as the reserved nature and tortuous policy of that
prince allowed to any minister, and subsequently shared the
exile and directed the political conduct of Charles the Second.
At the Restoration Hyde became chief minister. In a few
months it was announced that he was closely related by aflfjnity
to the royal house. His daughter had become, by a secret mar-
riage. Duchess of York. His grandchildren might perhaps wear
the crown. He was raised by this illustrious connection over
the heads of the old nobility of the land, and was for a time
supposed to be allpowerful. In some respects he was well fitted
for his great place. No man wrote abler state papers. No
man spoke with more weight and dignity in Council and in
Parliament. No man was better acquainted with general
maxims of statecraft. No man observed the varieties of charac-
ter with a more discriminating eye. It must be added that he
bad a strong sense of moral ^nd religious obligation, a sincere
164 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
reverence for the laws of his country, and a conscientious regard
for the honour and interest of the Crown. But his temper was
sour, arrogant, and impatient of opposition. Above all, he had
been long an exile ; and this circumstance alone would have
completely disqualified him for the supreme direction of affairs.
It is scarcely possible that a politician, wjio has been compelled
by civil troubles to go into banishment, and to pass many of the
best years of his life abroad, can be fit, on the day on which he
returns to his native land, to be at the head of the government.
Clarendon was no exception to this rule. He had left England
with a mind heated by a fierce conflict which had ended in the
downfall of his party and of his own fortunes. From 1 646 to
1660 he had lived beyond sea, looking on all that passed at
home from a great distance, and through a false medium. His
notions of public affairs were necessarily derived from the reports
of plotters, many of whom were ruined and desperate men.
Events naturally seemed to him auspicious, not in proportion as
they increased the prosperity and glory of the nation, but in
proportion as they tended to hasten the hour of his own return.
His wish, a wish which he has not disguised, was that, till his
countrymen brought back the old line, they might never enjoy
quiet or freedom. At length he returned ; and, without having
a single week to look about him, to mix with society, to note the
changes which fourteen eventful years had produced in the
national character and feelings, he was at once set to rule the
state. In such circumstances, a minister of the greatest tact and
docility would probably have fallen into serious errors. But
tact and docility made no part of the character of Clarendon.
To him England was still the England of his youth ; and he
sternly frowned down every theory and every practice which
had sprung up during his own exile. Though ho- was far from
meditating any attack on the ancient and undoubted power of
the House of Commons, he saw- with extreme uneasiness the
growth of that power. The royal prerogative, for which he had
long suffered, and by which he had at length been raised to
wealth and dignity, was sacred in his eyes. The Roundheads
he regarded both with political and with personal aversion. To
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND.
165
the Anglican Church he had always been strongly attached,
and had repeatedly, where her interests were concerned,
separated himself with regret from his dearest friends. His zeal
for Episcopacy and for the Book of Common Prayer was now
more ardent than ever, and was mingled with a vindictive hatred
of the Puritans, which did him little honour either as a states-
man or as a Christian.
While the House of Commons which had recalled the royal
family was sitting, it was impossible to effect the re-establish-
ment of the old ecclesiastical system. Not only were the inten-
tions of the court strictly concealed, but as'surances which qui-
eted the minds of the moderate Presbyterians were given by
the King in the most solemn manner. He had promised, before
his restoration, that he would grant liberty of conscience to his
subjects. He now repeated that promise, and added a promise
to use his best endeavours for the purpose of effecting a compro-
mise between the contending sects. He wished, he said, to see
the spiritual jurisdiction divided between bishops and synods.
The Liturgy should be revised by a body of learned divines,
one-half of whom should be Presbyterians. The questions
respecting the surplice, the posture at the Eucharist, and the
sign of the cross in baptism, should be settled in a way which
would set tender consciences at ease. When the King had thus
laid asleep the vigilance of those whom he most feared, he dis-
solved the Pai-liament. He had already given his assent to an
act by which an amnesty was granted, with few exceptions, to
all who, during the late troubles, had been guilty of political
offences. He had also obtained from the Commons a grant for
life of taxes, the annual product of which was estimated at twelve
hundred thousand pounds. The actual income, indeed, during
some years, amounted to little more than a million : but this
sum, together with the hereditary revenue of the crown, was
then sufficient to defray the expenses of the government in time
of peace. Nothing was allowed for a standing army. The
nation was sick of the very name ; and the least mention of
such a force would have incensed and alarmed all parties
Early in 1661 took place a general election. The peoplo
16{^ HISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
were mad with loyal enthusiasm. The capital was excited by
preparations for the most splendid coronation that had ever
been known. The result was that a body of representatives
was returned, such as England had never yet seen. A large
proportion of the successful candidates were men who had
foLiuht for the Crown and the Church, and whose minds had been
exasperated by many injuries and insults suffered at the hands
of the Roundheads. When the members met, the passions
which animated each individually acquired new strength from
sympathy. Tlie House of Commons was, during some years,
more zealous for royalty than the King, more zealous for epis-
copacy than the Bishops. Charles and Clarendon were almost
terrified at the completeness of their own success. They found
themselves in a situation not unlike that in wliich Lewis the
Eighteenth and the Duke of Richelieu were placed while the
Chamber of 1815 was sitting. Even if the King had been
desirous to fulfil the promises which he had made to the Pres-
byterians, it would have been out of his power to do so. It
was indeed only by the strong exertion of his influence that he
could prevent the victorious Cavaliers from rescinding the act
of indemnity, and retaliating v/ithout mercy all that they had
suffered.
The Commons began by resolving that every member sliould,
on pain of expulsion, take the sacrament according to the form
prescribed by the old Liturgy, and that the Covenant should be
burned by the hangman in Palace Yard. An act was passed,
which not only acknowledged the power of the sword to be
solely in the King, but declared that in no extremity whatever
could the two Houses be justified in withstanding him by force.
Anotlier act was passed which required every officer of a cor-
poration to receive the Eucharist according to the rites of the
Church of Eno[land, and to swear that he held resistance to the
King's authority to be in all cases unlawful. A few hotheaded
men wished to bring in a bill, which should at once annul all the
statutes passed by the Long Parliament, and should restore the
Star Chamber and the High Commission ; but the reaction, vio-
lent as it was, did not proceed quite to this length. It still con-
UNDKR CHARLES TIIK SICCOND. 167
tinued to be the law that a Parliament should be held every
three yeai's : but the stringent clauses which directed the return-
ing officers to proceed to election at the proper time, even with-
out the royal writ, were repealed. The Bishops were restored
to their seats in the Upper House. The old ecclesiastical pol-
ity and the old Liturgy were revived without any modification
which had any tendency to conciliate even the most reasonable
Presbyterians. Episcopal ordination was now, for the first
time, made an indispensable qualification for church 2:)i"eferment.
About two. thousand ministers of religion, whose conscience
did not suffer them to conform, were driven from their benefices
in one day. The dominant party exultingly reminded the suf-
ferers that the Long Parliament, when at the height of power,
had turned out a still greater number of Royalist divines.
The reproach was but too well founded : but the Long Parlia-
ment had at least allowed to the divines whom it ejected a
provision sufficient to keep them from starving ; and this exam-
ple the Cavaliers, intoxicated with animosity, had not the jus-
tice and humanity to follow.
Then came penal statutes against Noncouxormists, statutes
for which precedents might too easily be found in the Puritan
legislation, but to which the King could not give his assent
without a breach of promises publicly made, in the most impor-
tant crisis of his life, to those on whom his fate depended.
The Presbyterians, in extreme distress and terror, fled to the
f<oot of the throne, and pleaded their recent services and the
i ayal faith solemnly and repeatedl} plighted. The King
%i avered. He could not deny his own hand and seal. He
CO old not but be conscious that he owed much to the petitioners.
He was little in the habit of resisting importunate solicitation.
H^S! temper was not that of a persecutor. He disliked the
Puritans indeed; but in him dislike was a languid feeling, very
little resembling the energetic hatred which had burned in the
heart of Laud. He was, moreover, partial to the Roman
Catholic religion ; and he knew that it would be impossible to
grant liberty of worship to the professors of that religion with-
out extending the same indulg^ace to Protestant dissenters.
t
168 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
He therefore made a feeble attempt to restrain tlie intolerant
zeal of the House of Commons ; but that House was under the
influence of far deeper convictions and far stronger passions
than his own. After a faint struggle he yielded, and passed,
with the show of alacrity, a series of odious. acts against the
separatists. It was made a crime to attend a dissenting plate
of worship. A single justice of the peace might convict without
a jury, and might, for the third offence, pass sentence of trans-
portation beyond sea for seven years. With refined cruelty it
was provided that the offender should not be trajisported to
New England, where he was likely to find sympathising friends.
If he returned to his own country before the expiration of his
term of exile, he was liable to capital punishment. A new and
most unreasonable test was imposed on divines who had been
deprived of their benefices for nonconformity ; and all who
refused to take that test were prohibited from coming within
five miles of any town which was governed by a corporation, of
any town which was represented in Parliament, or of any town
where they had themselves resided as ministers. The magis-
trates, by whom these rigorous statutes were to be enforced,
were in general men inflamed by party spii'it and by the re-
membrance of wrongs suffered in the time of the commonwealth.
The gaols were therefore soon crowded with dissentei's ; and,
among the sufferers, were some of whose genius and virtue any
Christian society might well be proud.
The Church of England was not iingrateful for the protec-
tion which she received from the government. From the first
day of her existence, she had been attached to monarchy.
But, during the quarter of a century which followed the Restor-
ation, her zeal for royal authority and hereditary right passed
all bounds. She had suffered with the House of Stuart.
She had been restored with that House. She was connected
with it by common interests, friendships, and enmities, It
seemed impossible that a day could ever come when the ties
which bound her to the children of her august martyr would be
sundered, and when the loyalty in which she gloried would
cease to be a pleasing and profitable duty. She accordingly
t
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 169
magnified in fulsome phrase that prerogative which was con-
stantly employed to defend and to aggrandise her, and repro-
bated, much at her ease, the depravity of those whom oppres-
sion, from which she was exempt, had goaded to rebellion.
Her favourite theme was the doctrine of non-resistance. That
doctrine she taught without any qualification , and followed
out to all its extreme consequences. Her disciples were never
weary of repeating that in no conceivable case, not even if
England were cursed with a King resembling Busiris or
Phalaris, with a King who, in defiance of law, and without the
pretence of justice^ should daily doom huudi'eds of innocent
victims to torture and death, would all the Estates of the realm
united be justified in withstanding his tyranny by physical
force. Happily the principles of human nature afford abundant
security that such theories will never be more than theories.
The day of trial came ; and the very men who had most loudly
and most sincerely professed this extravagant loyalty were, in
every county of England arrayed in arms against the throne.
Property all over the kingdom was now again changing
hands. The national sales, not having been confirmed by Act
of Parliament, were regarded by 'the tribunals as nullities.
The bishops, the deans, the chapters, the Royalist nobility
and gentry, reentered on their confiscated estates, and ejected
even purchasers who had given fair prices. The losses which
the Cavaliers had sustained during the ascendency of their
opponents were thus in part repaired ; but in part only. All
actions for mesne profits were effectually barred by the general
amnesty ; and the numerous Royalists, who, in order to discharge
fines imposed by the Long Parliament, or in order to purchase
the favour of powerful Roundheads, had sold lands for much
less than the real value, were not relieved from the legal con-
sequences of their own acts.
While these changes were in progress, a change still more
important took place in the morals and manners of the com-
munity. Those passions and tastes which, under the rule of
the Puritans, had been sternly repressed, and, if gratified at all,
had been gratified by stealth, broke forth with ungovernable
170 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
violence as soou as the check was withdrawn. Men flew to
frivolous amusements and to criminal pleasures with the greedi-
ness which long and enforced abstinence naturally produces.
Little restraint was imposed by public opinion. For the nation,
nauseated with cant, suspicious of all pretensions to sanctity,
and still smarting from the recent tyranny of rulers austere in
life and powerful in prayer, looked for a time with complacency
on the softer and gayer vices. Still less restraint was imposed
by the government. Indeed there was no excess which was
not encouraged by the ostentatious profligacy of the King and
of his favourite courtiers. A few counsellors of Charles the
First, who wei-e now no longer young, retained the decorous
gravity which had been thn-ty years before in fashion at White-
hall. Such were Clarendon himself, and his friends, Thomas
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Lord Treasurer, and James
Butler, Duke of Ormond, who, having through many vicissitudes
struggled gallantly for the royal cause in Ireland, now governed
that kingdom as Lord Lieutenant. But neither the memory of
the services of these men, nor their great power in the state,
could protect them from the sarcasms which modish vice loves
to daft at obsolete virtue. The praise of politeness and vivacity
could now scarcely be obtained except by some violation of
decorum. Talents great and various assisted to spread the
contagion. Ethical philosophy had recently taken a form well
suited to please a generation equally devoted to monarchy and
to vice. Thomas Hobbes had, in language more precise and
luminous than has ever been employed by any other metaphysi-
cal writer, maintained that the will of the prince was the stand-
ard of right and wrong, and that every subject ought to be
ready to profess Popery, Mahometanism, or Paganism, at the
royal command. Thousands who were incompetent to appreciate
what was really valuable in his speculations, eagerly welcomed
a theory which, while it exalted the kingly office, relaxed the
obligations of morality, and degraded religion into a mere
affair of state. Ilobbism soon became an almost essential part
of the character of the flne ffontleman. All the lighter kinds of
literature were deeply tainted by the prevailing liceutiousness.
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 171
Poetry stooped to be the pandar of every low desire. Ridicule,
instead of putting guilt and error to the blush, turned her for-
midable shafts against innocence and truth. The restored
Church contended indeed against the prevailing immorality,
but contended feebly, and vpith half a heart. It was necessary
to the decorum of her character that she should admonish her
erring children : but her admonitions were given in a some-
what perfunctory manner^ Her attention was elsewhere en-
gaged. Her whole soul was in the work of crushing the Puri«
tans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto Ctesar the things
which were Caesar's. She had been pillaged and oppressed by
the party which preached an austere morality. She had been
restored to opulence and honour by libertines. Little as the
men of mirth and fashion were disposed to shape their lives
according to her precepts, they were yet ready to fight knee
deep in blood for her cathedrals and places, for every line of
her rubric and every thread of her vestments. If the debauched
Cavalier haunted brothels and gambling houses, he at least
avoided conventicles. If he never spoke without uttering
ribaldry and blasphemy, he made some amends by his eagerness
to send Baxter and Howe to gaol for preaching and praying.
Thus the clergy, for a time, made war on schism with so much
vigour that they had little leisure to make war on vice. The
ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence and
under the special sanction of the head of the Church, publicly
recited by female lips in female ears, while the author of the
Pilgrim's Progress languished in a dungeon for the crime of
proclaiming the gospel to the poor. It is an unquestionable
and a most instructive fact that the years during which the
political power of the Anglican hierarchy was in the zenith
were precisely the years during which national virtue was at
the lowest point.
Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of
the prevailing immorality ; but those persons who made politics
their business were perhaps the most corrupt part of the corrupt
society. For they were exposed, not only to the same noxious
influences which affected the nation generally, but also to a
172 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
taint of a peculiar and of a most malignant kind. Their char«
acter had been formed amidst frequent and violent revolutions
and counterrevolutions. In the course of a few years they had
seen the ecclesiastical and civil polity of their country repeatedly
changed. They had seen an Episcopal Church persecuting
Puritans, a Puritan Church persecuting Episcopalians, and an
Episcopal Church persecuting Puritans again. They had seen
hereditary monarchy abolished and restored. They had seea
the Long Parliament thi-ice supreme in the state, and thrice
dissolved amidst the curses and laughter of millions. They,
had seen a new dynasty rapidly rising to the height of power
and glory, and then on a sudden hurled down from the chair of
state without a struggle. They had seen a new representative
system devised, tried and abandoned. They had seen a new
House of Lords created and scattered. They had seen great
masses of property violently transferred from Cavaliers to
Roundheads, and from Roundheads back to Cavaliers. During
these events no man could be a stirring and thriving politician
who was not prepared to change with every change of fortune.
It was only in retirement that any person could long keep the
character either of a steady Royalist or of a steady Republican.
One who, in such an age, is determined to attain civil greatness
must renounce all thoughts of consistency. Instead of affecting
immutability in the midst of endless mutation, he must be always
on the watch for the indications of a cominw reaction. He must
seize the exact moment for desertinsr a fallins: cause. Having
gone all lengths with a faction while it was uppermost, he must
suddenly extricate himself from it when its difficulties begin,
must assail it, must persecute it, must enter on a nev/ career of
power and prosperity in company with new associates. His
situation naturally developes in him to the highest degree a
peculiar class of abilities and a peculiar class of vices. He
becomes quick of observation and fertile of resource. He
catches without effort the tone of any sect or party with which
he chances to mingle. He discerns the signs of the times with a
sagacity which to the multitude appears miraculous, with a
sagacity resembling that with which a veteran police officei
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, 173
pursues the faintest indications of crime, or with which a
Mohawk warrior follows a track through tlie woods. But we
shall seldom find, in a state-sman so trained, integrity, constancy,
any of the virtues of the noble family of Truth, He has no
faith in any doctrine, no zeal for any cause. He has seen so
many old institutions swept away, that lie has no reverence for
prescription. He has seen so many new institutions, from
which much had heen expected, produce mere disappointment,
that he has no hope of improvement. He sneers alike at those
who are anxious to preserve and at those who are eager to
reform. There is nothing in the state which he could not, with-
out a scruple or a blush, join in defending or in destroying.
Fidelity to opinions and to friends seems to him mere duhiess
and wrongheadedness. Politics he regards, not as a science of
which the object is the happiness of mankind, but as an exciting
game of mixed chance and skill, at which a dexterous and lucky
player may win an estate, a coronet, perhaps a crown, and at
which one rash move may lead to the loss of fortune and of
life. Ambition, which, in good times, and in good minds, is
half a virtue, now, disjoined from every elevated and philan-
thropic sentiment, becomes a selfish cupidity scarcely less ignoble
than avarice. Among those politicians who, from the Restora-
tion to the accession of the House of Hanover, were at the head
of the great parties in the state, very few can be named whose
reputation is not stained by what, in our age, would be called
gross perfidy and corruption. It is scarcely an exaggeration to
say that the most unprincipled public men who have taken part
in affairs within our memory would, if tried by the standard
which was in fashion during the latter part of the seventeenth
century, deserve to be regarded as scrupulous and dismterested.
While these political, religious, and moral changes were
taking place in England, the Royal authority had been without
difficulty reestablished in every other part of the British islands.
In Scotland the restoration of the Stuarts had been hailed with
delicfht , for it was resfarded as the restoration of national inde-
pendence. And true it was that the yoke which Cromwell had
imposed was, in appearance, taken away, that the Scottish
174 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
Estates again met iu their old hall at Edinburgh, and that thtt
Senators of the College of Justice again administered the Scot-
tish law according to the old forms. Yet was the independence
of the little kingdom necessarily rather nominal than real ; for,
ae long as the King had England on his side, he had nothing to
apprehend from disaSectiou in his other dominions. He was
now in such a situation that he could renew the attempt which
had proved destructive to his father without any danger of his
father's fate. Charles the First had tried to force his own
religion by his regal power on the Scots at a moment when
both his religion and his regal power were unpopular in Eng-
land; and he had not only failed, but had raised troubles which
had ultimately cost him his crown and his head. Times had
now changed : England was zealous for monarchy and prelacy ;
and therefore the scheme which had formerly been in the highest
degree imprudent might be resumed with little risk to the throne.
The government resolved to set up a prelatical church iu Scot-
land. The design was disapproved by every Scotchman whose
judgment was entitled to respect. Some Scottish statesmen who
were zealous for the King's prerogative had been bred Presby-
terians. Though little troubled with scruples, they retained a
preference for the religion of their childhood ; and they well
knew how stron<T a hold that religion had on the hef^vts of their
countrymen. They remonstrated strongly : but, when they
found that they remonstrated in vain, they had not, virtue enough
to persist in an oppositjon which would have given offence to
their master; and several of them stooped to the wickedness
and baseness of persecuting what in their consciences they
believed to be the purest form of Christianity. The Scottish
Parliament was so constituted that it had scarcely ever offered
any serious oi^position even to Kings much weaker than Charles
then was. Episcopacy, therefore, was established by law. As
to the form of worship, a large discretion was left to the clergy.
In some churches the English Liturgy was used. In others,
the ministers selected from that Liturgy such prayers and
thanksgivings as were likely to be least offensive to the people.
But in general the doxology was sung at the close of public
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 175
worship ; and the Apostles' Creed was recited when baptism
was administered. By the great body of the Scottish nation the
new Church was detested both as superstitious and as foreign ;
as tainted with the corruptions of Rome, and as a mark of the
predominance of England. There was, however, no general
insurrection. The country was not what it had been twenty-two
years before. Disastrous war and alien domination had tamed
the spirit of the people. The aristocracy, which was held in
great honour by the middle class and by the populace, had put
itself at the head of the movement against Charles the First, but
proved obsequious to Charles the Second. From the English
Puritans no aid was now to be expected. They were a feeble
party, proscribed both by law and by public opinion. The bulk
of the Scottish nation, therefore, sullenly submitted, and, with
many misgivings of conscience, attended the ministrations of
the Episcopal clergy, or of Presbyterian divines who had con-
sented to accept from the government a half toleration, known
by the name of the Indulgence. But there were, particularly
in the western lowlands, many fierce and resolute men who held
that the obligation to observe the Covenant was pai'amount to
the obligation to obey the magistrate. These people, in defiance
of the law, persisted in meeting to worship God after their own
fashion. The Indulgence they regarded, not as a partial re-
paration of the wrongs inflicted by the State on the Church, but
as a new wrong, the more odious because it was disguised under
the appearance of a benefit. Persecution, they said, could only
kill the body ; but the black Indulgence was deadly to the soul.
Driven from the towns, they assembled on heaths and moun-
tains. Attacked by the civil power, they without scruple repelled
force by force. At every conventicle they mustered in arms.
They repeatedly broke out into open rebellion. They were
easily defeated, and mercilessly punished : but neither defeat
nor punishment could subdue their spirit. Hunted down like
wild beasts, tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned
by hundreds, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the
license of soldiers from England, abandoned at another time to
the mercy of troops of marauders from the Highlands, they still
176 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
etood at bay in a mood so savage that the boldest and mightiest
oppressor could not but dread the audacity of their despair.
Such was, during the reign of Charles the Second, the state
of Scotland. Ireland was not less distracted. In that island
existed feuds, compared with which the hottest animosities of
English politicians were lukewarm. The enmity between the
Irish Cavaliers and the Irish Roundheads was almost forgotten
in the fiercer enmity which raged between the English and the
Celtic races. The interval between the Episcopalian and the
Presbyterian seemed to vanish, when compared with the interval
which separated both from the Papist. During the late civil
troubles the greater part of the Irish soil had been transferred
from the vanquished nation to the victors. To the favour of
the Crown few either of the old or of the new occupants had
any pretensions. The despoilers and the despoiled had, for the
most part, been rebels alike. The government was soon per-
plexed and wearied by the conflicting claims and mutual accusa-
tions of the two incensed factions. Those colonists amonfj
whom Cromwell had portioned out the concjuered territory, and
whose descendants are still called Cromwellians, asserted that
the aboriginal inhabitants were deadly enemies of the English
nation under every dynasty, and of the Protestant religion in
every form. They described and exaggerated the atrocities
which had disgraced the insurrection of Ulster : they urged the
King to follow up with resolution the policy of the Protector ;
and they were not ashamed to hint that there would never be
peace in Ireland till the old Irish race should be extirpated.
The Roman Catholics extenuated their offense as they best
might, and expatiated in piteous language on the severity of
their punishment, which, in truth, had not been lenient. They
implored Charles not to confound the innocent with the guilty,
and reminded him that many of the guilty had atoned for their
fault by returning to their allegiance, and by defending his
rights against the murderers of his father. The court, sick of
the importunities of two parties, neither of which it had any
reason to love, at length relieved itself from trouble by dictating a
compromise. That system, cruel, but most complete and energetic,
UNDER CHARLES TUE SECOND. 177
by which Oliver had proposed to make the island thoroughly
English, was abandoned. The Cromwellians were induced to
relinquish a third part of their acquisitions. The land thus
surrendered was capriciously divided among claimants whom the
government chose to favour. But great numbers who protested
that they were innocent of all disloyalty, and some persons who
boasted that their loyalty had been signally displayed, ob-
tained neither restitution -nor compensation, and filled France
and Spain with outcries against the injustice and ingratitude of
the House of Stuart.
Meantime the government had, even in England, ceased to
be popular. The Royalists had begun to quarrel with the court
and with each other ; and the party which had been vanquished,
trampled down, and, as it seemed, annihilated, but which had
still retained a strong principle of life, again raised its head,
and renewed the interminable war.
Had the administration been faultless, the enthusiasm with
which the return of the King and the termination of the mili-
tary tyranny had been hailed could not have been permanent.
For it is the law of our nature that such fits of excitement shall
always be followed by remissions. The manner in which the
court abused its victory made the remission speedy and com-
plete. Every moderate man was shocked by the' insolence,
cruelty, and perfidy with which the Nonconformists were treated.
The penal laws had effectually purged the oppressed party
of those insincere members whose vices had disgraced it, and
had made it again an honest and pious body of men. The
Puritan, a conqueror, a ruler, a persecutor, a sequestrator, had
been detested. The Puritan, betrayed and evil entreated, de-
serted by all the timeservers who, in his prosperity, had claimed
brotherhood with him, hunted from his home, forbidden under
severe penalties to pray or receive the sacrament according to
his conscience, yet still firm in his resolution to obey God rather
than man, was, in spite of some unpleasing recollections, an
object of intj and respect to well constituted minds. These
feelings became stronger when it was noised abroad that the
court was not disposed to treat Papists with the same rigour
12
178 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
which had been shown to Presbyterians. A vague suspicioi*
that the King and the Duke were not sincere Protestants sprang
up and gathered strength. Many persons too who had been
disgusted by the austerity and hypocrisy of the Saints of the
Commonwealth began to be still more disgusted by the open
profligacy of the court and of the Cavaliers, and were disjjosed
to doubt whether tho scdlen preciseness of Praise God Barebone
might not be preferable to the outrageous profaneness and
licentiousness of the Buckinghams and Sedleys. Even immoral
men, who were not utterly destitute of sense and public spirit,
complained that the government treated the most serious matters
as trifles, and made trifles its serious business. A King might
be pardoned for amusing his leisure with wine, wit, and beauty.
But it was intolerable that he should sink into a mere lounger
and voluptuary, that the gravest affairs of state shou. . be neglect-
ed, and that the public service should be starved anu tho finances
deranged in order that 1 arlots and parasites might grow rich.
A large body of Royalists joined in these complaints, and
added many sharp reflections on the King's ingratitude. His
whole revenue, indeed, woulJ not have sufficed to reward them
all in proportion to their own consciousness of desert. For to
every distressed gentleman who had fought under Rupert or
Derby his own services seemed eminently meritorious, and his
own sufferings eminently severe. Every one had flattered him-
self that, whatever became of the rest, he should be largely
recompensed for all that he had lost during the civil troubles,
and that the restoration of the monarchy would be followed by
the restoration of his own dilapidated fortunes. None
of these expectants could restrain his indignation, when he
found that he was as poor under the King as he had been under
the Rump or the Protector. The negligence and extravagance
of the oourt excited the bitter indignation of these loyal veterans.
They justly said that one half of what His Majesty squandered
on concubines and buffoons would gladden the hearts of hun-
dreds of old Cavaliers who, after cutting down their oaks and
melting their plate to help his father, now wandered about in
threadbare suits, and did not know where to turn for a meal.
DNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 179.
At the same time a sudden fall of rents took place. The ■
income of every landed proprietor was diminished by five shil-
lings in the pound. The cry of agricultural distress rose fromv
every shire in the kingdom ; and for that distress the govern--
ment was, as usual, held accountable. The gentry, compelled tO'
retrench their expenses for a period, saw with indignation the'
increasing splendour and profusion of Whitehall, and were im-
movably fixed in the belief that the money which ought to have
supported their households had, by some inexplicable process,
gone to tlie favourites of the King.
The minds of men w ere now in such a temper that every public
act excited discontent. Charles had taken to wife Catharine
Princess of Portugal. The marriage was generally disliked ;
Rnd the murmurs became loud when it appeared that the King
was not likely to have any legitimate posterity. Dunkirk, won
by Oliver from Spain, was sold to Lewis the Fourteenth, King
of France. This bargain excited general indignation. English-
men were already beginning to observe with uneasiness the pro.
gress of the French power, and to regard the House of Bourbon
with the same feelino^ with which their grandfathers had regarded
the House of Austria. Was it wise, men asked, at such a time, to
make any addition to the strength of a monarchy already too
formidable ? Dunkirk was, moreover, prized by the people,
not merely as a place of arms, and as a key to the Low Coun-
tries, but also as a trophy of English valour. It was to the
subjects of Chai'les what Calais had been to an earlier genera-
tion, and what the rock of Gibraltar, so manfully defended,
through disastrous and perilous years, against the fleets and
armies of a mighty coalition, is to ourselves. The plea of
economy might have had some weight, if it had been urged by
an economical government. But it was notorious that tho
charsres of Dunkirk fell far short of the suras which were wasted
at court in vice and folly. It seemed insupportable that
a sovereign, profuse beyond example in all that regarded hia
own pleasures, should be niggardly in all that regarded tho safety
and honour of the state.
The public discontent was heightened, when it was found
180 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
that, wliile Dunkirk was abandoned on the plea of economy, the
fortress of Tangier, which was part of the dower of Queen
Catharine, was repaired and kept up at an enormous charge.
That place was associated with no recollections gratifying to the
national pride : it could in no way promote the national inter-
ests : it involved us in inglorious, unprofitable, and interminable
wars with tribes of half savage Mussulmans ; aud it was situated
in a climate singularly unfavourable to the health and vigour of
the English race.
But the murmurs excited by these errors were faint, when
compared with the clamours which soon broke forth. The
government encraored in war with the United Provinces. The
House of Commons readily voted sums unexampled in our his-
tory, sums exceeding those which had supported the fleets and
armies of Cromwell at the time when his power was the terror
of all the world. But such was the extravagance, dishonesty,
and incapacity of those who had succeeded to his authority, that
this liberality proved worse than laseless. The sycophants of
the court, ill qualified to contend against the great men v/ho then
directed the arms of Holland, against such a statesman as De
Witt, and such a commander as De Ruyter, made fortunes
rapidly, while the sailors mutinied from very hunger, while the
dockyards were unguarded, while the ships were .eaky and with-
out ri<r£rinof. It was at ienirth determined to abandon all schemes
of offensive war ; aud it soon appeared that even a defensive
war was a task too hard for that administration. The Dutch
fleet sailed up the Thames, and. burned the ships of war which
lay at Chatham. It was said that, on the very day of that great
humiliation, the King feasted with the ladies of his seraglio, and
amused himself with hunting a moth about the supper room.
Then, at length, tardy justice was done to the memory of Oliver.
Everywhere men magnified his valour, genius, and patriotism.
Everywhere it was remembered how, when he ruled, all foreign
powers had trembled at the name of England, how the States
General, now so haughty, had crouched at his feet, and how,
when it was known that he was no more, Amsterdam was
lighted up as for a great deliverance, and children ran along the
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 181
canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead. Even Royal-
ists exclaimed that the state could be saved only by calling the
old soldiers of the Commonwealth to arms. Soon the capital
began to feel the miseries of a blockade. Fuel was scarcely to
be procured. Tilbury Fort, the place where Elizabeth had,
with manly spirit, hurled foul scorn at Parma and Spain, was
insulted by the invaders. The roar of foreign guns was heard,
for the first time, by the citizens of London. In the Council it
was seriously proposed that, if the enemy advanced, the Tower
should be abandoned. Great multitudes of people assembled
in the streets crying out that England was bought and sold.
The houses and carriajxes of the ministers were attacked by the
populace ; and it seemed likely that the government would have
to deal at once with an invasion and with an insurrection. The
extreme danger, it is true, soon passed by. A treaty was con-
cluded, very different from the treaties which Oliver had been
in the habit of signing ; and the nation was once more at peace,
but was m a mood scarcely less fierce and sullen than in the
days of shipmoney.
The discontent engendered by maladministration was
heightened by calamities which the best administration could
not have averted. While the ignominious war with Holland
was raging, London suffered two great disasters, such as never,
in so short a space of time, befel one city. A pestilence, sur-
/jjassing in horror any that during three centuries had visited
the island, swept away, in six months, more than a hundred
thousand human beings. And scarcely had the dead cart
ceased to go its rounds, when a fire, such as had not been
known in Euro};e since the conflagration of Rome under Nero,
laid in ruins the whole city, from the Tower to the Temple, and
from the river to the purlieus of Smithfield.
Had there been a general election while the nation was
smarting under so many disgraces and misfortunes, it is proba-
ble that the Roundheads would have regained ascendency in
the state. But the Parliament was still the Cavalier Parlia-
ment, chosen in the transport of loyalty which had followed the
Restoration. Nevertheless it soon became evident that no
182 HISTORY OP ENGLAND
English legislature, however loyal, would now consent to be
merely what the legislature had been under the Tudors. From,
the death of Elizabeth to the eve of the civil war, the Puri-
tans, who predominated in the representative body, had been
constantly, by a dexterous use of the power of the purse, en-
croaching on the province of the executive government. The'
gentlemen who, after the Restoration, filled the Lower House,
though they abhorred the Puritan name, were well jDleased to
inherit the fruit of the Puritan policy. They were indeed
most willing to employ the power which they possessed in the
state for the purpose of making their King mighty and hon-
oured, both at home and abroad : but with the power itself
they were resolved not to part. The great English revolution
of the seventeenth century, that is to say, the transfer of the
supreme control of the executive administration from the crown
to the House of Commons, was, through the whole long exist-
ence of this Parliament, proceeding noiselessly, but rapidly aiid
steadily. Charles, kept poor by his follies and vices, wanted
money. The Commons alone could legally grant him money.
They could not be prevented from jjutting their own price on
their grants. The price which they put on their grants was
this, that they should be allowed to interfere with every one of
the King's prerogatives, to wring from him his consent to laws
which he disliked, to break up cabinets, to dictate the course of
foreign policy, and even to direct the administration of war.
To the royal office, and the royal jierson, they loudly and sin-
cerely professed the strongest attachment. But to Clarendon
they owed no allegiance ; and they fell on him as furiously as
their predecessors had fallen on Strafford. The minister's
virtues and vices alike contributed to his ruin. Pie was the
ostensible head of the administration, and was therefore held
responsible even for those acts which he had strongly, but
v^ainly, opposed in Council. He was regarded by the Puritans,
\ind by all who pitied them, as an implacable bigot, a second
Laud, with much more than Laud's understanding. He had on
all occasions maintained that the Act of Indemnity ought to be
strictly observed ; and this part of his conduct, though highly
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 183
honourable to him, made him hateful to all those Royalists
who wished to repair their ruined fortunes by suing the Round-
heads for damages and mesne profits. The Presbyterians of
Scotland attributed to him the downfall of their Church. The
Papists of Ireland attributed to him the loss of their lands. As
father of the Duchess of York, he had an obvious motive for
wishing that there might be a barren Queen ; and he was there-
fore suspected of having purposely recommended one. The
sale of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him. For the war with
Holland, he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot
temper, his arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness with
which he grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he
squandered them, his picture gallery, filled with masterpieces
of Vandyke which had once been the property of ruined Cav-
aliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front right
opposite to the humbler residence of our Kings, drew on him
much deserved, and some undeserved, censure. When the
Dutch fleet was in the Thames, it was against the Chancellor
that the rage of the populace was chiefly directed. His win-
dows were broken ; the trees of his garden were cut down ;
and a gibbet was set up before his door. But nowhere was he
more detested than in the House of Commons. He was unable
to perceive that the time was fast approaching when that
House, if it continued to exist at all, must be supreme in the
state, when the management of that House would be the most
important department of politics, and when, without the help
of men possessing the ear of that House, it would be impossible
to carry on the government. He obstinately persisted in con-
sidering the Parliament as a body in no respect differing from
the Parliament which had been sitting when, forty years be-
fore, he first began to study law at the Temple. He did not
wish to deprive the legislature of those powers which were in-
herent in it by the old constitution of the realm : but the new
development of those powers, though a development natural,
inevitable, and to be prevented only by utterly destroying the
powers themselves, disgusted and alarmed him. Nothing
would have induced him to put the great seal to a writ for raw-
184 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ing sliipmoney, or to give his voice in Council for committing a
member of Parliament to the Tower, on account of words spoken
in debate : but, when the Commons began to inquire in what
manner the money voted for the war had been wasted, and to
examine into the maladministration of the navy, he flamed with
indignation. Such inquiry, according to him, was out of their
province. He admitted that the House was a most loyal as-
sembly, that it had done good service to the crown, and that its
intentions were excellent. But, both in public and in the
closet, he, on every occasion, expressed his concern that gen-
tlemen so sincerely attached to monarchy should unadvisedly
encroach on the prerogative of the monarch. Widely as they
differed in spirit from the members of the Long Parliament,
they yet, he said, imitated that Parliament in meddling with
matters which lay beyond the sphere of the Estates of the
realm, and which were subject to the authority of the ci'own
alone, The country, he maintained, would never be well gov-
erned till the knights of shires and the burgesses were content
to be what their predecessors had been in the days of Eliza-
beth. All the plans which men more observant than himself
of the signs of that time proposed, for the purjjose of maintain-
ing a good understanding between the Court and the Com-
mons, he disdainfully rejected as crude projects, inconsistent
with the old polity of England. Towards the young orators,
who were rising to distinction and authority in the Lower
House, his deportment was ungracious : and he succeeded in
making them, with scarcely an exception, his deadly enemies.
Indeed one of his most serious faults was an inordinate con-
tempt for youth : and this contempt was the more unjustifiable,
because his own experience in English politics was by no means
proportioned to his age. For so great a part of his life had been
passed abroad that he knew less of that world in which he found
himself on his return than many who might have been his sons.
For these reasons he was disliked by the Commons. For
very different reasons he was equally disliked by the Court.
His morals as well as his politics were those of an earlier gen-
eration. Even when he was a young law student, living much
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 185
with men of wit and pleasure, his natural gravity and his relig-
ious principles had to a great extent preserved him from the
contagion of fashionable debauchery ; and he was by no means
likely, in advanced years and in declinii^g health, to turn liber-
tine. On the vices of the young and gay he looked with an
aversion almost as bitter and contemptuous as that which he felt
for the theological errors of the sectaries. He missed no op-
portunity of showing his scorn of the mimics, revellers, and
courtesans who crowded the palace ; and the admonitions which
he addressed to the King himself were very sharp, and, what
Charles disliked still more, very long. Scarcely any voice was
raised in favour of a minister loaded with the double odium of
faults which roused the fury of the people, and of virtues which
annoyed and importuned the sovereign. Southampton was no
more. Ormond performed the duties of friendship manfully and
faithfully, but in vain. The Chancellor fell with a great ruin.
The seal was taken from him : the Commons impeached him :
his head was not safe : he fled irom the country : an act was
passed which doomed him to perpetual exile ; and those who
had assailed and undermined him began to struggle for the
fragments of his power.
The sacrifice of Clarendon in some degree took off the edge
of the public , petite for revenge. Yet was the anger excited
by the profusion and negligence of the government, and by the
miscarriages of the late war, by no means extinguished. The
counsellors of Charles, with the fate of the Chancellor before
their eyes, were anxious for their own safety. They accordingly
advised their master to soothe the irritation which prevailed
both in the Parliament and throughout the country and for that
end, to take a step which has no parallel in the history of the
House of Stuart, and which was worthy of the prudence and
magnanimity of Oliver.
We have now reached a point at which the history of the
great English revolution begins to be complicated with the his-
tory of foreign politics. The power of Spain had, during many
years, been declining. She still, it is ti'ue, held in Europe the
Milanese and the two Sicilies, Belgium, and Franche Comte. In
186 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
America her dominions still spread, ou both sides of the equator,
far beyond the limits of the torrid zone. But this great body
had been smitten with palsy, and was not only incapable of
giving molestation to other states, but could not, without assist-
ance, repel aggression. France was now, beyond all doubt, the
greatest power in Eurojie. Her resources have, since those
days, absolutely increased, but have not increased so fast as the
resources of England. It must also be remembered that, a
hundred and eighty years ago, the empire of Russia, now a
monarchy of the first class, was as entirely out of the system of
European politics as Abyssinia or Siam, that the Plouse of Bran-
denburg was then hardly more powerful than the House of
Saxony, and that the republic of the United States had not then
begun to exist. The weight of France, therefore, though still
very considerable, has relatively diminished. Her territory
was not in the days of Lewis the Fourteenth quite so extensive
as at present : but it was large, compact, fertile, well placed
both for attack and for defence, situated in a happy climate, and
inhabited by a brave, active, and ingenious people. The state
implicitly obeyed the direction of a single mind. The great
fiefs which, three hundred years before, had been, in all but
name, independent principalities, had been annexed to the crown.
Only a few old men could remember the last meeting of the
States General. The resistance which the Huguenots, the
nobles, and the parliaments had offered to the kingly power, had
been put down by the two great Cardinals who had ruled the
nation during forty years. The government was now a des-
potism, but, at least in its dealings with the upper classes, a mild
and generous despotism, tempered by courteous manners and
chivalrous sentiments. The means at the disposal of the sov-
ereign were, for that age, truly formidable. His revenue, raised, it
is true, by a severe and unequal taxation which ^iressed heavily on
the cultivators of the soil, far exceeded that of any other potentate.
His army, excellently disciplined, and commanded by the great-
est generals then living, already consisted of more than a hun-
dred and twenty thousand men. Such an array of regular troops
had not been seen in Europe since the downfall of the Roman
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 187
empire. Of maritime powers France was not the first. But,
though she had rivals on the sea, she had not yet a superior.
Such was her strength during the last forty years of the seven-
teenth century, that no enemy could singly withstand her, and
that two great coalitions, in which half Christendom was united
against her, failed of success.
The personal qualities of the French King added to the
respect inspired by the power and importance of his kingdom.
No sovereign has ever represented the majesty of a great
state with more dignity and grace. He was his own prime
minister, and performed the duties of a prime minister with an
ability and industry which could not be reasonably expected
from one who had in infancy succeeded to a crown, and who
had been surrounded by flatterers before he could speak. He
had shown, in an eminent degree, two talents invaluable to a
prince, the talent of choosing his servants well, and the talent of
appropriating to himself the chief part of the credit of their acts.
In his dealings with foreign powers he had some generosity, but
no justice. To unhappy allies who threw themselves at his feet,
and had no hope but in his compassion, he extended his protec-
tion with a romantic disinterestedness, which seemed better
suited to a knight errant than to a statesman. But he broke
through the most sacred ties of public faith without scruple or
shame, whenever they interfered with his interest, or with what
lie called his glory. His perfidy and violence, however, excited
less enmity than the insolence with which he constantly reminded
his neighbours of his own greatness and of their littleness.
He did not at this time profess the austere devotion which, at a
later period, gave to his court the aspect of a monastery. On
the contrary, he was as licentious, though by no means as frivo-
lous and indolent, as his brother of England. But he was a
sincere Roman Catholic ; and both his conscience and his vanity
impelled him to use his power for the defence and propagation
of the true faith, after the example of his renowned predeces-
sors, Clovis, Charlemagne, and Saint Lewis.
Our ancestors naturally looked with serious alarm on the
growing powej of France. This feeliug, in itself perfectly
I88 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
reasonable, was mingled with other feelings less praiseworthy.
France was our old enemy. It was against France that th«
most glorious battles recorded in our annals had been fought,
The conquest of France had been twice effected by the Plan.
tagenets. The loss of France had been long remembered as a
great national disaster. The title of King of France was still
borne by our sovereigns. The lilies of France still appeared
mingled with our own lions, on the shield of the House oi
Stuart. In the sixteenth century the di'ead inspired by Spain
had suspended the animosity of which France had anciently"
been the object. But the dread inspired by Spain had given
place to contemptuous compassion ; and France was again re-
garded as our national foe. The sale of Dunkirk to France
had been the most generally unpopular act of the restored
King. Attachment to France had been prominent among the
crimes imputed by the Commons to Clarendon. Even in trifles
the public feeling showed itself. When a brawl took place in
the streets of Westminster between the retinues of the French
and Spanish embassies, the populace, though forcibly prevented
from interfering, had given unequivocal proofs that the old
antipathy to France was not extinct.
France and Spain were now engaged in a more serious con-
test. One of the chief objects of the policy of Lewis through-
out his life was to extend his dominions towards the Ehine.
For this end he had engaged in war with Spain, and he was
now in the full career of conquest. The United Provinces saw
with anxiety the progress of his arms. Tliat renowned federa-
tion had reached the height of jjower, prosperity, and glory.
The Batavian territory, conquered from the waves and defended
against them by human art, was in extent little superior to the
principality of Wales. But all that narrow space was a busy
and populous hive, in which new wealth was every day created,
and in which vast masses of old wealth were hoarded. The
aspect of Holland, the rich cultivation, the innumerable canals,
the ever whirling mills, the endless fleets of barges, the quick
succession of great towns, the ports bristling with thousands of
masts, the large and stately mansioDS; the trim villas, the
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 189
«
richly furnished apartments, the picture galleries, the summer
houses, the tulip beds, produced on English travellers in that
age an effect similar to the effect which the first sight of
England now produces on a Norwegian or a Canadian. The
States General had been compelled to humble themselves before
Cromwell. But after the Restoration they had taken their
revenge, had waged war with success against Charles, and had
concluded peace on honourable terms. Rich, however, as the
Republic w^s, and highly considered in Europe, she was no
match for the power of Lewis. She apprehended, not without
good cause, that his kingdom might soon be extended to her
frontiers ; and she might well dread the immediate vicinity of a
monarch so great, so ambitious, and so unscrupulous. Yet it
was not easy to devise any expedient which might avert the
danger. Tiie Dutch alone could not turn the scale against
France. On the side of the Rhine no help was to be expected.
Several German princes had been gained by Lewis ; and the
Emperor himself was embarrassed by the discontents of Hun-
gary. England was separated from the United Provinces by
the recollection of cruel injuries recently inflicted and endured ;
and her policy had, since the restoration, been so devoid of wis-
dom and spirit, that it was scarcely possible to expect from her
any valuable assistance. '
But the fate of Clarendon and the growing ill humour of
the Parliament determined the advisers of Charles to adopt on
a sudden a policy which amazed and delighted the nation.
The English resident at Brussels, Sir William Temple, one
of the most expert diplomatists and most pleasing writers of
that age, had already represented to this court that it was both
desirable and practicable to enter into engagements with the
States General for the purpose of checking the progress of
France. For a time his suggestions had been slighted ; but it
was now thought expedient to act on them. He was commis-
sioned to negotiate with the States General. He proceeded to
the Hague, and soon came to an understanding with John De
Witt, then the chief minister of Holland. Sweden, small as
her resources were^ liad, forty years before, been raised by the
190 HISTORY O^ ENGLAND.
genius of Gustavus Adolphus to a high rank among European
powers, and had not yet descended to her natural position. She
was induced to join on this occasion with England and the
States. Thus was formed that coalition known as the Triple
Alliance. Lewis showed signs of vexation and resentment, but
did not think it politic to draw on himself the hostility of such
a confederacy in addition to that of Spain. He consented,
therefore, to relinquish a large part of the territory which his
armies had occupi 1. Peace was restored to Europe ; and the
English governuieut, lately an object of general contempt, was,
during a few months, regarded by foreign powers with respect
scarcely less than that which the Protector had inspired.
At home the Triple • Alliance was popular in the highest
•uegres. It gratuieu. aiiivc uational auiniosity and national
pride. It put a limit to the encroachments of a powerful and
ambitious neighbour. It bound the leading Protestant states
together in close union. Cavaliers and Roundheads rejoiced in
•common : but the joy of the Roundhead was even greater than
that of the Cavalier. For England had now allied herself
strictly with a country republican in government and Presby-
terian in religion, against a country ruled by an arbitrary
prince and attached to the Roman Catholic Church. The House
of Commons loudly applauded the treaty ; and some uncourtly
grumblers described it as the only good thing that had been
done since the King came in.
The King, however, cared little for the approbation of his
Parliament or of his people. The Triple Alliance he regarded
merely as a temporary expedient for quieting discontents which
"had seemed likely to become serious. The independence, the
safety, the dignity of the nation ovef H'hich he presided were
nothing to him. He had begun to find constitutional restraints
galling. Already had been formed iv the Parliament a strong
connection known by the name of the Country Party, Th^t
party included all the public mer who leaned towards Piiritan.-
ism and Republicanism, and ma>^y who, though attached to the
Church and to hereditary mon^i-chy, had been driven into op-
position by dread of Popery, b^ dread of France, and by disgust
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 191
at the extravagance, dissoluteness, and faithlessness of the court.
The power of this band of politicians was constantly growing.
Every year some of those members who had been returned to
Parliament during the loyal excitement of 1661 had dropped
off ; and the vacant seats had generally been filled by persons
less tractable. Charles did not think himself a King while an
assembly of subjects could call for his accounts before paying
his debts, and could insist on knowing which of his mistresses
or boon companions had intercepted the money destined for the
equipping and manning of the fleet. Though not very studi-
ous of fame, he was galled by the taunts which were sometimes
uttered in tbe discussions of the Commons, and on one occa-
sion attempted to restrain the freedom of sjieech by disgraceful
means. Sir John Coventry, a country gentleman, had, in de-
bate, sneered at the profligacy of the court. Tn any former
reign he would probably have been called before the Privy
Council and committed to the Tower. A different course was
now taken. A gang of bullies was secretly sent to slit the nose
of the offender. This ignoble revenge, instead of quelling the
spirit of opposition, raised such a tempest that the King was
compelled to submit to the cruel humiliation of passing an act
which attainted the instruments of his revenge, and which took
from him the power of pardoning them.
But, impatient as he was of constitutional restraints, how
was he to emancipate himself from them ? He could make
himself despotic only by the help of a great standing army ; and
such an army was not in existence. His revenues did indeed
enable him to keep up some regular troops : but those troops,
though niimerous enough to excite great jealousy and appre-
hension in the House of Commons and in the country, were
scarcely numerous enough to protect Whitehall and the Tower
against a rising of the mob of London. Such risings were, in-
deed, to be dreaded ; for it was calculated that in the capital
and its suburbs dwelt not less than 20,000 of Oliver's old
soldiers.
Since the King was bent on emancipating himself from the
control of Parliament, and since, in such an enterprise, he could
192 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
not hope for effectual aid at home, it followed that he must look-
for aid abroad. The power and wealth of the King of France
might be equal to the arduous task of establishing absolute
monarchy in England. Such an ally would undoubtedly ex-
pect substantial probfs of gratitude for such a service. Charles
must descend to the rank of a great vassal, and must make
peace and war according to the directions of the government
which- protected him. His relation to Lewis would closely re-
semble that in which the Rajah of Nagpore and the King of
Oude now stand to the British Government. Those princes are
bound to aid the East India Company in all hostilities, defen-
sive and offensive, and to have no diplomatic relations but such
as the East India Company shall sanction. The Company in
return guarantees them against insurrection. As long as they
faithfully discharge their obligations to the paramount power,
they ai'e permitted to dispose of large revenues, to fill their
palaces with beautiful women, to besot themselves in the com-
pany of their favourite revellers, and to oppress with impunity
any subject who may incur their displeasure.* Such a life
would be insupportable to a man of high spirit and of powerful
understanding. But to Charles, sensual, indolent, unequal to
any strong intellectual exertion, and destitute alike of all
patriotism and of all sense of personal dignity, the prospect had
nothing unp] easing.
Tliat the Duke of York should have concurred in the desisti
of degrading that crown which it was probable that he would
himself one day wear may seem more extraordinary. For his
nature was haughty and imperious ; and, indeed, he continued
to the very last to show, by occasional starts and struggles, his
impatience of the French yoke. But he was almost as much
debased by superstition as his brother by indolence and vice.
James was now a Roman Catholic. Religious bigotry had
become the dominant sentiment of his narrow and stubborn
mind, and had so mingled itself with his love of rule, that the
* I am happy to say, that, since this passage was written, the territories both
of the Rajah of Nagpore and of the King of Oude have been added to the British
dominions. (1857.)
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 193
two passions could hardly be distiuguished from each othei\ It
seemed highly improbable that, without foreign aid, he would
be able to obtain ascendency, or even toleration, for his own
faith : and lie was in a temper to see nothing humiliating in
u»y step which might promote the intei'ests of the true Church.
A negotiation was opened which lasted during several
months. The chief agent between the English and French
courts was the beautiful, graceful, and intelligent Henrietta,
Duchess of Orleans, sister of Charles, sister in law of Lewis,
ind a favourite with both. The King of England offered to
ieclare himself a Roman Catholic, to dissolve the Triple Alli-
ince, and to join with France against Holland, if France would
engage to lend him such military and pecuniary aid as might
make him independent of his parliament, Lewis at first affected
JO receive those propositions coolly, and at length agreed to
them with the air of a man who is conferring a great favour :
but in truth, the course which he had resolved to take was one
by which he might gain and could not lose.
It seems certain that he never seriously thought of establish-
ing despotism and Popery in England by force of arms. He
must have been aware that such an enterprise would be in the
highest degree arduous and hazardous, that it would task to the
utmost all the energies of France daring many years, and that
it would be altogether incompatible with more promising
schemes of aggrandisement, which were dear to his heart. He
would indeed willingly have acquired the merit and the glory
of doing a great service on reasonable terms to the Church of
which he was a member. But he was little disposed to imitate
his ancestors who, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, had
led the flower of French chivalry to die in Syria and Egypt :
and he well knew that a crusade against Protestantism in Great
Britain would not be less perilous than the expeditions in which
the armies of Lewis the Seventh and of Lewis the- Ninth had
perished. He had no motive for wishing the Stuarts to be
absolute. He did not regard the English constitution with
feelings at all resembling those which have in later times
induced princes to make war on the free institutions of neigh-
194 HISTORY OF EIVGLAND.
bouring nations. At present a great party zealous for popular
government has ramifications in every civilised country. Any
important advantage gained anywhere by that party is almost
certain to be the .signal for general commotion. It is not won-
derful that governments threatened by a common danger
should combine for the purpose of mutual insurance. But in
the seventeenth century no such danger existed. Between the
public mind of England and the public mind of France, there
was a great gulph. Our insiitutions and our factions were as
little understood at Paris as at Constantinople. It may be
doubted whether any one of the forty members of the French
Academy had an p]nglish volume in his library, or knew Shake-
speare, Jonson, or Spenser even by name. A few Huguenots,
who had inherited the mutinous spirit of their ancestors, might
perhaps have a fellow feeling with their brethren in the faith,
the English Eoundheads : but the Huguenots had ceased to be
formidable. The French, as a people, attached to the Church
of Rome, and proud of the greatness of their King and of their
own loyalty, looked on our struggles against Popery and
arbitrary power, not only without admiration or sympathy,
but with strong disapprobation and disgust. * It would there-
fore be a great error to ascribe the conduct of Lewis to appre-
hensions at all resembling those which, in our age, induced
the Holy Alliance to interfere in the internal troubles of
Naples and Spain.
Nevertheless, the ])ropositions made by the court of White-
hall were most welcome to him. He already meditated gigantic
designs, which were destined to keep Europe hi constant fer-
mentation during more than forty years. He wished to humble
the United Provinces, and to annex Belgium, Franche Comte,
and Loraine to his dominions. Nor was this all. The King of
Spain was a sickly child. It was likely that he would die
without issue. His eldest sister was Queen of France. A day
would almost certainly come, and might come very soon, when
the House of Bourbon might lay claim to that vast empire on
which the sun never set. The union of two great monarchies
under one head would doubtless be opposed by a continental
UKDER CHARLES THE SECOXD. 195
CMialition. But for auy continental eoalition France single-
handed was a match. Enghind could turn the scale. On the
course which, in such a crisis, Enijldnd might pursue, the
destinies of the world would depend ; and it was notorious that
the P]n Jish Parliament and nation were strongly attached to
the policy which had dictated the Triple Alliance. Nothing,
tlierefore, coulil he more gratiiying^to Lewis than to learn tliat
the princes, of the House of Stuart needed his help, and were
willing to purchase that help by unbounded subserviency. He
determined to profit by the opportunity, and laid down for
himself a plan to which, without deviation, he adhered, till the
Revolution of 1688 disconcerted all his politics. He professed
himself desirous to promote the designs of the English court.
He promised large aid. He from time to time doled out such
aid as might serve to keep hope alive, and as he could v/ithout
risk or inconvenience spare. In this way, at an expense very
much less than that which he incurred in Imilding and decora-
ting Versailles or Marli, he succeeded in making England,
during nearly twenty years, almost as insignificant a member
of the political system of Europe as the republic of 8aii
Marino.
His object was not to destroy our constitution, but to keep
the various elements of which it was composed in a perpetual
state of conflict, and to set irreconcilable enmity between those
who had the power of the purse and those who had the power
of the sword. With this view he bribed and stimulated both
parties in turn, pensioned at once the ministers of the crown
and the chiefs of the opposition, encouraged the court to witii-
stand the seditious encroachments of the Farliament, and con-
veyed to the Parliament intimations of the arbitrary designs of
tlie court.
One of the devices to which he resorted for the purpose of
obtaining an ascendency in the English counsels deserves
especial notice. Charles, though incapable of love in the
highest sense of the word, was the slave of any woman whose
person excited his desires, and whose airs and prattle amused
bis leisure. Indeed ^ Jiusbapd would be justly derided wtjo
196 HISTOlir OF ENGLAND.
should bear from a wife of exalted rank and spotless virtue
half the insolence which the King of England bore from the con-
cubines who, while they owed everything to hjs bounty, caressed
his courtiers almost before his face. He had patiently endured
the termagant passions of Barbara Palmer and the pert vivacity
of Eleanor Gwynn. Lewis thought that the most useful envoy
who could be sent to London, would be a handsome, licentious,
and crafty Frenchwoman. Such a woman was Louisa, c lady
of the Plouse of Querouaille, whom our rude ancestors called
Madam Carwell. She was soon triumphant over all her rivals,
was created Duchess of Portsmouth, was loaded with wealth,
and obtained a dominion which ended only with the life of
Charles.
The most important conditions of the alliance between the
crowns wero digested into a secret treaty which was signed at
Dover in May, 1670, just ten years after the day on which
Charles had landed at that very port amidst the acclamations
and joyful tears of a too confiding people.
By this treaty Charles bound himself to make public pro-
fession of the Roman Catholic religion, to join his arms to
those of Lewis for the purpose of destroying the power of the
United Provinces, and to employ the whole strength of Eng-
land, by land and sea, in support of the rights of the House of
Bourbon to the vast monarchy of Spain. L^^wis, on the other
hand, engaged to pay a large subsidy, and promised that, if any
insurrection should break out in Enslaud, he would send an
army at his own charge to supj^ort his ally.
This compact was made with gloomy auspices. Six weeks
after it had been signed and sealed, the charming princess,
whose influence over her brother and brother in law had been
so pernicious to her country, was no. more. Her death gave
rise to horrible suspicions which, for c moment, seemed likely
to interrupt the newly formed friendship between the Houses
of Stuart and Bourbon : but in a short time fresh assurances of
undiminished good will were exchanged between theco:ifedei'atej>.
The Duke of York, too dull to apprehend danger, or too
fanatical to care about it, was impatient to see the article touch-
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 197
ing the Roman Catholic religion carried into immediate execu-
tion : but Lewis had the wisdom to perceive that, if this course
were taken, there would be such an explosion in England as
would probably frustrate those parts of the plan which he had
most at heart. It was therefore determined that Charles should
still call himself a Protestant, and should still, at high festivals,
receive the sacrament according to the ritual of the Church of
England. His more scrupulous brother ceased to appear in the
royal chapel.
About this time died the Duchess of York, dauditer of the
banished Earl of Clarendon. She had been, during some years,
a concealed Roman Catholic. She left two daughters, Mary
and Anne, afterwards successively Queens of Great Britain.
They were bred Protestants by the positive command of the
King, who knew that it would be vain for him to profess him-
self a member of the Church of England, if children who seemed
likely to inherit his throne were, by his permission, brought up
as members of the Church of Rome.
The principal servants of the crown at this time were men
whose names have justly acquired an unenviable notoriety. We
must take heed, however, that we do not load their memory
with infamy which of right belongs to their master. For the
treaty of Dover the King himself is chiefly answerable. He
held conferences on it with the French agents : he wrote many
letters concerning it with his own hand : he was the jierson
who first suggested the most disgraceful articles which it con-
tained ; and he carefully concealed some of those articles from
the majority of his Cabinet.
Few things in our history are more curious than the origin
and growth of the power now possessed by the Cabinet. From
an early period the Kings of England had been assisted by a
Privy Council co which the law assigned many important func-
tions and duties. During several centuries this body deliberated
on the gravest and most delicate affairs. But by degrees its char-
acter changed. It became too lai'ge for despatch and secrecy.
The I'ank of Privy Councillor was often bestowed as an honorary
distinction on jiersons to whom nothing was confided, and whose
198 HL'iTORY OF ENGLAND.
opinion was never ask'^'d. The sovereign, on the most important
occasions, resorted for advice to a small knot of leading minis-
ters. The advantages and disadvantages of this course wfere
early pointed out by Bacon, with his usual judgment and
sagacity : but it was not till after the Restoration that the
interior council began to attract general notice. During many
years old fashioned politicians continued to regard the Cabinet
as an unconstitutional and dangerous board. Nevertheless, it
constantly became more and more important. It at length
drew to itself the chief executive power, and has now been
regarded, during several generations, as an essential part of our
polity^ Yet, strange to say, it still continues to be altogether
unknown to the law: the names of the noblemen and gentlemen
who compose it are never officially announced to the public : no
record is kept of its meetings and resolutions ; nor has its exist-
ence ever been recognised by any Act of Parliam nt.
During some years the word Cabal was popularly used as
synonymous with Cabinet. But it happened by a whimsical
coincidence that, in 1671, the Cabinet consisted of five persons
the initial letters of whose names made up the word Cabal ;
Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale.
These ministers were therefore emphatically called the Cabal ;
and they soon made that appellation so infamous that it has
never since their time been used except as a term >f reproach.
Sir Thomas Clifford was a Commissioner of the Treasury,
and had greatly distinguished himself in the House of Commons.
Of the members of the Cabal he was the most respectable. For,
with a fiery and imperious temper, he had a strong though a
lamentably perverted sense of duty and honour.
Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, then Secretary of State, had,
since he came to manhood, resided principally on the Continent,
and had learned that cosmopolitan indifference to constitutions
and religions wliich is ofton observable in persons whose life has
been passed in vagrant diplomacy. If there was any form of
government which he liked it was that of France. If there was
any Church for wiiich he felt a preference, it was that of Rome.
He had some talent for coDyepsatipn, and some talent also foy
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 199
transacting the ordinary business of office. He had learned, dur-
ing a life passed in travelling- and negotiating, the art of accom-
modating his language and deportment to the society in which
he found himself. His vivacity in the closet amused the King :
his gravity in debates and conferences imposed on the public ;
and he had succeeded in attaching to himself, partly by services
and partly by hopes', a considerable number of personal re-
tainers.
Buckingham. Ashley, and Lauderdale were men in v/hom the
fmmorality which was epidemic among the politicians of that
age appeared in its most malignant tji^e, but variously modi-
fied by great diversities of temper and understanding. Buck-
ingham was a sated man of pleasure, who had turned to ambition
as to a pastime. As he had tried to amuse himself with architec-
ture and music, with Avriting farces and with seeking for the
philosopher's stone, so he now tried to amuse himself with a se-
cret negotiation and a Dutch war. He had already, rather from
fickleness and love of novelty than from any deep design, been
faithless to every party. At one time he had ranked among the
Cavaliers. At another time warrants had been out against him
for maintainin-T a treasonable correspondence with the remains
of the Republican party in the city. He was now again a cour-
tier, and was eager to win the favour of the King by services
from which the most illustrious of those v»'ho had fought and suf-
fered for the royal house would have recoiled with horror.
Ashley, with a far stronger head, and with a far fiercer and
more earnest ambition, had been equally versatile. But Ash-
ley's versatility was the effect, not of levity, but of deliberate
selfishness. He had served and betrayed a succession of gov-
ernmeutj . But he had timed all his treacheries so well that,
through all revolutions, his fortunes had constantly been rising.
The multitude, struck with admiration by a prosperity which,
while everything else was constantly changing, remained un-
changeable, attributed to him a prescience almost miraculous,
and likened him to the Hebrew statesman of whom it is written
that his counsel was as if a man had inquired of the oracle ©f
God.
20G HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Lauderdale, loud and coarse both in mirth and anger, wae
perhaps, under the outward show of boisterous frankness, the
most dishonest man in the whole Cabal. lie had made himself
conspicuous among the Scotch insurgents of 1638 by his zeal for
the Covenant. He was accused of having been deeply con-
cerned in the sale of Charles the First to tlie Englii;h Pai'liament,
and Vv^as therefore, in the estimation of good Cavaliers, a traitor,
if possible, of a w^orse description than those who had sate in the
High Court of Justice. He often talked with a noisy jocularity
of the days when he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the
chief instrument employed by the court in the work of for-
cing episcopacy on his reluctant countrymen ; nor did he in that
cause shrink from the uns{)aring use of the sword, the halter,
and the boot. Yet those who knew him knew that thirty
years had made no change in his real sentiments, that he still
hated the memory of Charles the First, and that he still pre-
ferred the Presbyterian form of church government to every
other.
Unscrupulous as Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were,
it was not thouojht safe to intrust to them the Kin^r's intention
of declaring himself a Roman Catholic. A false treaty, in which
the article concernincj relijjion was omitted, was shown to them.
The names and seals of Clifford and Arlington are affixed to the
genuine treaty. Both these statesmen had a partiality for the
old Church, a partiality which the brave and vehement Clifford
in no long time manfully avowed, but wliich the colder and
meaner Arlington concealed, till the near approach of death
scared him into sincerity. The three other cabinet ministers,
however, were not men to be kept easily in the dark, and prob-
ably suspected more than was distinctly avowed to them. They
(\'ere certainly privy to all the political engagements contracted
with France, and were not ashamed to receive large gratifica-
tions from Lewis.
The first object of Charles was to obtain from the Commons
supplies which might be employed in executing the secret treaty.;
The Cabal, holding power at a time when our government was
in a state of transition, united in itself two different kinds of
...NTA SAKbARA. CAU^O*.. •
JJZ V g T
UNDEK CHARLES THE SECOND. 201
vices belonging to two diiferentages and to two different systems.
As those five evil counsellors were among the last English
statesmen who seriously thought of destroying the Parliament,
so they were the first English statesmen-who attempted exten-
sively to corrupt it. We find in their policy at once the latest
trace of the Thorough of Strafford, and the earliest trace of that
methodical bribery wliich was afterwards practiced by Walpole.
They soon perceived, however, that, though the House of Com-
mons was chiefly composed of Cavaliers, and though places and
French gold had been lavished on the members, there was no
chance that even the least odious parts of the scheme arranged
at Dover would be supported by a majority. It was necessary
to have recourse to fraud. The King professed great zeal for
the princi23les of the Triple Alliance, and pretended that, in or-
der to hold the ambition of France in check, it would be neces-
sary to augment the fleet. The Commons fell into the snare,
and voted a grant of eight hundred thousand poui>ds. The Par-
liament was instantly prorogued ; and the court, thus emanci-
pated from control, j^roceeded to the execution of the great de-
sign.
The financial difficulties however were serious. A war with
Holland could be carried on only at enormous cost. The ordi'
nary revenue was not more than sufficient to support the gov-
ernment in time of peace. The eight hundred thousand pounds
out of which the Commons had just been tricked would not
defray the naval and military charge of a single year of hostil-
ities. After the terrible lesson given by the Long Parliament,
even the Cabal did not venture to recommend benevolences or
shipmoney. In this perplexity Asliley and Clifford proposed
a flagitious breach of public faith. The goldsmiths of London
were then not only dealers in the precious metals, but also bank-
ers, and were in the habit of advancing large sums of money to
the government. In return for these advances they received
assignments on the revenue, and were repaid with interest as
the taxes came in. About thirteen hundred thousand pounds
had been in this way intrusted to the honour of the state. On
a sudden it was announced that it was not convenient to oav
202 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the principal, and that the lenders must content themselves with
interest. They were consequently unable to meet their own
engagements. The Exchange was in an uproar : several great
mercantile houses broke ; and dismay and distress spread
through all society. -Meanwhile rapid strides were made towards
despotism. Proclamations, dispensing with Acts of Parliament,
or enjoining what only Parliament could lawfully enjoin, ap-
peared in rapid succession. Of these edicts the most important
was the Declaration of Indulgence. By this instrument the
penal laws against Roman Catholics were set aside ; and, that
the real object of the measure might not be perceived, the laws
against Protestant Nonconformists were also suspended.
A few days after the appearance of the Declaration of In-
dulgence, war was proclaimed against the United Provinces.
By sea the Dutch maintained the struggle with honour ; but
on land they were at first borne down by irresistible force. A
great French army passed the Rhine. Fortress after fortress
opened its gates. Three of the seven provinces of the federa-
tion were occupied by the invaders. The fires of the hostile
camp were seen from the top of the Stadthouse of Amsterdam.
The Republic, thus fiercely assailed from without, was torn at
the same time by internal dissensions. The government was
in the hands of a close oligarchy of powerful burghers. There
were numerous selfelected Town Councils, each of which exer-
cised, within its own sphere, many of the rights of sovereif^ntv.
These councils sent delegates to the Provincial States, and the
Provincial States again sent delegates to the States General.
A hereditary first magistrate was no essential part of this polity.
Nevertheless one family, singularly fertile of great men, had
gradually obtained a large and somewhat indefinite authority.
William, first of the name. Prince of Orange Nassau, and Stadt-
holder of Holland, had headed the memorable insurrection
against Spain. His son Maurice had been Captain General
and first minister of the States, had, by eminent abilities and
public services, and by some treacherous and cruel actions,
raised himself to almost kingly power, and had bequeathed a
great part of that power to his family. The influence of the
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 203
Stadtholders was an object of extreme jealousy to the munici-
pal oligarchy. But the army, and that great body of citizens
which was excluded from all share in the government, looked
on the Burgomasters and Deputies with a dislike resembling
the dislike with which the legions and the common people of
Rome regarded the Senate, and were as zealous for the House
of Orange as the legions and the common people of Rome for
the House of C;i?sar. The Stadtholder commanded the forces
of the commonwealth, disposed of all militaiy commands, had
a large share of the civil patronage, and was surrounded by
pomp almost regal.
Prince William the Second had been strongly opposed by
the oligarchical party. His life had terminated in the year
1 650, amidst great civil troubles. He died childless : the ad-
herents of his house were left for a short time without a head ;
and the powers which he had exercised were divided among
the Town Councils, the Provincial States, and the States Gen-
eral.
But, a few days after William's death, his widow, Mary,
daughter of Charles the first, King of Great Britain, gave birth
to a son, destined to raise the glory and authority of the House
of Nassau to the highest point, to save the United Provinces
from slavery, to curb the power of France, and to establish the
English constitution on a lasting foundation.
This Prince, named W^illiam Henry, was from his birth an
object of serious apprehension to the party now supreme in
Holland, and of loyal attachment to the old friends of his line.
He enjoyed high consideration as the possessor of a splendid
fortune, as the chief of one of the most illustrious houses in
Europe, as a Magnate of the German empire, as a prince of
the blood royal of England, and, above all, as the descendant
of the founders of Batavian liberty. But the high office which
had once been considered as hereditary in his family remained
in abeyance ; and the intention of the aristocratical party was
that there should never be another Stadtholder. The want of
a fipst magistrate was, to a great extent, supplied by the Grand
Pensionary of the Province of Holland, John De Witt, whose
204 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
abilities, firmness, and integrity bad raised bim to unrivalled
autbority in tbe councils of tbe municipal oligarcby.
The French invasion produced a complete change. The
suffering and terrified people raged fiercely against the govern-
ment. In their madness they attacked tbe bravest captains
and the ablest statesmen of the distressed commonwealth. De
Ruyter was insulted by the rabble. De Witt was torn in
pieces before tbe gate of the palace of the States General at
the Hague. The Prince of Orange, who had no share in tbe
guilt of tbe murder, but who, on this occasion, as on another
lamentable occasion twenty years later, extended to crimes per-
petrated in his cause an indulgence which has left a stain on
his glory, became chief of tbe government without a rival.
Young as he was, his ardent and unconquerable spirit, though
disguised by a cold and sullen manner, soon roused the courage
of his dismayed countrymen. It was in vain that both his
uncle and the French King attempted by splendid offers to
seduce him from tbe cause of the Republic. To the States
General he spoke a high and inspiriting language. He even
ventured to suggest a scheme which has an aspect of antique
heroism, and which, if it had been accomplished, Avould have
been tbe noblest subject for epic song that is to be found in the
whole compass of modern history. He told tbe deputies that,
even if .their watal soil and the marvels with which human in-
dustry had covered it were buried under the ocean, all was not
lost. The Hollanders might survive Holland. Liberty and
pure religion, driven by tyrants and bigots from Europe, might
take refuge in the farthest isles of Asia. The shipping in the
ports of the republic would suffice to carry two hundred thou-
sand emigrants to the Indian Archipelago. There the Dutch
commonwealth might commence a new and more glorious ex-
istence, and might rear, under the Southern Cross, amidst the
sugar canes and nutmeg trees, the Exchangs of a wealthier
Amsterdam, and tbe schools of a more learned Leyden. The
national spirit swelled and rose higli. The terms offered by
the allies were firmly rejected. Tbe dykes were opened. The
whole country was turned into one great lake, from which the
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 205
cities, with their ramparts and steeples, rose like islands. The
invaders were forced to save themselves from destruction by a
precipitate retreat. Lewis, who, though he sometimes thought
it necessary to appear at the head of his troops, greatly pre-
ferre<l a palace to a camp, had already returned to enjoy the
adulation of poets and the smiles of ladies in the newly planted
alleys of Versailles.
And now the tide turned fast. The event of the maritime
war had been doubtful ; by land the United Provinces had ob-
tained a respite ; and a respite, though short, was of infinite
importance. Alarmed by the vast designs of Lewis, both the
branches of the great House of Austria sprang to arms. Spain
and Holland, divided by the memory of ancient wrongs and
humiliations, were reconciled by the nearness of the common
dau'fer. From every part of Germany troops poured towards
the Rhine. The English government had already expended
all the funds which had been obtained by pillaging the public
creditor. No loan could be expected from the City. An at-
tempt to raihe taxes by the royal authority would have at once
produced a rtbellion ; and Lewis, who had now to maintain a
contest against half Europe, was in' no condition to furnish the
means ol' coeicing the people of England. It was necessary to
convoke the Parliament.
In the spring of 1673, therefore, the Houses reassembled after
a recess of near two years. Clifford, now a peer and Lord
Treasurer, and Ashley, now Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord
Chancellor, were the persons on whom the King principally re-
lied as Parliamentary managers. The Country Party instantly
began to attack the policy of the Cabal. The attack was made,
not in the way of storm, but by slow and scientific approaches.
The Commons at first held out hopes that they would give sup-
port to the king's foreign policy, but insisted that he should pur-
chase that support by abandoning his whole system of domestic
policy. Their chief object was to obtain the revocation of the
Declaration of Indulgence. Of all the many unpopular steps
taken by the government the most unpopular was the publishing
of this Declaration. The most opposite sentioients had been
206 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
shocked by an act so liberal, done in a manner so despotic. AB
the enemies of religious freedom, and all the friends of civil
freedom, found themselves on the same side ; and these two
classes made up nineteen twentieths of the nation. The zeal-
ous churchman exclaimed against the favour which had been
shown both to the Papist and to the Puritan. The Puritan,
though he might rejoice in the suspension of the persecution by
which he had been harassed, felt little gratitude for a toleration
which he was to share with Antichrist. And all Englishmen
who valued liberty and law, saw with uneasiness the deep in-
road which the prerogative had made into the province of the
legislature.
It must in candour be admitted that the constitutional ques-
tion was then not quite free from obscurity. Our ancient Kings
had undoubtedly claimed and exercised the right of suspending
the operation of penal laws. The tribunals had recognised that
right. Parliaments had suffered it to pass unchallenged. Tliat
some such right was inherent in the crown, few even of the
Country Party ventured, in the face of precedent and authority,
to deny. Yet it was clear that, if this prerogative were without
limit, the En lish government could scarcely be distinguished
from a pure despotism. That there was a limit was fully ad-
mitted by the King and his ministers. Whether the Declaration
of Indulgence lay within or without the limit was the question ;
and neither party could succeed iti tracing any line which would
bear examination. Some opponents of the government com-
plained that the Declaration suspended not less than forty stat-
utes. But why not forty as well as one ? There was an orator
who gave it as his opinion that the King might constitutionally
dispense with bad laws, but not with good laws. The absurdity
of such a distinction it is needless to expose. The doctrine
which seems to have been generally received in the House of
Commons was, that the dispensing power was confined to secu-
lar matters, and did not extend to laws enacted for the security
of the established religion. Yet, as the King was supreme head
of the Church, it should seem that, if he possessed the dispens-
ing power at all, he might well possess that power where the
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 207
Church was concerned. When the courtiers on the other side
attempted to point out the bounds of this prerogative, they were
not more successful than the opposition had been.
The truth is that the dispensing power was a great anomaly
in politics. It was utterly inconsistent in theory with the prin-
ciples of mixed government : but it had grown up in times when
people troubled themselves little about theories.* It had not
been very grossly abused in practice. It had therefore been
tolerated, and had gradually acquired a kind of prescription.
At length it was employed, after a long interval, in an enlight-
e>ied age, and at an important conjuncture, to an extent never
before known, and for a purpose generally abhorred. It was
instantly subjected to a severe scrutiny. Men did not, indeed,
at first, venture to pronounce it altogether unconstitutional. But
they began to perceive that it was at direct variance with the
spirit of the constitution, and would, if left unchecked, turn the
English government from a limited into an absolute monarchy.
Under the influence of such apprehensions, the Commons
denied the King's right to dispense, not indeed with "all penal
statutes, but with penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical, and
gave him plainly to understand that, unless he renounced that
right, they would grant no supply for the Dutch war. He, for
a moment, showed some inclination to put everything to hazard ;
but he was strongly advised by Lewis to submit to necessity,
and to wait for better times, when the French armies, now em-
ployed in an arduous struggle on the Continent, might be avail-
able for the purpose of suppressing discontent in England. In
the Cabal itself the signs of disunion and treachery began to
appear. Shaftesbury, with his proverbial sagacity, saw that a
violent reaction was at hand, and that all things were tending
towards a crisis resembling that of 1640. He was determined
that such a crisis should not find him in the situation of Straf-
ford. He therefore turned suddenly round, and acknowledged,
in the House of Lords, that the Declaration was illegal. The
* The most sensible thing said in the House of Commons, on this suhject, came
from Sir William Coventry :—" Our ancestors never did draw a line to circuna.
scribe prerogative and liberty."
208 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
King, thus deserted by-his ally and by his Chancellor, yielded,
cancelled the Declaration, and solemnly promised that it should
never be drawn into precedent.
Even this concession was insufficient. The Commons, not
content with having forced their sovereign to annul the Indul-
gence, next extorted his unwilling assent to a celebrated law,
which continued in force do^vn to the reign of George the
Fourth, This law, known as the Test Act, provided that all
persons holding any office, civil or military, should take the oath
of supremacy, should subscribe a declaration against transub-
stantiation, and should publicly receive the sacrament according
to the rites of the Church of England. The preamble expressef*
hostility only to the Papists : but the enacting clauses were
scarcely more unfavourable to the Papists than to the rigid
Puritans. The Puritans, however, terrified at the evident
leaning of the court towards Popery, and encouraged by some,
churchmen to hope that, as soon as the Roman Catholics should
have been effectually disarmed, relief would be extended to
Protestant Nonconformists, made little opposition ; nor could
the King, who was in extreme want of money, venture to with-
hold his sanction. The act was passed ; and the Duke of York
was consequently under the necessity of resigning the great
place of Lord High Admiral.
Hitherto the Commons had not declared against the Dutch
war. But, when the King had, in return for money cautiously
doled out, relinquished his whole plan of domestic policy, they
fell impetuously on his foreign policy. They requested him to
dismiss Buckingham and liauderdale from his councils forever,
and appointed a committee to consider the propriety of impeach-
ing Arlington. In a short time the Cabal was no more. Clif-
ford, who, alone of the five, had any claim to be regarded as an
honest man, refused to take the new test, laid down his white
staff, and retired to his country seat. Aiiington quitted the
post of Secretary of State for a quiet and dignified employment
vn the Royal household. Shaftesbury and Buckingham made
their peace with the opposition, and appeared at the head of
the stormy democracy of the cit3\ Lauderdale, however, still
UNDER CHAULES THE SECOND. 209
<;ontinued to be minister for Scotch affairs, with which the
Enirlish Parliament could not interfere.
And now the Commons nrged the King to make peace with
Holland, and expressly declared that no more supplies s/iould
be granted for the war, unless it should appear that the enemy
obstinately refused to consent to reasonable terms. Charles
found it necessary to postpone to a more convenient season all
thought of executing the treaty of Dover, and to cajole the
nation by pretending to return to the policy of the Triple
Alliance. T( mple, who, dui-ing the ascendency of the Cabal,
had lived in seclusion among his books and flower beds, was
called forth from his hermitage. By his instrumentality a
separate peace was concluded with the United Provinces ; and
he again became ambassador at the Hague, where his presence
was regarded as a sure pledge for the sincerity of his court.
The chief direction of affairs was now intrusted to Sir
Thomas Osborne, a Yorkshire baronet, who had, in the House
of Commons, shown eminent talents for business and debate.
Osborne became Lord Treasurer, and was poon created Earl of
^ Danby. He was not a man whose character, if tried by any
high standard of morality, would appear to merit approbation.
He was greedy of wealth and honours, corrupt himself, and a
corrupter of others. The Cabal had bequeathed to him the art
of bribing Parliaments, an art still rude, and giving little promise
of the rare perfection to which it was brought in the following
century. He improved greatly on the plan of the first inventors.
They liad merely purchased orators : but every man who had a
vote, might sell himself to Danb3\ Yet the new minister must
not be confounded with the negotiators of Dover. He was not
without the feelinofs of an Englishman and a Protestant ; nor
did he, in his solicitude for his own interests, ever wholly forget
the interests of his country and of his religion. He was desirous,
indeed, to exalt the prerogative : but the means by which he
proposed to exalt it were widely different from those which had
been contemplated by Arlington and Clifford. The thought of
establ'shing arbitrary power, by calling in the aid of foreign arms,
and bv reducing the kingdom to the rank of a dependent princi'
14
2lO HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
pality, never entered into his mind. His plan was to rally round
the monarchy those classes which had been the firm allies of the
monarchy during the troubles of the preceding generation, and
which had been disgusted by the recent crimes and errors of the
court. With the help of the old Cavalier interest, of the nobles,
of the country gentlemen, of the clergy, and of the Universities,
it might, he conceived, be possible to make Charles, not indeed
an absolute sovereign, but a sovereign scarcely less powerful
than Elizabeth had been. x
Prompted by these feelings, Danby formed the design of
securing to the Cavalier party the exclusive possession of all
political power both executive and legislative. In the year
1675, accordingly, a bill was offered to the Lords which provided
that no person should hold any office, or should sit in either
House of Parliament, without first declaring on oath that he
considered resistance to the kingly power as in all cases criminal,
and that he would never endeavour to alter the government
either in Church or State. During several weeks the debates,
divisions, and protests caused by this proposition kept the coun-
try in a state of excitement. The opposition in the House of
Lords, headed by two members of the Cabal who were desirous
to make their peace with the nation, Buckingham and Shaftes-
bury, was beyond all precedent vehement and pertinacious, and
at length proved successful. The bill was not indeed rejected,
but was retarded, mutilated, and at length suffered to drop.
So arbitrary and so exclusive was Danby's scheme of domes-
tic policy. His opinions touching foreign policy did him more
honour. They were in truth directly opposed to those of the
Cabal and differed little from those of the Country Party. He
bitterly lamented the degraded situation to which England was
reduced, and declared, with more energy than politeness, that
his dearest wish was to cudgel the French into a proper respect
for her. So little did he disguise his feelings that, at a great
banquet where the most illustrious dignitaries of the State
and of the Church were assembled, he not very decorously filled
his glass to the confusion of all who were against a war with
France. He would indeed most gladly have seen his country
IJNDEU CHARLES THE SECOND. 2ll
united with the powers which were then combined against
Lewis, and was for that end bent on placing Temple, the author
of the Triple Alliance, at the head of the department which
directed foreign affairs. But the power of the prime minister
was limited. In his most confidential letters he complained
that the infatuation of his master prevented England from taking
her proper place among European nations. Charles was insa-
tiably greedy of French gold : he had by no means relinquished
the hope that he might, at some future day, be able to establish
absolute monarchy by the help of the French arms ; and for
both reasons he wished to maintain a good understanding with
the court of Versailles.
Thus the sovereign leaned towards one system of foreign pol-
itics, and the minister towards a system diametrically opjjosite.
Neither the sovereign nor the minister, indeed, was of a temper
to pursue any object with undeviating constancy. Each occa-
sionally yielded to the importunity of the other ; and their
jarring inclinations and mutual concessions gave to the whole
administration a strangely capricious character. Charles some-
times, from levity and indolence, suffered Danby to take steps
Avhich Lewis resented as mortal injuries. Danby, on the other
hand, rather than relinquish his great place, sometimes stooped
to compliances which caused him bitter pain and shame. The
King was brought to consent to a marriage between the Lady
Mary, eldest daughter and presumptive heiress of the Duke of
York, and William of Orange, the deadly enemy of France and
the hereditary champion of the Reformation. Nay, the brave
Earl of Ossory, son of Ormond, was sent to assist the Dutch
with some British troops, who, on the most bloody day of the
whole war, signally vindicated the national reputation for stub-
born courage. The Treasurer, on the other hand, was induced
not only to connive at some scandalous pecuniary transactions
which took place between his master and the court of Versailles,
but to become, unwillingly indeed and ungraciously, an agent in
those transactions.
Meanwhile the Country Party was driven by two strong feel-
ings in two opposite directions. The popular leaders were
212 HISTORY OF KNGLAND.
afraid of the greatness of Lewis, who was not only making head
against the whole strength of the continental alliance, but was
even gaining ground. Yet th'ey were afraid to entrust their own
King with the means of curbing France, lest those means should
be used to destroy the liberties of England. Tlie conflict be-
tween these apprehensions, both of which were perfectly legiti-
mate, made the policy of the Opposition seem as eccentric and
fickle as that of the Court. The Commons called for a war
with France, till the King, pressed by Danby to comply with
their wish, seemed disposed to yield, and began to raise an army.
But, as soon as they saw that the recruiting had commenced,
their dread of Lewis gave placo to a nearer dread. They began
to fear that the new levies might be employed on a service in
which Charles took much more interest than in the defence of
Flanders. They therefore refused supplies, and clamoured for
disbanding as loudly as they had just before clamoured for arm-
ing. Those historians who have severely reprehended this
inconsistency do not appear to have made sufficient allowance
for the embarrassing situation of subjects who have reason to
believe that their prince is conspiring with a foreign and hostile
power against their liberties. To refuse him military resources
is to leave the state defenceless. Yet to give him military
resources may be only to arm him against the state. In such
circumstances vacillation cannot bo considered as a proof of dis-
honesty or even of weakness.
These jealousies were studiously fomented by the French
King. He had long kept England passive by promising to
support the throne against the Parliament. He now, alarmed
at finding that the patriotic counsels of Danby seemed likely to
prevail in the closet, began to inflame the Parliament against
the throne. Between Lewis and the Country Party there was
one thing, and one only in common, profound distrust of Charles.
Could the Country Party have been certain that their sovereign
meant only to make war on France, they would have been
eager to support him. Could Lewis have been certain that the
new levies were intended only to make war on the constitution
of England, he would have made no attempt to stop them.
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 213
But the unsteadiness and faithlessness of Charles were such
that the French Government and the English opposition, agree-
ing in nothing else, agreed in disbelieving his protestations,
and were equally desirous to keep him poor and without an
army. Communications were opened between Barillon, the
Ambassador of Lewis, and those English politicians who had
always professed, and who indeed sincerely felt, the greatest
dread and dislike of the French ascendency. The most up-
right of the Country Party, William Lord Russell, son of the
Earl of Bedford, did not scruple to concert with a foreign
mission schemes for embarrassing his own sovereign. This
was the whole extent of Russell's offence. His principles and
his fortune alike raised him above all temptations of a sordid
kind : but there is too much reason to believe that some of his
associates were less scrupulous. It would be unjust to impute
to them the extreme wickedness of taking bribes to injure their
country. On the contrary, they meant to serve her : but it is
impossible to deny that they were mean and indelicate enough
to let a foreign prince pay them for serving her. Among those
who cannot be acquitted of this degrading charge was one man
who is popularly considered as the personification of public
spirit, and who, in spite of some great moral and intellectual
faults, has a just claim to be called a hero, a philosopher, and a
patriot. It is impossible to see withoiit pain such a name in
the list of the pensioners of France. Yet it is some consolation
to reflect that, in our time, a public man would be thought lost
to all sense of duty and of shame, who should not spurn from
him a temptation which conquered the virtue and the pride of
Algernon Sydney.
The effect of these intrigues was that England, though she
occasionally took a menacing attitude, remained inactive till
the continental war, having lasted near seven years, was ter-
minated by the treaty of Nimeguen. The United Provinces,
which in 1672 had seemed to be on the verge of utter ruin,
obtained honourable and advantageous terms. This' narrow
escape was generally ascribed to the ability and courage of the
young Stadtholder. His fame was great throughout Europe,
214 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
and especially among the English, who regarded him as one ot
their own princes, and rejoiced to see him the liusband of
their future Queen. France retained many important towns
in the Low Countries and the great province of Franche
Comte. Almost the whole loss was borne by the decaying
monarchy of Spain.
A few months after the termination of hostilities on the
Continent came a great crisis in English politics. Towards
such a crisis things had been tending during eighteen years.
The whole stock of popularity, great as it was, with which the
King had commenced his administration, had long been ex-
pended. To loyal enthusiasm had succeeded profound dis-
affection. The public mind had now measured back again the
space over which it had passed between 1640 and 1G60, and
was once more in the state in which it had been when the Long
Parliament met.
The prevailing discontent was compounded of many feelings.
One of these was wounded national pride. That generation
had seen England, during a few years, allied on equal terms
with France, victorious over Holland and Spain, the mistress of
the sea, the terror of Rome, the head of the Protestant interest.
Her resources had not diminished ; and it might have been ex-
pected that she would have been at least as highly considered
in Europe under a legitimate King, strong in the affection aud
willing obedience of his subjects, as she had been under an
usurper whose utmost vigilance and energy were required to
keep down a mutinous people. Yet she had, in consequence of
the imbecility and meanness of her rulers, sunk so low that any
German or Italian principality which brought five thousand
men into the field was a more important member of the com-
monwealth of nations.
With the sense of national humiliation was mingled anxiety
for civil liberty. Rumours, indistinct indeed, but perhaps the
more alarming by reason of their indistinctness, imputed to
the court a deliberate design against all the constitutional rights
of Englishmen. It had even been whispered that this design
was to be carried into effect by the intervention of foreign
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 215
arms. The thought of such intervention made the blood, even
of the Cavaliers, boil in their veins. Some who had always
professed the doctrine of non-resistance in its full extent were
now heard to mutter that there was one limitation to that doc-
trine. If a foreign force were brought over to coerce the
nation, they would not answer for their own patience.
But neither national pride nor anxiety for public liberty had
so great an influence on the popular mind as hatred of the
Roman Catholic religion. That hatred had become one of the
ruling passions of the community, and was as strong in the
ignorant and profane as in those who were Protestant from con-
viction. The cruelties of Mary's reign, cruelties which even in
the most accurate and sober narrative excite just detestation,
and which were neither accurately nor soberly related in the
popular martyrologies, the conspiracies against Elizabeth, and
above all the Gunpowder Plot, had left in the minds of the
vulgar a deep and bitter feeling which was kept up by annual
commemorat ons, prayers, bonfires, and processions. It should
be added that those classes which were peculiarly distinguished
by attachment to the throne, the ^clergy and the landed gentry,
had peculiar reasons for regarding the Church of Rome with
aversion. The clergy trembled iot their benefices ; the landed
gentry for their abbeys and great tithes. While the memory of
the reigii* of the Saints was still recent, hatred of Popery had
in some degree given place to hatred of Puritanism ; but, during
the eighteen years which had elapsed since the Restoration, the
hatred of Puritanism had abated, and the hatred of Popery had
Increased. The stipulations of the treaty of Dover were accu-
I'ately known to very few ; but some hints had got abroad. The
general impression was that a great blow was about to be aimed
at the Protestant religion. The King was suspected by many
of a leaning towards Rome. His brother and heir pi-esumptive
was known to be a bigoted Roman Catholic. The first Duchess
of York had died a Roman Catholic. James had then, in de«
fiance of the remonstrances of the House of Commons, taken to
-wife the Princess Mary of Modena, another Roman Catholic.
If there should be sons by this marriage, there was reason to
216 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
fear that they might be bred Roman Catholics, and that a long
succession of princes, hostile to the establislied faith, might sit
* on the English throne. The constitution had recently been
violated for the purpose of protecting the Roman Catholics from
the penal laws. The ally by whom the policy of England had,
during many years, been chiefly governed, was not only a
Roman Catholic, but a persecutor of the reformed Churches.
Under such circumstances it is not strange that the common
people should have been inclined to apprehend a return of the
times of her whom they called Bloody Mary.
Thus the nation was in such a temper tliat the smallest
spark might raise a flame. At this conjuncture fire was set in
two places at once to the vast mass of combustible matter ; and
in a moment the whole was in a blaze.
The French court, which knew Danby to be its moptjtl
enemy, artfully contrived to ruin him by nijkiiig him pass for
its friend. Lewis, by the instrumentality of Ralph Montague,
a faithless and shameless man who had resided in France as
minister from England, laid before the House of Commons
proofs that the Treasurer had been concerned in an application
made by the Court of Whitehall*to the Court of Versailles for
a sum of money. This discovery produced its natural effect.
The Treasurer was, in truth, exposed to the vengeance of Par-
liament, not on account of his delinquencies, but on account of
his merits ; not because he had been an accomplice in a crim-
inal transaction, but because he had been a most unwilling and
unserviceable accomplice. But of the circumstances, which
liave, in the judgment of posterity, greatly extenuated liis fault,
liis contemporaries were ignorant. In their view he was the
broker who had sold England to France. It seemed clear that
his greatness was at an end, and doubtful whether his head
could be saved.
Yet was the ferment excited by this discovery slight, when
compared with the commotion which arose when it was noised
abroad that a great Popish plot had been detected. One
Titus Gates, a clergyman of the Church of England, had, by
his disorderly life and heterodox doctrine, drawn on himself the
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 217
censure of his spiritual superiors, had been compelled to quit
his benefice, and had ever since led an infamous and vagrant
life. He had once professed himself a Roman Catholic, and
had passed some time on the Continent in English colleges of
the order of Jesus. In those seminaries he had heard much
wild talk about the best means of bringing England back to the
true Church. From hints thus furnished he constructed a hid'
eous romance, resembling rather the dream of a sick man than
any transaction which ever took place in the real world. The
Pope, he said, had entrusted the government of England to tho
Jesuits. Tlie Jesuits had, by commissions under the seal of
their society, appointed Roman Catholic clergyiften, noblemen,
and gentlemen, to all the highest offices in Church and State.
The Papists had burned down London once. They had tried
to burn it down again. They were at that moment planning a
scheme for setting fire to all the shipping in the Thames. They
were to rise at a signal and massacre all their Protestant neigh-
bours. A French army was at the same time to land in Ireland.
All the leading statesmen and divines of England were to be
murdered. Three or four schemes had been formed for assas-
sinating the King. He was to be stabbed. He was to be poi-
soned in his medicine. He was to be shot with silver bullets.
The public mind was so sore and excitable that these lies readily
found credit with the vulgar ; and two events which speedily
took place led even some reflecting men to suspect that the
tale, though evidently distorted and exaggerated, might have
some foundation.
Edward Coleman, a very busy, and not very honest, Roman
Catholic intriguer, had been among the persons accused.
Search was made for his papers. It was found that he had just
destroyed the greater part of them. But a few which had es'
caped contained some passages such as, to minds strongly pre-
possessed, might seem to confirm the evidence of Gates. Those
passages indeed, when candidly construed, appear to express
little more than the hopes which the posture of affairs, the pre-
dilections of Charles, the still stronger predilections of .lames,
and the relations existing between the French and English
218 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
courts, might naturally excite iu the mind of a Roman Catholic
strongly attached to the interests of his Church. But tha coun-
try was not then inclined to construe the letters of Papists can-
didly ; and it was urged, with some show of reason, that, if
papers which had been passed over as unimportant were filled
with matter so suspicious, some great mystery of iniquity must
have been contained in those documents which had been care-
fully committed to the flames.
A few days later it was known that Sir Edmondsbury God-
frey, an eminent justice of the peace who had taken the deposi-
tions of Oates against Coleman, had disappeared. Search was
made ; and Godfrey's corpse was found in a field near London.
It was clear that he had died by violence. It was equally clear
that he had not been set upon by robbers. His fate is to this
da}"^ a secret. Some think that he perished by his own hand ;
some, that he was slain by a private enemy. The most improlv
able supposition is that he was murdered by the party hostile
to the court, in order to give colour to the story of the plot.
The most probable supposition seems, on the whole, to be that
some hotheaded Roman Catholic, driven to frenzy by the lies of
Oates and by the insults of the mul.itude, and not nicely dis-
tinguishing between the perjured accuser and the innocent mag-
istrate, had taken a revenge of which the history of persecuted
sects furnishes but too many examples. If this were so, the
assassin must have afterwards bitterly execrated his own wick-
edness and folly. The capital and the whole nation went mad
with hatred and fear. The penal laws, which had begun to
lose something of their edge, were sharpened anew. Every-
where justices were busied in searching houses and seizing
papers. All the gaols were filled with Papists. London had
the aspect of a city in a state of siege. The trainbands were
under arms all night. Preparations were made for barricading
the great thoroughfares. Patrols marched up and down the
streets. Cannon were planted round Whitehall. No citizen
thought himself safe unless he carried under his coat a small
flail loaded with lead to brain the Popish assassins. The corpse
of the murdered magistrate was exhibited during several days
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 219
to the gaze of great multitudes, and was then committed to the
grave with strange and terrible ceremonies, which indicated
rather fear and the thirst of vengeance tliau sorrow or religious
hope. The Houses insisted that a guard should be placed in
the vaults over which they sate, in order to secure them against
a second Gunpowder Plot. All their proceedings were of a
piece with this demand. Ever since the reign of Elizabeth the
oath of supremacy had been exacted from members of the
House of Commons. Some Roman Catholics, however, had
contrived so to interpret this oath that they could take it without
scruple. A more stringent test was now added : every member
of Parliament was re({uired to make the Declaration against
Transubstantiation ; and thus the Roman Catholic Lords were
for the first time excluded from their seats. Strong resolutions
were adopted against the Queen. The Commons threw one of
the Secretaries of State into prison for having countersigned
commissions directed to gentlemen who were not good Protes-
tants. They impeached the Lord Treasurer of high treason.
Nay, they so far forgot the doctrine which, while the memory
of the civil war was still recent, they had loudly professed, that
they even attempted to wrest the command of the militia out of
the King's hands. To such a temper had eighteen years of
misgovernment brought the most loyal Parliament that had
ever met in England.
Yet it may seem strange that, even in that extremity, the
King should have ventured to appeal to the people ; for the
people were more excited than their representatives. The
Lower House, discontented as it was, contained a larger num-
ber ot Cavaliers than were likely to find seats again. But it
was thought that a dissoluti(m would put a stop to the prosecu-
tion of the Lord Treasurer, a prosecution which might probably
bring to light all the guilty mysteries of the French alliance, and
might thus cause extreme personal annoyance and embarrass-
ment to Charles. Accordingly, in January, 1679, the Parliament,
which had been in existence ever since the beffinnins: of the
year 1661, was dissolved j and Tvrits were jssijed for a general
election,
220 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
During some weeks the contention over the whole country
was fierce and obstinate beyond example. Unprecedented sums
were expended. New tactics were employed. It was remark-
ed by the pamphleteers of tliat time as something extraordinary
that horses were hired at a great charge for the conveyance of
electors. The practice of splitting freeholds for the purpose of
multiplying votes dates from this memorable straggle. Dissent-
ing preachers, who had long hidden themselves in quiet nooks
from persecution, now emerged from their retreats, and rode
from village to village, for the purpose of rekindling the zeal
of the scattered j^eojsle of God. The tide ran strong against
the government. Most of the new members came up to West-
minster in a mood little differing from that of their predeces-
sors who had sent Strafford and Laud to the Tower.
Meanwhile the courts of justice, which ought to be, in the
midst of political commotions, sure places of refuge for the
innocent of every party, were disgraced by wilder passions and
fouler corruptions than were to be found even on the hustings.
The tale of Gates, though it had sufficed to convulse the whole
realm, would not, unless confirmed by other evidence, suffice to
destroy the humblest of those whom he had accused. F'or, by
the old law of Euijland, two witnesses are necessary to establish
a charge of treason. But the success of the first impostor
produced its natural consequences. In a few w-eeks he had
been raised from penury and obscurity to opulence, to power
which made him tlie dread of princes and nobles, and to notoriety
such as has for low and bad minds all the attractions of glory.
He was not long without coadjutors and rivals. A wretch-
named Carstairs, who had earned a livelihood in Scotland by
going disguised to conventicles and then informing against the
preachers, led the way. Bedloe, a noted swindler, followed;
and soon from all the brothels, gambling houses, and spunging
houses of London, false witnesses poured forth to swear away the
lives of Roman Catholics. Gne came with a story about an
army of thirty thousand men who were to muster in the disguise
of pilgrims at Corunna, and to sail thence to Wales. Another
had been promised canonisation and five hundred pounds to
UNDEK CHARLES THE SECOND. 221
murder the King. A third had stepped into an eating house
in Covent Garden, and had there heard a great Roman Catholic
banker vow, in the hearing of all the guests and drawers, to
kill the heretical tyrant. Gates, that he might not be eclipsed
by his imitators, soon added a large supplement to his original
narrative. He had the portentous impudence to affirm, among
other things, that he had once stood behind a door which was
ajar, and had there overheard the Queen declare that she had re-
solved to give her consent to the assassination of her husband. The
vuVar believed, and the liighest magistrates pretended to believe,
even such fictions as these. The chief judges of the realm were
corrupt, cruel, and timid. The leaders of the Country Party
encouraged the prevailing delusion. The most respectable
amonsr them, indeed, were themselves so far deluded as to be-
lieve the greater part of the evidence of the plot to be true.
Such men as Shaftesbury and Buckingham doubtless perceived
that the whole was a romance. But it was a romance which
served their turn ; and to their seared consciences the death of
an innocent man gave no more uneasiness than the death of a
parti'idge. The juries partook of the feelings then common
throughout the nation, and were encouraged by the bench to in-
dulge those feelings without restraint. The multitude applauded
Gates and his confederates, hooted and pelted the Witnesses who
appeared on behalf of the accused, and shouted with joy when
the verdict of Guilty was pronounced. It was in vain that the
sufferers appealed to the respectability of their past lives : for
the public mind was possessed with a belief that the more con-
scientious a Papist was, the more likely he must be to plot
against a Protestant government. It was in vain that, just
before the cart passed from under their feet, they resolutely
affirmed their innocence : for the general opinion was that a good
Papist considered all lies which were serviceable to his Church
as not only excusable but meritorious.
While innocent blood was shedding under the forms of jus-
tice, the new Parliament met ; and such was the violence of the
predominant party that even men whose youth had been passed
amidst revolutions, men who remembered the attainder of Straf-
222 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ford, the attempt on the five members, the abolition of the
House of Lords, the execution of the King, stood aghast at the
aspect of public affairs. The impeachment of Danliy was re-
sumed. He pleaded the royal pardon. But the Commons
treated the plea with contempt, and insisted that the trial should
proceed. Danby, however, was not their chief object. They
were convinced that the only effectual way of securing the
liberties and religion of the nation was to exclude the Duke of
York from the throne.
The King was in great perplexity. He had insisted that
his brother, the sight of whom inflamed the populace to mad-
ness, should retire for a time to Brussels : but this concession
did not seem to have produced any favourable effect. The
Roundhead party was now decidedly preponderant. Towards
that party leaned millioris who had, at the time of the Restora-
tion, leaned towards the side of prerogative. Of the old Cava-
liers many participated in the prevailing fear of Popery, and
many, bitterly resenting the ingratitude of the prince for whom
they had sacrificed so much, looked on his distress as carelessly
as he had looked on theirs. Even the Anglican clergy, morti-
fied and alarmed by the apostasy of the Duke of York, so far
countenanced the opposition as to join cortiially in the outcry
against the Roman Catholics.
The King in this extremity had recourse to Sir William
Temple. Of all the official men of that age Temple had pre-
served the fairest character. The Triple Alliance had been his
work. He had refused to take any part in the politics of the
Cabal, and had, while that administration directed affaii's, lived
in strict privacy. He had quitted his retreat at the call of
Danby, had made peace between England and Holland, and
had borne a chief part in bringing about the marriage of the
Lady Mary to her cousin the Prince of Orange. Thus he had
the credit of every one of the few good things which had been
done by the government since the Restoration. Of the numer-
ous crimes and blunders of the last eighteen years none could
be imputed to him. His private life, though not austere, was
figcproHs ; his manner? were popular ; and he Yfm o-ot to b©
L'NDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 223
corrupted either by titles or by money. Something, however,
was wanting to the character of this respectable statesman. The
temperature of his patriotism was lukewarm. He prized his
ease and his personal dignity too much, and shrank from re-
sponsibility with a pusillanimous fear. Nor indeed had his
habits fitted him to bear a part in the conflicts of our domestic
factions. He had reached his fiftieth year without having sate
in the English Parliament ; and his ofiicial experience had been
almost entirely acquired at foreign courts. He was justly
esteemed one of the first diplomatists in Europe: but the
talents and accomplishments of a diplomatist are widely differ-
ent from those which qualify a politician to lead the House of
Commons in agitated times.
The scheme which he proposed showed considerable ingenu-
ity. Though not a profound philosopher, he had thought more
than most busy men of the world on the general principles of
government ; and his mind had been enlarged by historical
studies and foreion travel. He seems to have discerned more
clearly than most of his contemporaries one cause of the diffi-
culties by which the government was beset. The character of
the English polity was gradually changing. The Parliament
was slowly, but constantly, gaining ground on the prerogative
The line between the legislative and executive powers was in
theory as strongly marked as ever, but in practice was daily be-
coming fainter and fainter. The theory of the constitution was
that the King might name his own ministers. But the House
of Commons had driven Clarendon, the Cabal, and Danby suc-
cessively from the direction of affair?. The theory of the con-
stitution was that the King alone had the power of making
peace and war. But the House of Commons had forced him to
make peace with Holland, and had all but forced him to make
war with France. The theory of the constitution was that the
King was the sole judge of the cases in which it might be
proper to pardon offenders. Yet he was so much in dread of
the House of Commons that, at that moment, he could not ven-
ture to rescue from the gallows men whom he well knew to be
the innocent victims of perjury.
224 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Temple, it should seem, was desirous to secure to the legis*
lature its undoubted coustitutional powers, and yet to prevent
it, if possible, from encroaching further on the province of the
executive administration. With this view he determined to in-
terpose between the sovereign and the Parliament a body which
might break the shock of their collision. There was a body,
ancient, highly honourable, and recognised by the law, which,
he thought, might be so remodelled as to serve this purpose.
He determined to give to the Privy Council a new character
and office in the government. The number of Councillors he
fixed at thirty. Fifteen of them were to be the cliief ministers
of state, of law, and of religion. The other fifteen were to be
unplaced noblemen and gentlemen of ample fortune and high
character. There was to be no interior cabinet. All the thirty
were to be entrusted with every political secret, and summoned
to every meeting ; and the King was to declare that he would,
on every occasion, be guided by their advice.
Temple seems to have thought that, by this contrivance, he
could at once secure the nation against the tyranny of the
Crown, and the Crown against the encroachments of the Par-
liament. It was, on one hand, highly impi-obable that schemes
such as had been formed by the Cabal would be even propounded
for discussion in an assembly consisting of thirty eminent men,
fifteen of whom were bound by no tie of interest to the court.
On the other hand, it might be hoped that the Commons, con-
tent with the guarantee against misgovernment which such a
Privy Council furnished, ^would confine themselves more than
they had of late done to their strictly legislative functions, and
would no longer think it necessary to pry into every part of the
executive administration.
This plan, though in some respects not unworthy of the
abilities of its author, was in principle vicious. The new board
was half a cabinet and haM a Parliament, and, like almost every
other contrivance, whether mechanical or political, which is
meant to serve two purposes altogether different, failed of ac-
complishing either. It was too large and too divided to be a
gooi administrative body. It was too closely connected with
UNDER CHARLES rilE SECOND. 225
the Crown to be a good checking botly. It contained just
enough of popular ingredients to make it a bad council of state,
unfit for the keeping of secrets, for the conducting of delicate
negotiations, and for the administration of war. Yet were these
popular ingredients by no means sufficient to secure the nation
against misgovernment. The plan, therefore, even if it had
been fairly tried, could scarcely have succeeded ; and it was not
fairly tried. The King was fickle and perfidious : the Parlia-
ment was excited and unreasonable ; and the materials out of
which the new Council was made, though perhaps the best
which that age afforded, were still bad.
The commencement of the new system was, however, hailed
with general delight ; for the peojjle were in a temper to think
any change an improvement. They were also pleased by some
of the new nominations. Shaftesbury, now their favourite, was
appointed Lord President. Russell and some other distinguished
members of the Country Party were sworn of the Council. But
a few days later all was again in confusion. The inconveniences
of having so numerous a cabinet were such that Temple him.self
consented to infringe one of the fundamental rules which he had
laid down, and to become one of a small knot which really
directed everything. With him were joined three other minis-
ters, Arthur Capel, p]arl of Essex, George Savile, Viscount
Halifax, and Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland.
Of the Earl of Essex, then First Commissioner of the
Treasury, it is sufficient to say that he was a man of solid,
though not brilliant parts, and of grave and melancholy charac-
ter, that he had been connected with the Country Party, and
that he was at this time honestly desirous to effect, on terras
beneficial to the state, a reconciliation between that party and
the throne.
Among the statesmen of those times Halifax was, in genius,
the first. His intellect was fertile, subtle, and capacious. His
polished, luminous, and animated eloquence, set off by the silver
tones of his voice, was the delight of the HousGi of Lords. His
conversation overflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His
political tracts well deserve to be studied for their literary
15
226 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
merit, and fully entitle him to a place among English cla> >sica.
To the weight derived from talents so great and varices he
united all the influence which belongs to rank and ample ;»osses-
sions. Yet he was less successful in politics than majy who
enjoyed smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual pecu-
liarities which make his writings valuable frequently impeded
him in the contests of active life. For he always saw, passing
events, not in the point of view in which they commonly appear
to one who bears a part in them, but in thepoint of view in
which, after the lapse of many years, they appear to the phil-
osophic historian. With such a turn of mind, he could not long
continue to act cordially with any body of men. All the pre-
judices,' all the exaggerations, of both the great parties in the
state moved his scorn. He despised the mean arts and unrea-
sonable clamours of demagogues. He despised still more the
doctrines of divine right and passive obedience. He sneered
impartially at the bigotry of the Churchman and at the bigotry
of the Puritan. He was equally unable to comprehend how
any man should object to Saints' days and surplices, and how
any man should persecute any other man for objecting to them.
In temper he was what, in our time, is called a Conservative,
in theory he was a Republican. Even wlien his dread of
anarchy and his disdain for vulgar delu ions led him to side for
a time with the defenders of arbitrary power, his intellect was
always with Locke and Milton. Indeed, his jests upon heredi-
tary monarchy were sometimes such as would have better
become a member of the Calf's Head Club than a Privy Coun-
cillor of the Stuarts. In reli<xiou he was so far from beinsr a
zealot that he was called by the uncharitable an atheist : but
this imputation he vehemently repelled ; and iu truth, though
he sometimes gave scandal by the way in which he exerted his
rare powers both of reasoning and of ridicule on serious sub-
jects, he seems to have been by no means unsusceptible of
relisifious imoressions.
o
He was the chief of those politicians whom the two great
parties contemptuously called Trimmers. Instead of quarrel-
ling with this nickname, he assumed it as a title of honour, and
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND 227
vindicated, witli great vivacity, the dignity of the appelhition.
Everything good, he said, trims between extremes. The tem-
perate zone trims between the climate in which men are roasted
and the climate in which they are frozen. The English Church
trims between the Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy.
The English constitution trims between Turkish despotism and
Polish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but a just temper between
propensities any one of which, if indulged to excess, becomes
vice. Nay, the perfection of the Supreme Being himself con-
sists in the exact equilibrium of attributes, none of which could
preponderate without disturbing the whole moral and physical
order of the workL* Thus Halifax was a Trimmer on principle.
He was also a Trimmer by the constitution both of his head
and of his heart. His understanding was keen, sceptical, inex-
haustibly fertile in distinctions and objections ; his taste refined,
his sense of the ludicrous exquisite ; his temper placid and for-
giving, but fastidious, and by no means prone either to malev-
olence or to enthusiastic admiration. Such a man could not
long be constant to any band of political allies. He must not,
however, be confounded with the vulgar crowd of renegades,
For though, likg them, he passed from side to side, his transition
was always in the direction opposite to theirs. He had nothing
in common with those who fly from extreme to extreme, and
who regard the party which they have deserted with an ani-
mosity far exceeding that of consistent enemies. His place was
on the debatable ground between tlie hostile divisions of the
community, and he never wandered far beyond the front'er of
either. The party to which he at' any moment belonged was
the party wliich, at that moment, he liked least, because it was
the party of which at that moment he had the nearest view-
He was therefore always severe upon his violent associates, and
was always in friendly relations with his moderate opponents.
Every faction in the day Of its insoient and vindictive triumph
incurred his censure ; and every faction, when vanquished and
persecuted, found in him a protector. To his lasting honour it
* Halifax was undoubtedly the real author of the Character of a Trimmer,
which, for a time, went under the name of Jiis kinsman. Sir William Coventry.
228 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
must be mentioned that he attempted to save those victims
whose fate has left the deepest stain both on the Whig and on
the Tory name.
He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, and had
thus drawn on himself the royal displeasure, which was indeed
so strong that he was not admitted into the Council of Thirty
without much difficulty and long altercation. As soon, however,
as he had obtained a footing at court, the charms of his manner
and of his conversation made him a favourite. He was seriously
alarmed by the violence of the public discontent. He thought
that liberty was for the present safe, and that order and legiti-
mate authority were in danger. He therefore, as was his fashion,
joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his conversion was
not wholly disinterested. For study and reflection, though they
had emancipated him from many vulgar prejudices, had left him
a slave to vulgar desires. Money he did not want ; and there
is no evidence that he ever obtained it by any means which, in
that age, even severe censors considered as dishonourable ; but
rank and power had strong attractions for him. He pretended,
indeed, that he considered titles and great offices as baits which
could allure none but fools, that he hated business, pomp, and
pageantry, and tliat his dearest Avish was to escape from the
bustle and glitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which sur-
rounded his ancient mansion in Nottinghamshire ; but his con-
duct was not a little at variance with his professions. In truth
he wished to command the respect at once of courtiers and of
philosophers, to be admired for attaining high dignities, and to
be at the same time admired for despising them.
Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the polit-
ical immorality of his age was personified in the most lively
manner. Nature had given him a keen understanding, a rest'
less and mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirit.
His mind had undergone a training by which all his vices had
been nursed up to the rankest maturity. At his entrance into
public life, he had j^assed several years in diplomatic posts abroad,
and had been, during some time, minister in France. Every
calling has its peculiar temptations. There is no injustice in
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 229
saying that diplomatists, as a class, have always been more dis-
tinguished by their address, by the art with which they win the
confidence of those with whom they have to deal, and by the
ease with which they catch the tone of every societ}^ into which
they are admitted, than by generous enthusiasm or austere recti-
tude ; and the relations between Charles and Lewis were such
that no English nobleman could long reside in France as envoy,
and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland
came forth from the bad school in which he had been brought
up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and
destitute of all principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a
Cavalier : but with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common.
They were zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all
resistance. Yet they had sturdy P^nglish hearts which would
never have endured veal despotism. He, on the contrary, had
a languid speculative liking for republican institutions which
was compatible with perfect readiness to be in practice the most
servile instrument of arbitrary power. Like many other accom-
plished flatterers and negotiators, he was far more skilful in the
art of reading the characters and practising on the weaknesses
of individuals, than in the art of discerning the feelings of great
masses, and of foreseeing the approach of great revolutions.
He was adroit in intrigue ; and it was difficult even for shrewd
and experienced men who had been amply forewarned of his
perfidy to withstand the fascination of his manner, and to refuse
credit to his professions of attachment. But he was so intent
on observing and courting particular persons, that he often
forgot to study the temper of the nation. He therefore miscal-
culated grossly with respect to some of the most momentous
events of his time. More than one important movement and
rebound of the public mind took him by surprise ; and the world,
unable to understand how so clever a man could beTjIindto
what was clearly discerned by the politicians of the coffee houses,
sometimes attributed to deep design what were in truth mere
blunders.
It was only in private conference that his eminent abilities
displayed themselves. In the royal closet, or in a very small
230 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
circle, he exercised great influence. But at the Council board
he was taciturn ; and in the House of Lords he never opened
his lips.
, The four> confidential advisers of the crown soon found that
their position was embarrassing and invidious. The other
members of the Council murmured at a distinction inconsistent
with the King's promises ; and some of them, with Shaftesbury
at their head, again betook themselves to strenuous opposition
in Parliament. The agitation, which had been suspended by
the late changes, speedily became more violent than ever. It
was in vain that Charles offered to grant to the Commons any
security for the Protestant religion which they could devise,
provided only that they would not touch the order of succession.
They would hear of no compromise. They would have the
Exclusion Bill, and nothing but the Exckision Bill. The King,
therefore, a few weeks after he had publicly promised to take
no step without the advice of his new Council, went down to
the House of Lords without mentioning Ids intention in Coun-
cil, and prorogued the Parliament.
The day of that prorogation, the twenty-sixth of May, 1 679,
is a great era in our history. For on that day the Habeas
Corpus Act received the royal assent. From the time of tlie
Great Charter the substantive law respecting the personal lib-
-^rty of Englishmen had been nearly the same as at present:
but it had been inefficacious for want of a stringent system of
procedure. What was needed was not a new right, but a
prompt and searching remedy ; and such a remedy the Habeas
Corpus Act supplied. The King would gladly have refused his
consent to that measure : but he was about to appeal from his
Parliament to his people on the question of the succession, and
he could not venture, at so critical a moment, to reject a bill
whicli was in the highest degree popular.
On the same day the press of England became for a short
time free. In old times jirinters had been strictly controlled
by the Court of Star Chamber. The Long Parliament had
abolished the Star Chamber, but had, in spite of the philo-
sophical and eloquent expostulation of Milton, established and
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 231
maintained a censorship. Soon after the Restoration, an Act
had been passed which prohibited the printing of nnlicensed
books ; and it had been provided that tliis Act should continue
in force till the end of the first session of the next Parliament.
That moment had now arrived ; and the King, in the very act
of dismissing the House, emancipated the Press.
Shortly after the prorogation came a dissolution and another
general election. The zeal and strengtli of the opposition were
at the height. The cry for the Exclusion Bill was louder than
ever; and with this cry was mingled another cry, which fired
the blood of the multitude, but wliich was heard with regret
and alarm by all judicious friends of freedom. Not oidy the
rights of the Duke of York, an ^avowed Papist, but those of
his two daughters, sincere and zealous Protestants, were assailed.
It was confidently affirmed that the eldest natural son of the
King had been born in wedlock, and was lawful heir to the
crown.
Charles, while a wanderer on the Continent, had fallen in at
the Hague with Lucy Walters, a Welsh girl of great beauty,
but of weak understanding and dissolute manners. She be-
came his mistress, and presented him with a son. A suspicious
lover might have had his doubts ; for the lady had several ad-
mirers, and was not supposed to be cruel to any. Charles, how-
ever, readily took her word, and poured forth on little James
Crofts, as the boy was then called, an overflowing fondness,
such as seemed hardly to belong to that cool and careless nature.
Soon after the restoration, the young favourite, who had learned
in France the exercises then considered necessary to a fine
gentleman, made his appearance at Whitehall. He was lodged
in the palace, attended by pages, and permitted to enjoy sevei'al
distinctions which had till then been confined to princes of the
blood royal. He was married, while still in tender youth, to
Anne Scott, heiress of the noble house of Buccleuch. He took
her name, and received with her hand possession of her ample
domains. The estate which he had acquired by this match was
popularly estimated at not less than ten thousand pounds a
year. Titles, and favours more substantial than titles, were
232 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
lavished on him. He was made Duke of Monmouth in Eng-
land, Duke of Buccleuch in Scotland, a Knight of the Garter,
Master of the Horse, Commander of the first troop of Life
Guards, Chief Justice of Eyre south of Trent, and Chancellor
of the University of Cambridge. Nor did he appear to the
public unworthy of his high fortunes. His countenance was
eminently handsome and engaging, his temper sweet, his man-
ners polite and affable. Though a libertine, he won the hearts
of the Puritans. Though he was known to have been privy to
the shameful attack o-n Sir John Coventry, he easily obtained
the forgiveness of the Country Party. Even austere moral-
ists owned that, in such a court, strict conjugal fidelity was
scarcely to be expected from one who, while a child, had been
married to another child. Even patriots were willing to excuse
a headstrong boy for visiting with immoderate vengeance an in-
sult offered to his father. And soon the stain left by loose
amours and midnight brawls was effaced by honourable ex-
ploits. When Chnrlcs and Lewis united their forces against
Holland, Monmouth commanded the English auxiliaries who
were sent to the Continent, and approved himself a gallant
soldier and a not unintelligent officer. On his return he found
himself the most ])opular man in the kingdom. Nothing was
withheld from him but the crown ; nor did even tlie crown
seem to be absolutely beyond his reach. Tiie distinction which
had most injudiciously been made between him and the highest
nobles had produced evil conse(}uences. When a boy he had
been invited to put on his hat in the presence chamber, while
Howards and Seymours stood uncovered round him. When
foreign princes died, he had mourned for them in the long pur-
ple cloak, which no other subject, except the Duke of York
and Prince liupert, was permitted to wear. It was natural that
these things should lead him to regai'd himself as a legitimate
prince of the House of Stuart. Charles, even at a ripe age, was
devoted to his pleasures and regardless of his dignity. It could
hardly be thought incredible that he should at twenty have
secretly gone through the form of espousing a lady whose
beauty had fascinated him. While Monmouth was still a child.
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 233
and while the Duke of York still passed for a Protestant, it was
rumoured throughout the country, and even in circles which
ought to have been well informed, that the King had made
Lucy Walters his wife, and that, if every one had his right, her
son would be Prince of Wales. Much was said of a certain
black box which, according to the vulgar belief, contained the
contract of marriage. When JVIonmouth had returned from the
Low Countries with a high character for valour and conduct,
and when the Duke of York was known to be a member of a
church detested by the great majority of the nation, this idle
story became important. For it there was not the sli<rhtest
evidence. Against it there was the solemn asseveration of the
King, made before his Council, and by his order communicated
to his people. But the multitude, always foiid of romantic ad-
ventures, drank in eagerly the tale of the secret espousals and
the black box. Some chiefs of the opposition acted on this
occasion as they acted with respect to the more odious fables
of Gates, and countenanced a story which they must have
despised.
The interest which the populace took in him whom they re-
gardtd as the chapa[)ion of the true religion, and the rightful heir
of the British throne, was kept up by every artifice. When Mon-
mouth arrived in London at midnight, the watchmen were or-
dered by the magistrates to 'proclaim the joyful event throuo-h
the streets of the City : the people left their beds : bonfires were
lighted : the windows were illuminated : the churches were
opened ; and a merry peal rose from all the steeples. When
he travelled, he was everywhere received with not less pomp,
and with far more enthusiasm, than had been displayed when
Kings had made progresses through the realm. He was es-
corted from mansion to mansion by long cavalcades of armed gen
tlemen and yeomen. Cities poured forth their whole popular
tion to receive him. Electors thronged round him, to assure him
that their votes were at his disposal. T(> such a height were his
pretensions carried, that he not only exhibited on his escutcheon
the lions of England and the lilies of France without the baton
sinister under which, according to the law of heraldrj, they should
234 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
have been debruised in token of his illegitimate birth, but ven-
tured to touch for the king's evil. At the same time he neglected
no art of condescension by which the love of the multitude could
be conciliated. He stood godfather to the children of the peas-
antry, mingled in every rustic sport, vprestled, played at quarter-
stafp, and won footraces in his boots against fleet runners in shoes.
It is a curious circumstance that, at two of the greatest con-
junctures in our history, the chiefs of the Protestant party should
have committed the same error, and should by that error have
greatly endangered their country and their religion. At the
death of Edward the Sixth they set up the Lady Jane, without
any show of birthright, in opposition, not only to their eneniy
Mary, but also to Elizabeth, the true hope of England and of
the Reformation. Thus the most respectable Protestants, with
Elizabeth at their head, were forced to make common cause
with the Papists. In the same manner, a hiuidred and thirty
years later, a part of the opposition, by setting up Monmouth
as a claimant of the crown, attacked the rights, not only of
James, whom they justly regarded as an implacable foe of their
faith and their liberties, but also of the Prince and Princess of
Orange, who were eminently marked out, both by situation and
by personal qualities, as the defenders of all free governments
and of all reformed churches.
The folly of this course speedily became manifest. At pres-
ent the popularity of Monmouth constituted a great part of the
strength of the opposition. The elections went against the
court : the day fixed for the meeting of the Houses drew near ;
and it was necessary that the King should determine on some
line of conduct. Those who advised him discerned the first
faint signs of a change of public feeling, and hoped that, by
merely postponing the conflict, he would be able to secure the
victory. He therefore, without even asking the opinion of the
Council of the Thirty, resolved to prorogue the new Parliament
before it entered on business. At the same time the Duke of
York, who had returned from Brussels, was ordered to retire to
Scotland, and was placed at the head of the administration of
that kingdom.
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 235
Temple's phm of government was now avowedly abandoned
and very soon forgotten. The Privy Council again became
wiiat it had been. Shaftesbury, and those who were connected
with him in politics resigned their seats. Temple himself, as
was his wont in unquiet times, retired to his garden and his
library. Essex quitted the boafd of Treasury, and cast in his
lot with the opposition. But Halifax, disgusted and alarmed
by the violence of his old associates, and Sunderland, who never
quitted place while he could hold it, remained in the King's
service.
In consequence of the resignations which took place at this
conjuncture, the way to greatness was left clear to a new set
oi aspirants. Two statesmen, who subsequently rose to the
Ihighest eminence which a British subject can reach, soon began
to attract a large share of the public attention. These were
Xawrence Hyde and Sidney Godolpbin.
Lawrence Hyde was the second son of the Chancellor Clai'-
endon, and was brother of the first Duchess of York. He had
excellent parts, which had been improved by parliamentary and
diplomatic exi^erience ; but the infirmities of his temper detracted
much from the effective strength of his abilities. Negotiator
and courtier as he was, he never learned the art of governing or
of concealing his emotions. When prosperous, he was insolent
and boastful : when he sustained a check, his undisguised mortifi-
cation doubled the triumph of his enemies : very slight provo-
cations sufficed to kindle his anger ; and when he was angry
he said bitter things which he forgot as soon as he was pacified,
but which others remembered many years. His quickness and
penetration would have made him a consummate man of busi-
ness but for his selfsufficiency and impatience. His writings
proved that he had many of the qualities of an orator: but his
irritability prevented him from doing himself justice in debate;
for nothing was easier than to goad him into a passion ; and,
from the moment when he went into a passion, he was at the
mercy of opponents far inferior to him in capacity.
Unlike most of the leading politicians of that generation he
was a consistent, dogged, and rancorous party man, a Cavalier
236 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
of the old school, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the
Church, and a hater of Republicans and Nonconformists. He
had consequently a great body of personal adherents. The
clergy especially looked on him as their own man, and extended
to his foibles an indulgence of which, to say the truth, he stood
in some need : for he drank deep ; and when h6 was in a rage, —
and he very often was in a rage, — he swore like a porter.
He now succeeded Essex at the treasury. It is to be observed
that the place of First Lord of the Treasury had not then thf
importance and dignity which now belong to it. When there
was a Lord Treasurer, that great officer was generally prime
minister : but, when the white staff was in commission, the
chief commissioner hardly ranked so high as a Secretary of
State. It was not till the time of Walpole that the First Lord
of the Treasury became, under a humbler name, all that the
Lord High Treasurer had been.
Godolphin had been bred a page at Whitehall, and had early
acquired all the flexibility and the selfpossession of a veteran
courtier. He was laborious, clearheaded, and profoundly
versed in the details of finance. Every government, therefore,
found him an useful servant ; and there was nothing in his opin-
ions or in his character which could prevent him from serving
any government. " Sidney Godolphin," said Charles, " is never
in the way, and never out of the way." This pointed remark
goes far to explain Godolphin's extraordinary success in life.
He acted at different times with both the great political
parties : but he never shared in the passions of either. Like
most men of cautious tempers and prosperous fortunes, he had a
strong disposition to support whatever existed. He disliked
revolutions ; and, for the same reason for which he disliked
revolutions, he disliked counter revolutions. His deportment
was remarkably grave and reserved : but his personal tastes
were low and frivolous ; and most of the time which he could
save from public business was spent in racing, cardplaying, and
cockfighting. He now sate below Rochester at the Board of
Treasury, and distinguished himself there by assiduity and
utelligence.
rNDEU OHARLKS TIIK SECOND. 237
Before the v.ew Parliament was f.uilered to meet for the
despatch of business a whole year elapsed, an eventful year,
which has left lasting traces in our manners and language.
Never before hiid political controversy been carried on with so
much freedom. Never before had political clubs existed with
so elaborate an organisation or so formidable an influence.
The one question of the Exclusion occupied the pul)Iic mind.
All the presses and pulpits of the realm took part in the con-
flict. On one side it was maintained that the constitution and
religion of the state could never be secure under a Popish
King ; on the other, that the right of James to wear the crown
in his turn was derived from God, and could not be annulled,
even by the consent of all the branches of the legislature.
Every county, every town, every family, was in agitation.
The civilities and hospitalities of neighbourhood were inter-
rupted. The dearest ties of friendshiji and of blood were sun-
dered. Even schoolboys were divided into angry parties ; and
the Duke of York and the Earl of Shaftesbury had zealous
adherents on all the forms of Westminster and Eton. The
theatres shook with the roar of the contending factions. Pope
Joan was brought on the stage by the zealous Protestants.
Pensioned poets filled their prologues and epilogues with
eulogies on the King and the Duke. The malecontents be-
sieged the throne with petitions, (Remanding that Parliament
might be forthwith convened. The royalists sent up addresses,
expressing the utmost abhorrence of all who presumed to dictate
to the sovereign. The citizens of London assembled by tens
of thousands to burn the Pope in efiigy. The government
posted cavalry at Temple Bar, and placed ordnance round
Whitehall. In that year our tongue was enriched with two
words, Mob and Sham, remarkable memorials of a season of
tumult and imposture.* Opponents of the court were called
Birminghams, Petitioners, and Exclusionists. Those who took
the King's side were Antibirminghams, Abhorrers, and Tan-
tivies. These appellations soon become obsolete : but at this
time were first heard two nicknames which, though originally
• North's Examen, 231, 574.
238 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
^iven in insult, were soon assumed with pride, which are still
in daily use, which have spread as widely as the English race,
and which will last as long as the English literature. It is a
curious circumstance that one of these nicknames was of
Scotch, and the other of Irish, origin. Both in Scotland and
in Ireland, misgovernment had called into existence bands of
desperate men wliose ferocity was heightened by religious
enthusiasm. In Scotland some of the persecuted Covenanters,
driven mad by oppression, had lately murdered the Primate,
had taken arms against the government, had obtained some
advantages against the King's forces, and had not been put
down till Monmouth, at the head of some troops from England,
had routed them at Bothwell Bridjje. These zealots were
most numerous among the rustics ot the western lowlands, who
were vulgarly called Whigs. Thus the appellation of Whig
was fastened on the Presbyterian zealots of Scotland, and was
transferred to those English 23oliticians who showed a disposition
to oppose the court, and to treat Protestant Nonconformists
with indulgence. The bogs of Ireland, at the same time,
afforded a refuge to Popish outlaws, much resembling those
who were afterwards known as Whiteboys. These men were
then called Tories. The name of Tory was therefore given to
Englishmen who refused to concur in excluding a Roman
Catholic prince from the thrqne.
The rage of the hostile factions would have been sufficiently
violent, if it had been left to itself. But it was studiously
exasperated by the common enemy of both. Lewis still con-
tinued to bribe and flatter both the court and the opposition.
He exhorted Charles to be firm : he exhorted .James to raise a
civil war in Scotland : he exhorted the Whigs not to flinch, and
to rely with confidence on the protection of France.
Through all this agitation a discerning eye might have
perceived that the jmblic opinion was gradually changing.
The persecution of the Roman Catholics went on ; but con-
victions were no longer matters of course. A new brood of
false witnesses, among Avhom a villain named Dangerfield was
the most conspicuous, infested the courts : but the stories of
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 239
these men, though better constructed than that of Gates, found
less credit. Juries were no longer so easy of belief as during
the panic which had followed the naurder of Godfrey ; and
Judges, who, while the popular frenzy was at the height, had
been its most obsequious instruments, now ventured to express
some part of what they had from the first thought.
At length, in October 1680, the Parliament met. The
Whigs had so great a majority in the Commons that the Exclu-
sion Bill went through all its stages there without difficulty.
The King scarcely knew on what members of his own cabinet he
«ould reckon. Hyde had been true to his Tory opinions, and
had steadily supported the cause of hereditary monarchy. But
Godolphin, anxious for quiet, and believing that quiet could be
restored only by concession, wished the bill to jjass. Sunderland,
ever false, and ever shortsighted, unable to discern the signs of
approaching reaction, and anxious to conciliate the party which
he believed to be irresistible, determined to vote against the court.
The Duchess of Portsmouth implored her royallover not to rush
headlong to destruction. If there were any point on which he
had a scruple of conscience or of honour, it was the question
of the succession ; but during some days it seemed that he would
submit. He wavered, asked what sum the Commons would give
him if he yielded, and suffered a negotiation to be opened with
the leading Whigs. But a deep mutual distrust whifh had been
many years growing, and which had been carefully nursed by
the arts of France, made a treaty impossible. Neither side
would place confidence in the other. The whole nation now
looked with breathless anxiety to the House of Lords. The
assemblage of peers was large. The King himself was present.
The debate was long, earnest, and occasionally furious. Some
hands were laid on the pommels of swords in a manner which
revived the recollection of the stormy Parliaments of Edward
the Third and Richard the Second. Shaftesbury and Essex
were joined by the treacherous Sunderland. But the genius of
Halifax bore down all opposition. Deserted by his most im-
portant colleagues, and opposed to a crowd of able antagonists.
We defended the cause of the Duke of York, in a succession of
240 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
speeches which, many years later, were remembered as master-
pieces of reasoning, of wit, and of eloquence. It is seldom that
oratory changes votes. Yet the attestation of contemporaries
leaves no doubt that, on this occasion, votes were changed by
the oratory of Halifax. The Bishops, tiue to their doctrines,
supported the principle of hereditary right, and the bill was
rejected by a great majority.*
The party which preponderated in the House of Commons,
bitterly mortified by this defeat, found some consoiatioii iu shed-
duig the blood of Roman Catholics. William Howard, Viscount
Stafford, one of the unhappy men who had beeu accused of
a share m the plot, was impeached ; and on the testimony of
Gates and of two other false witnesses, Dugdale and Turbervill' ■,
was found guilty of high treason, and suffered death. But the
circumstances of his trial and execution ought to have given an
useful warning to the Whig leaders. A large and respectable
minority of the House of Lords pronounced the prisoner not
guilty. The multitude, which a few months before had received
the dying declarations of Oates's victims with mockery and ex-
ecrations, now loudly expressed a belief that Stafford was a
murdered man. When he with his last breath protested his
innocence, the cry was, " God bless you, my Lord ! We believe
you, my Lord." A judicious observer might easily have pre-
dicted that the blood then shed would shortly have blood.
The King determined to try once more the experiment of a
dissolution. A new Parliament was summoned to meet at
* A peer who was present lias described the effect of Halifax's oratory in words
which I will quote, because, though they have been long in print, they are prob-
ably known to few even of the most curious and diligent readers of history.
" Of powerful eloquence and great parts were the Duke's enemies who did
assert the Bill ; but a noble Lord appeared against it who, that day, in all the force
of speech, in reason, in arguments of what could concern the public or the private
Interests of men, in honour, in conscience, in estate, did outdo himself and every
other man ; and in fine his conduct and his parts were both victorious, and by
him all the wit and malice of that party was overthrown."
This passage is taken from a memoir of Henry Earl of Peterborough, In a
volume entitled "Succinct Genealogies, by. Robert Halstead," fol. 1685. The
name of Halstead is fictitious. The real authors were the Earl of Peterborough
himself and his chaplain. The book is extremely rare. Only twenty-four copies
vere printed, two of which are now in the British Museum. Of these two OM
belonged to George the Fourth, and the other to Mr. GrenviUa.
UNDER CHAKLES THE SECOND. 24i
Oxford, in March, 1G81. Since the days of the Plantagenets
the Houses had constantly sat at Westminster, except when the
plague was raging in the capital : but so extraordinary a conjunc-
ture seemed to require extraordinary precautions. If the Parlia-
ment were held in its usual place of assembling, the House
of Commons might declare itself permanent, and might call for
aid on the magistrates and citizens of Loudon. The trainbands
might rise to defend Shaftesbury as they had risen forty years
before to defend Pym and Hampden. The Guards might be
overpowered, the palace forced, the King a prisoner in the hands
of his mutinous subjects. At Oxford there was no such dangei-.
The University was devoted to the crown ; and the gentry of
the neighbourhood were generally Tories. Here, therefore, the
opposition had more reason than the King to apprehend violence.
The elections were sharplj^ contested. The Whigs still
composed a majority of the House of Commons : but it was
plain that the Tory spirit was fast rising throughout the coun-
try. It should seem that the sagacious and versatile Shaftes-
bury ought to have foreseen tlie coming change, and to have
consented to the compromise which the court offered : but he
appears to have forgotten his old tactics. Instead of making
dispositions which, in the worst event, woidd have secured his
retreat, he took up a position in which it was necessary that he
should either conquer or perish. Perhaps his head, strong as
it was, had been turned by popularity, by success, and by the
excitement of conflict. Perhaps he had spurred his party till
he could no longer curb it, and was really hurried on headlong
by those whom he seemed to guide.
The eventful day arrived. The meetir g at Oxford resem-
bled rather that of a Polish Diet than that of an English Par-
Uament. The Whig members were escorted by great numbers
»f their armed and mounted tenants and serving men, who ex-
jhanged looks of defiance with the royal Guards. The slight-
est provocation might, under such circ«msLa.^v»38, have produced
R civil war; but neither side dared to strixe tiie first blow. The
King again offered to consent to anything but the Exclusion
Bill. The Commons were determined to ftccept nothing but the
16
242 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Exclusion Bill. In a few days the Parliament was again dis-
solved.
The King had triumphed. The reaction, which had begun
some months before the meeting of the House at Oxford, now
went rapidly on. The nation, indeed, was still hostile to Popery :
but, when men reviewed the whole history of the plot, they
felt that their Protestant zeal had hiwried them into folly and
crime, and could scarcely believe that they had been induced by
nursery tales to clamour for the blood of fellow subjects and
fellow Christianso The most loyal, indeed, could not deny that
the administration of Charles had often been highly blamable.
But men who had not the full information which we possess
touching his dealings with France, and who were disgusted by
the violence of the Whigs, enumerated the large concessions
which, during the last few years he had made to his Parliaments,
and the still larger concessions which he had declared himself
willing to make. He had consented to the laws which excluded
Roman Catholics from the Plouse of Lords, from the Privy
Council, and from all civil and military offices. He had passed
the Habeas Corpus Act. If securities yet stronger had not
been provided against the dangers to which the constitution and
the Church might be exposed under a Roman Catholic sovereign,
the fault lay, not with Charles who had invited the Parliament
to propose such securities, but with those Whigs who had re-
fused to hear of any substitute for the Exclusion Bill. One
thing only had the King denied to his people. He had refused
to take away his brother's birthright. And was there not good
reason to believe that this refusal was prompted by laudable
feelings ? What selfish motive could faction itself impute to
the royal mind ? The Exclusion Bill did not curtail the reign-
ing King's prerogatives, or diminish his income. Indeed, by
passing it, he might easily have obtained an ample addition to
his own revenue. And what was it to him who ruled after him .''
Nay, if he had personal predilections, they were known to be
rather in favour of the Duke of Monmouth than of the Duke
of York. The most natural explanation of the King's conduct
seemed to be that, careless as was his temper and loose as were
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 243
his morais, lie had, on this occasion, acted from a sense of duty
and honour. And, if so, would tlie nation compel him to do
what lie thought criminal and disgraceful ? To apply, even by
strictly constitutional means, a violent pressure to liis conscience,
seemed to zealous royalists ungenerous and undutiful. But
strictly constitutional means were not the only means which the
Whigs were disposed to employ. Signs were already discerni-
ble which portended the approach of great troubles. Men, who,
in the time of the civil war and of the Commonwealth, had ac-
quired an odious notoriety, had emerged from the obscurity in
which, after the Restoration, they had hidden themselves from
the general hatred, showed their confident and busy faces every-
where, and appeared to anticipate a second reign of the Saints.
Another Naseby, another High Court of Justice, another
usurper on the throne, the Lords again ejected from their hall
by violence, the Universities again purged, the Church again
robbed and persecuted, the Puritans again dominant, to suck
results did the desperate policy of the opposition seem to tend.
Strongly moved by these apprehensions, the majority of the
upper and middle classes hastened to rally round the throne.
The situation of the King bore, at tliis time, a great resemblance
to that in which his father stood just after the Remonstrance
had been voted. But the reaction of 1641 had not been suf-
fered to run its course. Charles the First, at the very moment
when his people, long estranged, were returning to him with
hearts disposed to reconciliation, had, by a perfidious violation
of the fundamental laws of the realm, forfeited their confidence
for ever. Had Charles the Second taken a similar course, had
he arrested the Whig leaders in an irregular manner, had he
impeached them of high treason before a tribunal which had no
legal jurisdiction over them, it is highly probable that they
would speedily have regained the ascendency which they had
lo6t. Fortunately for liimself, he was induced, at this crisis, to
adopt a policy singularly judicious. He determined to conform
to the law, but at the same time to make vigorous and unsparing
use of the law against his advei'sai'ies. He was not bound to
convoke a Parliament till three years should havf; elapsed. He
244 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
was not mucli distressed for money. The iiroduce of the taxes
which had been settled on him for life exceeded the estimate.
He was at peace with all the world. He could retrench his
expenses by giving up the costly and useless settlement of
Tangier ; and he might hope for pecuniary aid f i-om France.
He had, therefore, ample time and means for a systematic
attack on the opposition under the forms of the constitution.
The Judges were removable at his {pleasure: the jui'ies were
nominated by the Sheriifs ; and, in almost all the counties of
England, the Sheriifs were nominated by himself. Witnesses,
of the same class with those who had recently sworn away the
lives of Papists, were ready to swear away the lives of Whigs.
The first victim was College, a noisy and violent demagogue
of mean birth and education. He was by trade a joiner, and
was celebrated as the inventor of the Protestant flail.* He
had been at Oxford when the Parliament sate there, and was
accused of having planned a rising and an attack on the King's
guards. Evidence was given against him by Dugdale and Tur-
berville, the same infamous men who had, a few months earlier,
borne false witness against Stafford. In the sight of a jury of
country squires no Exclusionist was likely to find favour.
College was convicted. The crowd which filled the court house
of Oxford received the verdict with a roar of exultation, as bar-
barous as that which he and his friends had been in the habit
of raising when innocent Papists were doomed to the gallows.
His execution was the beginning of a new judicial massacre
not less atrocious than that in which he had himself borne a
share.
The government, emboldened by this first victory, now
aimed a blow at an enemy of a very different class. It was
resolved that Shaftesbury should be brought to trial for his life.
Evidence was collected which, it was thought, would support a
charge of treason. But the facts which it was necessary to
prove were alleged to have been committed in London. The
* This is mentioned in the curious work entitled " Ragguaglio della soleiin*
Comparsa fatta iu Boma gli otto di Geiuiaio, 1687, dall' illustrissimo et ©ccelleu-
tiasimo signer Conto di Castleinaiue."
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 245
Sheriffs of London, chosen by the citizens, were zealous Whigs.
Thej named a Whig grand jury, wliieh threw out the bilL
This defeat, far from discouraging those who advised the Kino-,
suggested to them a new and daring scheme. Since the charter
of the capital was in their way, that charter must be annulled.
It was pretended, therefore, that the City had by some irreo-u-
larities forfeited its municipal privileges ; and proceedings were
instituted against the corporation in the Court of King's Bench.
At the same time those laws which had, soon after the Restora-
tion, been enacted against Nonconformists, and which had re-
mained dormant during the ascendency of tlie Whigs, were
enforced all over the kinijdom with extreme riirour.
Tet the spirit of the Whigs was not subdued. Though in
evil plight, they were still a numerous and powerful party ; and,
as they mustered strong in the large towns, and especially in
the capital, they made a noise and a show more than propor-
tioned to their real force. Animated by the recollection of
past triumphs, and by the sense of present oj^pression, they
overrated both their strength and their wrongs. It was not
In their power to make out that clear and overwhelming
case which can alone justify so violent a remedy as resistance
to an established government. Whatever they might suspect,
they could not prove that their sovereign had entered into
a treaty with France against the religion and liberties of
England. What was apparent was not sufficient to warrant an
appeal to the sword. If the Lords had thrown out the Exclu-
sion Bill, they had thrown it out in the exercise of a right
coeval with the constitution. If the Kincj had dissolved the
Oxford Parliament, he had done so by virtue of a prerogative
which had never been questioned. If he had, since the dissolu-
tion, done some harsh things, still those things were in strict
conformity with the letter of the law, and with the recent
practice of the malecontents themselves. If he had prosecuted
his opponents, he had prosecuted them according to the proper
forms, and before the proper tribunals. The evidence now pro-
duced for the crown was at least as worthy of credit as the
evidence on which the noblest blood of England had lately been
246 HISTORY OF ENGLAND-
«hed bj the opposition. The treatment which an accused Whig
had now to expect from judges, advocates, slieriffs, juries and
spectators, was no worse than the treatment which had lately
been thought liy the Whigs good enough for an accused Papist.
If the privileges of the City of London were attacked, they
were attacked, not by military violence or by any disputable
exercise of prerogative, but according to the regular practice of.
Westminster Hall. No tax was imposed by royal authority..
No law was suspended. The Habeas Corpus Act was i-espected..
Even the Test Act was enforced. The opposition, therefore,,,
could not bring home to the King that species of misgoverar-
ment which alone could justify insurrection. And, even had
his misgovernment been more flagrant than it was, insurrection
would still have been criminal, because it was almost certain to
be unsuccessful. The situation of the Whiss in 1682 differed
widely from that of the Roundheads forty years before. Those
who took up arms against Charles the First acted under the
authority of a Parliament which had been legally assembled,
and which could not, without its own consent, be legally dis-
solved. The opponents of Charles the Second were private
men. Almost all the military and naval resources of the king--
dom had been at the disposal of those who resisted Charles the
First. All the military and naval resources of the kingdom
were at the disposal of Charles the Second. The House of
Commons had been supported by at least half the nation
against Charles the First. But those who were disposed to-
levy war against Charles the Second were certainly a minority.
It could hardly be doubted, therefore, that, if they attempted a.
rising, they would fail. Still less could it be doubted that their
failure would aggravate every evil of which they complained.
The true policy of the Whigs was to submit with patience to
adversity which was the natural consequence and the just pun-
ishment of their errors, to wait patiently for that turn of public
feeling which must inevitably come, to observe the law, and to-
avail themselves of the protection, imperfect indeed, but by no
means nugatory, which the law afforded to innocence. Unhap-
pily they took a very different course. Unscrupulous and hoi-
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 247
headed chiefs of the party formed and discussed schemes of
resistance, and were heard, if not with approbation, yet with the
phow of acquiescence, by much better men than themselves. It
was proposed that there should be simultaneous insurrections in
London, in Cheshire, at Bristol, and at Newcastle. Communi-
cations were opened with the discontented Presbyterians of
Scotland, who were suffering under a. tyranny such as England,
in the worst times, had never known. While the leaders of the
opposition thus revolved plans of open rebellion, but were still
restrained by fears or scruples from taking any decisive step^ a
design of a very different kind was meditated by some of their
accomplices. To fierce spirits, unrestrained by principle, or
maddened by fanaticism, it seemed that to waylay and murder
the King and his brother was the shortest and surest way of
vindicatinor the Protestant relii>ion and the liberties of Ensrland.
A place and a time were named ; and the details of the butchery
were frequently discussed, if not definitely arranged. This
scheme was known but to few, and was concealed with especial
care from the upright and humane Russell, and from Mon-
mouth, who, though not a man of delicate conscience, would
have recoiled with horror from the guilt of parricide. Thus
there were two plots, one within the other. The object of the
great Whig plot wals to raise the nation in arms against the
government. The lesser plot, commonly called the Rye House
Plot, in which only a few desperate men were concerned, had
for its object the assassination of the King and of the heir
presumptive.
Both plots were soon discovered. Cowardly traitors hastened
to save themselves, by divulging all, and more than all, that
had passed in the deliberations of the party. That only a small
minority of those who meditated resistance had admitted into
their minds the thought of assassination is fully estab-
lished : but, as the two conspiracies ran into each other,
it was not difficult for the government to confotmd them to-
gether. The just indignation excited by the Rye House Plot
was extended for a time to the whole Whig body. The King
was now at liberty to exact full vengeance for years of restraint
248 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
and humiliation. Shaftesbury, indeed, had escaped the fate
which his manifold perfidy had well deserved. He had seen
that the ruin of his party was at hand, had in vain endeavoured
to make his peace with the royal brothers, had fled to Holland,
and had died there, under the generous protection of a govern-
ment whicli he had cruelly wronged. Monmouth threw himself
at his father's feet and found mercy, but soon gave new offence,
and thought it prudent to go into voluntary exile. Essex per-
ished by his own hand in the Tower. Russell, who appears to
have been guilty of no offence falling within the definition of
high treason, and Sidney, of whose guilt no legal isvidence could
be produced, were beheaded in defiance of law and justice.
Russell died with the fortitude of a Christian, Sidney with the
fortitude of a Stoic. Some active politicians of meaner rank
were sent to the gallows. Many quitted the country. Numer-
ous prosecutions for misprision of treason, for libel, and for con-
spiracy were instituted. Convictions were obtained without
difficulty from Tory juries, and rigorous punishments were in-
flicted by courtly judges. With these criminal proceedings were
joined civil proceedings scarcely less formidable. Actions were
brought against persons who had defamed the Duke of York ;
and damages tantamount to a sentence of perpetual imprison-
ment were demanded by the plaintiff, and without difficulty
obtained. The Court of King's "Bench pronounced that the
franchises of the City of London were forfeited to the Crown.
Flushed with tliis great victory, the government proceeded to
attack the constitutions of other corporations which were gov-
erned by AYhig officers, and which had been in the habit of re-
turnincr Whiij members to Parliament. Boroua:li after boroush
was compelled to surrender its privileges ; and new charters
were granted which gave the ascendency everywhere to the
Tories.
These proceedings, however reprehensible, had yet the sem-
blance of legality. They were also accompanied by an act
intended to quiet the uneasiness with which many loyal men
looked forward to the accession of a Popish sovereign. The
Lady Aune, younger daughter of the Duke of York by his first
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 249
wife, was married to George, a prince of the orthodox House
of Denmark. The Tory gentry and clergy might now flatter
themselves that the Church of England had been effectually
secured without any violation of the order of succession. The
King and the heir presumptive were nearly of the same age.
Both were approaching the decline of life. The King's health
was good. It was therefore probable that James, if he came to
the throne, would have but a short reign. Beyond his reign
there was the gratifying prospect of a long series of Protestant
sovereigns.
The liberty of unlicensed printing was of little or no use to
the vanquished party ; for the temper of judges and juries was
such that no writer whom the government prosecuted for a libel
had any chance of escaping. The dread of punishment there-
fore did all that a censorship could have done. Meanwhile, the
pulpits resounded with harangues agaiiist the sin of rebellion.
The treatises in which Filmer maintained that hereditary des-
potism was the form of government ordained by God, and that
limited monarchy was a pernicious absurdity, had recently ap-
peared, and had been favourably received by a large section of
the Tory party. The university of Oxford, on the very day
on which Russell was put to death, adopted by a solemn public
act these strange doctrines, and ordered the political works of
Buchanan, Milton, and Baxter to be publicly burned in the court
of the Schools.
Thus emboldened, the King at length ventured to overstep .
the bounds which he had during some years observed, and to
violate the plain letter of the law. The law was that not more
than three years should pass between the dissolving of one Par-
liament and the convoking of another. But, when three years
had elapsed after the dissolution of the Parliament which sate
at Oxford, no writs were issued for an election. This infraction
of the constitution was the more reprehensible, because the King
had little reason to fear a meeting with a new House of Com-
mons. The counties were generally on his side ; and many
boroughs in which the Whigs had lately held sway had been so
remodelled that they were certain to return none but courtiers
250 HISTOUY OF ENGLAND.
In a short time the hxw wn,s again violated in order to gratify
the Duke of York. That prince was, partly on account of his
religion, and partly on account of the sternness and harshness
of his nature, so unpopular that it had been thought necessary
to keep him out of sight while the Exclusion Bill was before
Parliament, lest his appearance should give an advantage to the
party which was sti'uggling to deprive him of his birthright.
He had therefore been sent to govern Scotland, where the sav-
age old tyrant Lauderdale was sinking into the grave. Even
Lauderdale was now outdone. The administration of James
was marked by odious laws, by barbarous punishments, and by
judgments to the iniquity of which even that age furnished no
parallel. The Scottish Privy Council had jiower to put state
prisoners to the question. But the sight was so dreadful that,
as soon as the boots appeared, even the most servile and hard-
hearted courtiers hastened out of the chamber. The board was.
sometimes quite deserted : and it was at length found necessary
to make an order that the members should keep their seats on
such occasions. The Duke of York, it was remarked, seemed
to take pleasure in the spectacle which some of the worst men
then living were unable to contemplate without pity and horror.
He not only came to Council when the torture was to be in-
flicted, but watched the agonies of the sufferers with that soi't of
interest and complacency with which men observe a curious ex-
periment in science. Thus he employed himself at Edinburgh,
till the event of the conflict between the court and the Whigs
was no longer doubtful. He then returned to England t but he
was still excluded by the Test Act from all public emplo}Tnent ;
nor did the King at first think it safe to violate a statute which
the great majority of his most loyal subjects regarded as one of
the chief securities of their religion and of their civil rights.
When, however, it appeared, from a succession of trials, that
the nation had patience to endure almost anything that the
government had courage to do, Charles ventured to dispense
with the law in his brother's favour. The Duke again took his
seat in the Council, and resumed the direction of naval affairs.
These breaches of the constitution excited, it is true, some
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 251
murmurs among the moderate Tories, and were not unani-
mously approved even by the King's ministers. Halifax in
particular, now a Marquess and Lord Privy Seal, had, from
the very day on which the Tories had by his help gained the
ascendant, begun to turn Whig. As soon as the Exclusion
Bill had been thrown out, he had pressed the House of Lords
to make i>rovision against the danger to which, in the next
reign, the liberties and religion of the nation might be exposed.
He now saw with alarm the violence of that reaction which
was, in no small measure, his own work. He did not try to
conceal the scorn which he felt for the servile doctrines of the
University of Oxford. He detested the French alliance. He
(disapproved of the long intermission of Parliaments. He re-
gretted the severity with which the vanquished party was
\treated. He who, when the Whigs were predominant, had
ventured to pronounce Stafford not guilty, ventured, when
they were vanquished and helpless, to intercede for Russell.
At one of the last Councils which Charles held a remarkable
scene took place. The charter of Massachusetts had been for-
feited. A question arose how, for the future, the colony should
be governed. The general opinion of the board was that the
whole power, legislative as well as executive, should abide in
the crown. Halifax took the opposite side, and argued with
great energy against absolute monarchy, and in favour of rep-
resentative government. It was vain, he said, to think that a
population, sprung from the English stock, and animated by
English feelings, would long bear to be deprived of English
institutions. Life, he exclaimed, would not be worth having
in a country where liberty and property were at the mercy of
one despotic master. The Duke of York was greatly incensed
by this language, and represented to his brother the danger of
retaining in office a man who appeared to be infected with all
•the worst notions of Marvell and Sidney.
Some modern writers have blamed Halifax for continuing
in the ministry while he disapproved of the manner in which
both domestic and foreign affairs were conducted. But this
censure is unjust. Indeed it is to be remarked that the word
252 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ministry, in the sense in wliich we use it, was then unknown.*
The thing itself did not exist ; for it belongs to an age in which
parliamentary government is fully established. At present the
chief servants of the crown form one body. They are under-
stood to be on terms of friendly confidence with each other, and
to agree as to the main principles on which the executive ad-
ministration ought to be conducted. If a slight difference of
opinion arises among them, it is easily compromised : but, if
one of them differs from the rest on a vital point, it is his duty
to resign. While he retains his office, he is held responsible
even for steps which he has tried to dissuade his colleagues
from taking. In tlie seventeenth century, the heads of the
various branches of the administration were bound toafether in
no such ijartnershij:). Each of them was accountable for his
own acts, for the use which he made of his own official seal,
for the documents which he signed, for the counsel which he
gave to the King. No statesman was held answerable for what
he had not himself done, or induced others to do. If he took
care not to be the agent in what was wrong, and if, when con-
sulted, he recommended what was right, he was blameless. It
would have been thought strange scrupulosity in him to quit
his post, because his advice as to matters not sti-ictly within liis
own department was not taken by his master ; to leave the
Board of Admiralty, for example, because the finances were in
disorder, or the Board of Treasury because the foreign rela-
tions of the kingdom were in an unsatisfactory state. It was,
therefore, by no means unusual to see in high oflice, at the same
time, men who avowedly differed from one another as widely
as ever Pulteney differed from Walpole, or Fox from Pitt.
The moderate and constitutional counsels of Halifax were
timidly and feebly seconded by Francis North, Lord Guildford,
who had lately been made Keeper of the Great Seal. The
character of Guildford has been drawn at full length by his
brother Roger North, a most intolerent Tory, a most affected
and pedantic writer, but a vigilant observer of all those minute
e
►North's Exameu, 69.
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 25S
circumstances which throw light on the dispositions of men. It
is remarkable that the biographer, though he was under the in-
fluence of the strongest fi-aternal partiality, and though he was
evidently anxious to produce a flattering likeness, was unable
to portray the Lord Keeper otherwise than as the most ignoble
of mankind. Yet the intellect of Guildford was clear, his in-
dustry great, his proficiency in letters and science respectable,
and his legal learning more than respectable. His faults were
selfishness, cowardice, and meanness. He was not insensible to
the power of female beauty, nor averse from excess in wine.
Yet neither wine nor beauty could ever seduce the cautious and
frugal libertine, even in his earliest youth, into one fit of indis-
creet generosity. Though of noble descent, he rose in his pro-
fession by paying ignominious homage to all who possessed
influence in the courts. He became Chief Justice of the Com-
mon Pleas, and as such was party to some of the foulest judicial
murders recorded in our history. He had sense enough to per-
ceive from the first that Oates and Bedloe were impostors : but
the Parliament and the country were greatly excited : the govern-
ment had yielded to the pressure ; and North was not a man to
risk a good place for the sake of justice and humanity. Accord-
ingly, while he was in secret drawing up a refutation of the
whole romance of the Popish plot, he declared in public that
the truth of the story was as plain as the sun in heaven, and
was not ashamed to browbeat, from the seat of judgment, the
unfortunate Roman Catholics who were arraigned before him
for their lives. He had at length reached the highest post in
the law. But a lawyer, who, after many years devoted to pro-
fessional labour, engages in politics for the first time at an ad-
vanced period of life, seldom distinguishes himself as a states-
man ; and Guildford was no exception to the general rule. He
was indeed so sensible of his deficiencies that he never attended
the meetinjTs of his colleagues on foreign affairs. Even on
o o O
questions relating to his own profession his opinion had less
weiglit at the Council board than that of any man who has ever
held the Great Seal. Such as his influence was, however, he
used it, as far as he dared, on the side of the laws.
254 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
The chief opponent of Halifax was Lawrence Hyde, who
had recently been created Earl of Rochester. Of all Tories,
Rochester was the most intolerent and uncompromising. The
moderate members of his party complained that the whole
patronage ot the Treasury, while he was First Commissioner
there, went to noisy zealots, whose only claim to promotion was
that they were always drinking confusion to Whiggery, and
lighting bonfires to burn the Exclusion Bill. The Duke of
York, pleased with a spirit which so much resembled his own,
supported his brother in law passionately and obstinately.
The attempts of the rival ministers to surmount and sup-
plant each other kept the court in incessant agitation. Hali-
fax pressed the King to summon a Parliament, to grant a gen-
eral amnesty, to deprive the Duke of York of all share in the
government, to recall Monmouth from banishment, to break
with Lewis, and to form a close union with Holland on the
principles of the Triple Alliance. The Duke of York, on the
other hand, dreaded the meeting of a Parliament, regarded the
vanquished Whigs with undiminished hatred, still flattered him-
self that the design formed fourteen years before at Dover
might be accomplished, daily represented to his brother the im-
propriety of suffering one who was at heart a Republican to
hold the Privy Seal, and strongly recommended Rochester for
the great place of Lord Treasurer.
While the two factions were struggling, Godolphin, cautious,
silent, and laborious, observed a neutrality between them. Sun-
derland, with his usual restless perfidy, intrigued against them
both. He had been turned out of office in disgrace for having
voted in favour of the Exclusion Bill, but had made his peace
by employing the good offices of the Duchess of Portsmouth
and by cringing to the Duke of York, and was once more Sec-
retary of State.
Nor was Lewis negligent or inactive. Everything at that
moment favoured his designs. He had nothing to apprehend
from the German empire, which was then contending against
the Turks on the Danube. Holland could not, unsupported
venture to oppose him. He was therefore at liberty to indulge
UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND. 255
his ambition and insolence without restraint. He seized StraS'
burg, Courtray, Luxemburg. He exacted from the republic of
Genoa the most hunjiliating submissions. The power of France
at that time reached a higher point than it ever before or ever
after attained, during the ten centuries which separated the
reign of Charlemagne from the reign of Napoleon. It was not
easy to say where her acquisitions would stop, if only England
could be kept in a state of vassalage. The first object of tha
court of Versailles was therefore to prevent the calling of a
Parliament and the reconciliation of English parties. For this
end bribes, promiseSj and menaces were unsparingly employed.
Charles was sometimes allured by the hope of a subsidy, and
sometimes frightened by being told that, if he convoked the
Houses, the secret articles of the treaty of Dover should be
published. Several Privy Councillors were bought ; and at-
tempts were made to buy Halifax, but in vain. "When he had
been found incorruptible, all the art and influence of the French
embassy were employed to drive him from office: but his pol-
ished wit and his various accomplishments had made him so
agreeable to his master, that the design failed.'"'
Halifax was not content with standing on the defensive. He
openly accused Rochester of malversation. An inquiry took
place. It appeared that forty thousand pounds had been lost
to the public by the mismanagement of the First Lord of the
Treasury. In consequence of this discovery he was not only
forced to relinquish his hopes of the white staff, but was re-
moved from the direction of the finances to the more dignified
but less lucrative and importau; post of Lord President. " I
have seen people kicked down stairs," said Halifax ; " but my
Lord Rochester *.s the first person that I ever saw kicked up
* Lord Preeton, who was envoy at Paris, wrote thence to Halifax as follows :
"I find that your Lordship lies e IJ under the r-.ame misfortune of being n<?
favourite to this court ; and Monsieur Barillon dare not do you the honour to
ehine upon you, since his master frowneth. laey know very well your lordship's
qualifications, which make them fear and consequently hate you ; rjid be assured,
my lord, if all their strength can send you to Rufford, it shall bo employed for
that end. Two things, I hear, they particularly object against you, your secrecy,
and your being incapable of being corrupted. Against these two things I know
they have declared." The date of tlie letter is October 5, N. s. 1683.
256 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
stairs." Godolphin, now a peer, became First Commissioner of
the Treasury.
Still, however, the contest continued. The event depended
wholly on the will of Charles ; and Charles could not come to
a decision. In his perplexity he promised everything to every-
body. He would stand by France : he would break with
France : he would never meet another Parliament : he would
order writs for a Parliament to be issued without delay. He
assured the Duke of York that Halifax should be dismissed
from office, and Halifax that the Duke should be sent to Scot-
land. In public he affected implacable resentment against
Monmouth, and in private conveyed to Monmouth assurances
of unalterable affection. How long, if the King's life had
been protracted, his hesitation would have lasted, and what
would have been his resolve, can only be conjectured. Early in
the year 1685, while hostile parties were anxiously awaiting his
determination, he died, and a new scene opened. In a few
months the excesses of the government obliterated the impres-
sion which had been made on the public mind by the excesses
of the opposition. The violent reaction which had laid the
Whig party prostrate was followed by a still more violent re-
action in the opposite direction ; and signs not to be mistaken
indicated that the great conflict between the prerogatives of the
Crown and the privileges of the Parliament, was about to be
brought to a final issue.
STATK OK ENGLAND IN 1685, 251
CHAPTER ITT.
I INTEND, in this chapter, to give • a description of the state
in which England was at the time wlien the crown passed from
Charles the Second to his brother. . Such a description, com-
posed from scanty and dispersed materials, must necessarily be
very imperfect. Yet it may perhaps correct some false notions
which would make the subsequent narrative unintelligible or
uninstructive.
Tf we would study with profit the liistory of our ancestors,
we must be constantly on our guard against that delusion which
the well known names of families, places, and offices naturally
produce, and must never forget that the country of which we
read was a v ry different country from that in which we live.
In evory experimental science there is a tendency towards per-
fect! nc In every human being there is a wish to ameliorate
his own condition. These two principles have often sufiiced,
even when counteracted by great public calamities and by bad
institutions, to carjy civilisation rapidly forward. No ordinary
misfortune, np ordinary misgovern ment, will do so much to
make a nation wretched, as the constant progress of physical
knowledge and the constant effort of every man to better him-
self will do to make a nation prosperous. It has often been
found that profuse expenditure, heavy taxation, absurd com-
mercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions,
persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to
destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have
been able to create it. It can easily be proved that, in our own
land, the national wealth has, during at least six centuries, been [
almost uninterruptedly increasing ; that it was greater under
the Tudors than under the Planfragenets ; that it was greater
17
258 HISTOBY OF ENGLAND.
under the Stuarts than under the Tudors ; that, in spite of bat«
ties, sieges, and confiscations, it was greater on the daj of the
Restoration than on the day when the Long Parliament met ;
that, in spite of maladministration, of extravagance, of public
bankruptcy, of two costly and unsuccessful wars, of the pesti-
lence and of the fire, it was greater on the day of the death of
Charles the Second than on the day of his Restoration. This
progress, having continued during many ages, became at length,
about the middle of the eighteenth century, portentously rapid,
and has proceeded, during the nineteenth, with acceleiated
velocity. In consequence partly of our geographical and partly
of our moral jjosition, we have, during several generations, been
exempt from evils which have elsewhere impeded the efforts
and destroyed the fruits of industry. While every part of the
Continent, from Moscow to Lisbon, has been the theatre of
bloody and devastating wars, no hostile standard has been seen
here but as a trophy. While revolutions have taken place all
around us, our government has never once been subverted by
violence. During more than a hundred years there has been in
our island no tumult of sufficient importance to be called an in-
surrection ; nor has the law been once borne down either by
popular fury or by regal tyranny : public credit has been held
sacred : the administration of justice has been pure : even in
times which might by Englishmen be justly called evil times,
we have enjoyed what almost every other nation in the world
would have considered as an ample measure of oivil and relig-
ious freedom. Every man has felt entire confidence that the
state would -protect him in the possession of what had been
earned by his diligence and hoarded by his selfdeniaL Under
the benignant influence of peace and liberty, science has flour-
ished, and has been applied to practical purposes on a scale
never before known. The consequence is that a change to
which the history of the o^d world furnishes no parallel has
taken place in our country. Could the England of 1 685 be,
by some magical process, set before our eyes, we should not
know one landscape in a hundred or one building in ten thou-
sand. The country gentleman would not recognise his own
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 259
fields. The inhabitant of the town would not recognise his own
street. Everything has been changed, but the great features of
nature, and a few massive and durable works of human art.
We might find out Snowdon and Windermere, the Cheddar
Clififs and Beachy Head. We might find out here and there a
Norman minster, or a castle which witnessed the wars of the
Roses. But, with such rare exceptions, everything would be
strange to us. Many thousands of square miles which are now
rich corn land and meadow, intersected by green hedgerows,
and dotted with villages and pleasant country seats, would ap-
pear as moors overgrown with furze, or fens abandoned to
wild ducks. We should see straggling huts built of wood and
covered with thatch, where we now see manufacturinof towns
and seaports renowned to the farthest ends of the world. The
capital itself would shrink to dimensions not much exceeding
those of its present suburb on the south of the Thames. Not
less strange to us would be the garb and manners of the peo-
ple, the furniture and the equipages, the interior of the shops
and dwellings. Such a change in the state of a nation seems
to be at least as well entitled to the notice of a historian as any
change of the dynasty or of the ministry.*
One of the first objects of an inquirer, who wishes to form a
correct notion of the state of a community at a given time, must
be to ascertain of how many persons that community then con-
sisted. Unfortunately the population of England in 1685, can-
not be ascertained with perfect accuracy. For no great state had
tlien adopted the wise course of periodically numbering the
people. All men were left to conjecture for themselves ; and,
as they generally conjectured without examining facts, and un-
der the influence of strong passions and prejudices, their guesses
were often ludicrously absurd. Even intelligent Londoners
♦During the interval wliir>h has elapsed sirioe this chapter was written, Eng-
land has continued to advance rapidly in material prosperity. I have left my
text nearly a<! it originally stood : but I have added a few notes which may en-
able the reader to form some notion of the prosrre s which has been made during
the last nine years ; and. in creneral. I would desire him to remember that there
is scarcely a district which is not more populous, or a source of wealth which i?
aot more productive, at present than in 1K48. (1SB7J
260 HISTORY OF ENGLAND,
ordinarily talked of London as containing several millions of
souls. It was confidently asserted by many tii;it, during the
thirty-five years which had elapsed between the accession of
Charles the First and the Restoration, the population of the City
had increased by two millions.* Even while the ravages of
the plague and fire were recent, it was the fashion to say that
the capital still had a million and a half of inhabitants. f Some
persons, disgusted by these exaggerations, ran violently into the
opposite extreme. Thus Isaac Vossius, a man of undoubted
parts and learning, strenuously maintained that there were only
two millions of human beings in England, Scotland, and Ireland
taken together. J
We are not, however, left without the means of correcting
the wild blunders into which some minds were hurried by
national vanity and others by a morbid love of paradox. There
are extant three computations which seem to be entitled to pecu-
liar attention. They are entirely independent of each other :
they proceed on different principles ; and yet there is little dif-
ference in the results.
One of these computations was made in the year 1696 by
Gregory King, Lancaster herald, a political arithmetician of
great acuteuess and judgment. The basis of his calculations
was the number of houses returned in 1690 by the officers who
made the last collection of the hearth money. The conclusion at
which he arrived was that the population of England was nearly
five millions and a half.§
About the same time King William the Third was desirous
to ascertain the comparative strength of the religious sects into
* Observations on the Bills of Mortality, by Cai)tain John Graunt (Sir' William
Petty), chap. xi. "
t " She doth comprehend
Full fifteen hundred thousand which do spend
Their dayA within."
Great Britain's Beauty, IG'i 1,
t Isaac Vossius, De Magnitudine XJrbium Sinarum, 1685. Vossius, as wo learn
from Saint Evremond, talked on this subject of tener and longer than fashionable
circles cared to listen.
§ King's Natural and Political Observations, 169(5, This valuable treatise, which
ought to be read as the author wrote it, and not as garble<i by Davenant, will be
found in some editions of Chalmers's Estimate.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685, 261
which the community was divided. Au inquiry was instituted ;
and reports were hxid before liim from all the dioceses of
the realm. According to these reports the number of his En-
glish subjects must have been about five million two hundred
thousand.*
Lastly, in our own daj's, Mr. Finlaison, an actuary of
eminent skill, subjected the ancient jiarochial registers of bap-
tisms, marriages, and burials, to all the tests which the modern
improvements in statistical science enabled him to apply. His
opinion was, that, at the close of the seventeenth century, the
population of England was a little under five million two hun-
dred thousand souls. f
Of these three estimates, framed without concert by different
persons from different sets of materials, the highest, which is that
of King, does not exceed the lowest, which is that of Finlaison,
by one twelfth. 'We may, therefore, with confidence pronounce
that, when James the Second reigned, England contained be-
tween five million and five million five hundred thousand hihabi-
tants. On the very highest supposition she then had less than
one third of her present population, and less than three times the
population which is now collected in her gigantiq capital.
The increase of the people has been great in every part of
the kingdom, but generally much greater in the northern than
in the southern shires. In truth a large part of the country
beyond Trent was, down to the eighteenth century, in a state
of barbarism. Physical and moral causes had concurred to
prevent civilisation from spreading to that region. The air
was inclement ; the soil was generally such as required skilful
and industrious cultivation ; and there could be little skill or
industry in a tract which was often the theatre of war, and
which, even when there was nominal peace, was constantly
desolated by bands of Scottish marauders. Before the union
* Dalrymple's Appendix to Pait IT. Book I. Tlie practice of reckoning
the population by sects was long fasliioiiable, Gulliver says of the King of
Brobdignag ; " lie laughed at my odd arithmetic, as he was pleased to call it, in
reckoning the numbers of our people by a computation drawn from the several
sects among us in religion and politics."
t Preface to the Population Returns of 1831,
Ji62 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
of the two British crowns, and long after that union, there
was as great a difference between Middlesex and Northumber"
land as there now is between Massachusetts and the settlements
of those squatters who, far to the west of the Mississippi,
administer a rude justice with the rifle and the dagger. In the
reign of Charles the Second, the traces left by ages of slaughter
and pillage were distinctly perceptible, many miles south of the
Tweed, in the face of the country and in the lawless manners
of the people. There was still a large class of mosstroopers,
whose calling was to plunder dwellings and to drive away whole
herds of cattle. It was found necessary, soon after the Restor-
ation, to enact laws of great severity for the prevention of these
outrages. The magistrates of Northumberland and Cumberland
were authorised to raise bands of armed men for the defence of
property and order ; and provision was made for meeting the
expense of these levies by local taxation.* The parishes were
required to keep bloodhounds for the purpose of hunting the free-
booters. Many old men who were living in the middle of the
eighteenth- century could well remember the time when those
ferocious dogs were common.f Yet, even with such auxiliaries,
it was often found impossible to track the robbers to their
retreats among the hills and morasses. For the geography of
that wild country was very imperfectly known. Even after
the accession of George the Third, the path over the fells from
Borrowdale to Ravenglas was still a secret carefully kept by
the dalesmen, some of whom had probably in their youth
escaped from the pursu't of justice by that road.J The seats
of the gentry and the larger farmhouses were fortified. Oxen
were peimed at night beneath the overhanging battlements of
the residence, which was known by the name of the Peel.
The inmates slept with arms at their sides. Huge stones and
boiling water were in readiness to crush and scald the plunderer
who might venture to assail the little garrison. No traveller
■ventured into that country without making his will. The
* statutes U Car. II. c. 22.; 18 & 19 Car. II. c. 3. ; 29 & 30 Car. II. c. 2.
t Nichol-:on and Boiinie, Discourse on the Ancient State of tlje Border, X777»
t Gray'8 JouniaJ of a Tom in tbe Lakes, Oct. 3, 1769,
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 263
Judges on circuit, with the whole body of barristers, attorneys,
clerks, and serving rnen, rode on horseback from Newcastle to
Carlisle, armed and escorted by a strong guard under the
command of the Sheriffs. It was necessary to carry j)rovisions ;
for the country was a wilderness which afforded no supplies.
The spot where the cavalcade halted to dine, under an immense
oak, is not yet forgotten. The irregular vigour with which
criminal justice was administered shocked observers whose lives
had been passed in more tranquil districts. Juries, animated
by hatred and by a sense of common danger, convicted liouse-
breakers and cattle stealers with the promptitude of a court
martial in a mutiny ; and the convicts were hurried by scores
to the gallows.* Within the memory of some whom this gen-
eration has seen, the sportsman who wandered in pursuit of
game to the sources of the Tyne found the heaths round Keel-
dar Castle peopled by a race scarcely less savage than the
Indians of California, and heard with surprise the half naked
women chaunting a wild measure, while the men with brandished
dirks danced a war dance. t
Slowly and with difficulty peace was established on the
border. In the train of peace came industry and all the arts
of life. Meanwhile it was discovered that the regions north
of the Trent possessed in their coal beds a source of wealth far
more precious than the gold mines of Peru. It was found that,
in the neighbourhood of these beds, almost every manufacture
might be most profitably carried on. A constant stream of
emigrants began to roll northward. It appeared by the returns
of 1841 that the ancient archiepiscopal province of York con-
tained two-sevenths of the population of England. At the
time of the Revolution that province was believed to contain
only one seventh of the population $ In Lancashire the
number of inhabitants appear to have increased ninefold, while
* North's Life of Guildford ; Hutchinson's History of Cumberland, Parish of
Brampton.
t See Sir Walter Scott's Journal, Oct. 7, 1827, in his Life by Mr. Lockhart.
% Dalrymple, Appendix to Part II. Book I. The r^etuins of the hearth money
lead to nearly the same conclusion. The hearths in the province of York were
not a sixth of the hearths of England.
^CA HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Northamptonshire it has hardly
doubled.*
Of the taxation we can speak with more confidence and pre-
cision than of the population. The revenue of England, when
Charles the Second died, was small, when compared with the
resources which she even then possessed, or with the sums which
were raised by the governments of the neighbouring countries.
It had, from the time of the Restoration, been almost constantly
increasing : yet it was little more than tliree fourths of the
revenue of the United Provinces, and was hardly one fiftli of
the revenue of France.
The most important head of receipt was the excise, which,
in the last year of the reign of Charles, produced five hundred
and eighty-five thousand pounds, clear of all deductions. Tlie
net proceeds of the customs amounted in the same year to five
hundred and thirty thousand pounds. These burdens did not
lie very heavy on the nation. The tax on chimneys, though
less productive, call forth far louder murmurs. The discontent
excited by direct imposts is, indeed, almost always out of pro-
portion to the quantity of money which they bring into the Ex-
chequer; and the tax on chimneys was, even among direct im-
posts, peculiarly odious : for it could be levied only by means
of domiciliary visits ; and of such visits the English have always
been impatient to a degree which the people of other countries
can but faintly conceive. The poorer householders were fre-
quently unable to pay their hearth money to the day. When
this happened, their furniture was distrained without mercy
for the tax was farmed ; and a farmer of taxes is, of all credit-
ors, proverbially the most rapacious. The collectors were loudly
accused of performing their unpopular duty with harshness and
insolence. It was said that, as soon as they appeared at the
threshold of a cottage, the children began to wail, and the old
women ran to hide their earthenware. Nay, the single bed of a
* I do not, of course, pretend to strict accuracy here ; but I believe that who-
ever ■will take the trouble to compare the last returns of hearth money in the
reigu of "William the Third with the census of 1841, will come to a conclusion
not very different from mine.
BTATB OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 265
poor family had sometimes been carried away and sold. The
net annual receipt from this tax was two hundred thousand
pounds.*
When to the three great sources of income which have been
mentioned we add the royal domains, then far more extensive
than at present, the tirst fruits and tenths, which had not yet
been surrendered to the Church, the Duchies of Cornwall and
Lancaster, the forfeitures, and the lines, we sluiil find that the
whole annual revenue of the crown may be fairly estimated at
about fourteen hundred thousand pounds. Of this revenue part
was hereditary ; the rest had been granted to Charles for life ;
and he was at liberty to lay out the whole exactly as he thought
fit. Whatever he could save by retrenching from the expend-
iture of the public dejiartments was an addition to his privy
purse. Of the Post Office more will hereafter be said. The
profits of that establishment had been appropriated by Parliament
to the Duke of York.
The King's revenue was, or rather ought to have been,
charged with the payment of about eighty thousand pounds a
year, the interest of the sum fraudulently detained in the Ex-
chequer by the Cabal. While Danby was at the head of the
finances, the creditors had received dividends, though not with
the strict jiuuctuality of modern times : but those who had suc-
* There are in the Pepysian Library some ballads of that age on the chimney
mouey. I will give a specimen or two : —
" The good old dames, vhencvcr they the chimney man espied,
tinto their noolis they iiasfe awny, their xiota and pipkins hide.
There is notone old aanie in tciT, and searcli the nation through.
Buti if j'ou tal^ of chimney iiicu, will spore a curse or two."
Again;
" Li^e plunderlna; eoldiers they'd enter the door,
And make a distress on the goodw of the poor.
While frighted poor children distractedly cried i
This nothing abated their insolent pride"."
In the British IMuseum there are doggrel verses composed on the same subject
*nd in the same spirit :
" Or, If throuch poverty it lie not paid
For cruelty to tear'away the single bed,
On which the poor man rests his weary head.
At once deprives him of his rest and Bread."
ItaTvethisopportun-Hy, the first which occiirs, of acknowledging most gratefully
the kind and H'k^:;!! muuncr in which the Mastr^r and Vicemaster of Magdalena
College, Cambridge, gav<* me access to the valuable collections of Pepys.
266 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ceeded him at the treasury had been less expert, or less solicit-
ous to maintain public faith. Since the victory won by the
court over the Whigs, not a farthhig had been paid ; and no
redress was granted to the sufferers, till a new dynasty had
been many years on the throne. There can be no greater error
than to imagine that the device of meeting the exigencies of tlie
state by loans was imported into our island by William the
Third. AVhat really dates from his reign is not the system of
borrowing, but the system of funding. Frotn a period of im-
memorable antiquity it had been the practice of every English
fifovernment to contract debts. What the Revolution introduced
was the practice of honestly paying them.*
By plundering the public creditor, it was possible to make
an income of about fourteen hiuidrod thousand pounds, with
some occasional help from Versailles, support the necessary
charges of the government nnd tho wasteful expenditure of the
court. For that load which pressed most heavily on the finances
of the great continental states was here scarcely felt. In
France, Germany, and the Netherlands, armies, such as Henry
the Fourth and Philip the Second had never emplo3'ed in time
of war, were kept up in the midst of peace. Bastions and
ravelins were everywhere rising, constructed on principles
unknown to Parma and Spinola. Stores of artillery and ammu-
nition were accumulated, sucli as even Richelieu, whom the
preceding generation had regarded as a worker of prodigies,
would have pronounced fabulous. No man could journey many
leagues in those countries without hearing the drums of a regi-
ment on march, or being challenged by the sentinels on the
drawbridge of a fortress. In our island, on the contrary, it was
possible to live long and to travel far without being once
reminded, by any martial sight or sound, that the defence of
nations had become a science and a calling. The majority of
Englishmen who were under twenty-five years of age had prob-
ably never seen a company of regular soldiers. Of the cities
which, in the civil war, had valiantly repelled hostile armies,
• My chief autlionties for this finaiicial statemeut will ba found in the Conv
tnons' Journal, March 1, aad Maivh 20, I6ff
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 207*
scarcely one was now capable of sustaining a siege. The gates
stood open night and day. The ditches were dry. The ram-
parts had been suffered to fall into decay, or were repaired only
that the townsfolk might have a pleasant walk on summer
evenings. Of the old baronial keeps many had been shattered
by the cannon of Fairfax and Cromwell, and lay in heaps of
ruin, overo-rown with ivy. Those which remained had lost their
martial character, and were now rural palaces of the aristocracy.
The moats were turned into preserves of carp and pike. Th^
mounds were planted with fragrant shrubs, through which
spiral walks ran up to summer houses adorned with mirrors and
paintings.* On the capes of the sea coast, and on many inland
hills, were still seen tall posts, surmounted by barrels. Once
those barrels had been filled with pitch. Watchmen had been
set round them in seasons of danger ; and, within a few hours
after a Spanish sail had been discovered in the Channel, or after
a thousand Scottish mosstroopers had crossed the Tweed, the
signal fires were blazing fifty miles off, and whole counties
were rising in arms. But many years had now elapsed since
the beacons had been lighted ; and they were regarded rather
as curious relics of ancient manners than as parts of a machinery
necessary to the safety of the state. f
The only army which the law recognised was the militia.
That force had been remodelled by two Acts of Parliament,
passed shortly after the Restoration. Every man who possessed
five hundred pounds a year derived from land, or six thousand
pounds of personal estate, was bound to provide, equip, and pay,
at his own charge, one horseman. Every man who had fifty
pounds a year derived from land, or six hundred pounds of
personal estate, was charged in like manner with one pikeman
or musketeer. Smaller proprietors were joined together in a
kind of society, for which our language does not afford a special
name, but which an Athenian would have called a Synteleia ;
and each society was required to furnish, according to its means,
• See, for example, the picture of the mound at Marlborough, in Stukeley'a
Xtinerarium Curiosum.
vChamberlayne's State of England, 1684.
iQS ^ insTOlJi' OF KNGLANn.
a horse soldier or a foot soldier. The whole number of cavalry
and infantry thus maintained was popularly estimated at a
hundred and thirty thousand men.*
The King was, by the ancient constitution of the realm, and
by the recent and solemn acknowledgment of both Houses of
Parliament, the sole Captain General of this large force. The
Lords Lieutenants and their Dejmties held the command under
him, and ap^jointed meetings for- drilling and inspection. The
tmie occupied by such meetings, however, was not to exceed
fourteen days in one year. The Justices of the Peace were
authorized to inflict severe penalties for breaches of discipline.
Of the ordinary cost no part was paid by the crown : but when
the trainbands were called out against an enemy, their sub-
sistence became a charge on the general revenue of the state,
and they were subject to the utmost rigour of martial law.
There were those who looked on the militia with no friendly
eye. Men who had travelled much on the Continent, who had
marvelled at the stern precision with which every sentinel
moved and spoke in the citadels built by Vauban, who had seen
the mighty armies which poured along all tlie roads of Germany
to chase the Ottoman from the Gates of Vienna, and who had
been dazzled by the well ordered pomp of the household troops
of Lewis, sneered much at tire way in which the jijeasants of
Devonshire and Yorkshire marched and wheeled, shouldered
muskets and ported pikes. The enemies of the liberties and
relififion of En tjland looked with aversion on a force which couid
not, without extreme risk, be employed against those liberties
and that religion, and missed no opportunity of throwing rid-
icule on the rustic soldiery. f Enlightened patr'ots, when they
* 1.") and 14 Car. II. c. 3 ; 15 Car. II. c. -1. Cbamberlayne's State of Eiiglaml, 1684.
t Bryileii, in his Cymon and Iphigeiiia, expressed, with his usual keeiine^^s and
energy, tlie sentiments wliicli had been fashionable among the sycophants of
James the Second : —
" The country ring^ a o iiul witli loud alarms,
And raw in fields the rude miiitia swarms ;
Mouths without hands, niaint. lined nt v.ist expense,
In peace a.char?:e. in war a weak defence.
Stout once a montli they rmrch. a blustering' hand,
And ever, but in time of need, at hand.
This "was the morn when, issuing on the ji"uard.
Drawn up in rank and file, tluy'stood prepared
of seeming arms to make a sliort essay.
Then hasten to be drunk, the business ol the day."
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1G85. ^GO
contrasted these rude levies with the battalions -which, in time
of war, a few hours might bring to the coast of Kent or Sussex,
were forced to acknowledge that, dangerous as it might ba tff
keep up a permanent military establishment, it might be more
dangerous still to stake the honour and independence of the
country on the result of a contest between plowmen officered by
Justices of the Peace, and A-eteran warriors led by Marshals of
France. la Parliament, however, it was necessary to express
such opinions with some reserve ; for the militia was an institu-
tion eminently popular. Every reflection thrown on it excited
the indignatioi\ of both the great parties in the state, and espe-
cially of that party which was distinguished by peculiar zeal for
monarchy and for the Anglican Church. The array of tha
counties was commanded almost exclusively by Tory noblemen
and gentlemen. They were proud of their military rank, and
considered an insult offered to the service to which they be-
longed as offered to themselves. They were also perfectly
aware that whatever was said against a militia was said in
favour of a standing array ; and the name of standing army was
hateful to them. One such army had held dominion in Eng-
land ; and under that dominion the King had been murdered,
the nobility degraded, the landed gentry plundered, the Church
persecuted. There was scarcely a rural grandee who could not
tell a story of wrongs and insults suffered by himself, or by his
father, at the hands of the parliamentary soldiers. One old
Cavalier had seen half his manor house blown up. The hered-
itary elms of another had been hewn down. A third could
never go into his parish church without being reminded by tha
defaced scutcheons and headless statues of his ancestry, that
Oliver's redcoats had once stabled their horses there. Tha
consequence was that those very Royalists, who were most
ready to fight for the King themselves, were the last persons
whom ha could venture to ask for tha means of hiring regular
troops.
Charles, however, had, a fevr months after his restoration,
begun to form a small standing army. He felt that, without
Bome better protection than that of tha trainbands and beel"
270 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
eaters, his palace and person would hardly be secure, in the
vicinity of a gi'eat city swai'miug with warlike Fifth Monarchy
men who had just been disbanded. He therefore, careless and
profuse as he was, contrived to spare from his pleasures a sum
sufficient to keep up a body of guards. With the increase of
trade and of public wealth his revenues increased ; and he was
thus enabled, in spite of the occasional murmurs of the Com-
mons, to make gradual additions to his regular forces. One
considerable addition was made a few months before the close
of his reign. The costly, useless, and pestilential settlement of
Tangier was abandoned to the barbarians who chvelt around it ;
and the garrison, consisting of one regiment of horse and two
regiments of foot, was brought to England.
The little army formed by Charles the Second was the germ
o^ that great and renowned army which has, in the present cen-
tury, marched triumphant into Madrid and Paris, into Canton
and Candahar. The Life Guards, who now form two regiments,
were then distributed into three troops, each of which consisted
of two hundred carabineers, exclusive of officers. This corps,
to which thb safety of the King and royal^family was confided,
had a very peculiar character. Even the privates were desig-
nated as gentlemen of the Guard. Many of them were of good
families, and had held commissions in the civil war. Their pay
was far higher than that of tne most favoured regiment of our
time, and would in that age have been thought a respectable
provision for the younger son of a country squire. Their fine
horses, their rich housings, their cuirasses, and their buff coats
adorned with riban' velvet, and gold lace, made a splendid
appearance in Saint James's Park. A small body of grenadier
dragoons, who came from a lower class and received lower pay,
was attached to each troop. Another body of household cav-
alry distinguished by blue coats and cloaks, and still called the
Blues, was generally quartered in the neighbourhood of the cap-
ital. Near the capital lay also he corps which is now desig-
nated as the first regnneut of di-aguous, but whh'h ,va^5 Caen,
the only regiment of dragoons on the English establisliment.
It had I'ecently been formed out of the cavalry which had
l:ettu-ned from Tangier. A single troop of dragoons, whicb
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 271
uid not form part of any regiment, was stationed near Berwick,
for the purpose of keeping the peace among the mosstroopers
of the borcier. For this species of service the dragoon was
then thought to be peculiarly qualified. He bus since become
a mere horse soldier. But in the seventeenth century he was
accurately described by MontecucuH as a foot soldier who used
ft horse only in order to arrive with more speed at the place
irlic^ro milit;>,ry service was to be performecJ.
The household infantry consisted of two regiments, which
were then, as now, called the first regiment of Foot Guards, and
the Coldstream Guards. They generally did duty near White-
hall and Saint James's Palace. As there were then no barracks,
and as, by the Petition of Right, It had been declared unlawful
to quarter soldiers on private families, the redcoats filled all the
alehouses of Westminster and the Strand.
There were five other regiments of foot. One of these,
called the Admiral's Regiment, was especially destined to service
on board of the fleet. The remaining four still rank as the first
four regiments of the line. Two of these represented two
brigades which had long sustained on the Continent the fame of
British valour. The first, or Royal regiment, had, under the
great Gustavus, borne a conspicuous part in the deliverance
of Germany. The third regiment, distinguished by fleshcoloured
facings, from which it had derived the well known name of
the Buffs, had, under Maurice of Nassau, fought not less bravely
for the deliverance of the Netherlands. Both these gallant
bands had at length, after many vicissitudes, been recalled from
foreign service by Charles the econd, and had been placed on
the English establishment.
The regiments which now r , "- as the second and fourth of
the line had, in 1685, just returned from Tangier, bringing with
them cruel and licentious habits contracted in a long course of
warfare with the Moors. A few companies of infantry which
had not been regimented lay in garrison at Tilbury Fort, at
Portsmouth, at Plymouth, and at 3omc other important stations
<jn or near 'he coast.
Since the beginning of the seventeenth century a great change
272 HISTORY OF KNGLANU.
had taken place in the arms of the infantry. The pike had
been gradually giving place to the muskcfc ; and, at the close of
the reign of Charles the Second, most of his foot -v^ere muske-
teers. Still, however, there was a large intermixture of pike-
men. Each class of troops was occasionally instructed in the
use of the weapon which peculiarly belonged to the other class.
Every foot soldier had at his side a sword for close fight. The
musketeer was generally provided with a weapon which had,
during many years, been gradually coming into use, and wliich
the English then called a dagger, but which, from the time of
William the Third, has been known among us by the French
name of bayonet. The ba3'onet seems not to have been then so
formidable an instrument of destruction as it has since become ;
for it was inserted in the muzzle of the gun ; and in action muoli
time was lost while the soldier unfixed his bayonet in order to
lire, and fixed it again in order to chai-ge. The dragoon, when
dismounted, fought as a musketeer.
The regular army which was kept up in England at the be-
ginning of the year 1685 consisted, all ranks included, of about
seven thousand foot, and about seventeen hundred cavalry and
drasfoons. The whole charsre amounted to about two hundred
and ninety thousand pounds a year, less then a tenth part
of what the military establishment of France then cost in time
of peace. The daily pay of a private in tlie Life Guards was
four shillings, in the Blues two shillings and sixpence, in the
Dragoons eighteen pence, in the Foot Guards tenpence, and in
the line eightpence. The discipline was lax, and indeed could
not be otherwise. The common law of England knew nothing
of courts martial, and made no distinction, in time of peace, be-
tween a soldier and any other subject ; nor could the govern-
ment then venture to ask even the most loyal Parliament for a
Mutiny Bill. A soldier, therefore, by knocking down his
colonel, incurred only the ordinary penalties of assault and bat-
tery, and by refusing to obey orders, by sleeping on guard, or
by deserting his colours, incurred no legal penalty at all. Mili-
tary punishments were doubtless inflicted during the reign of
Charles the Second j but they were inflicted very sparingly, and
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 273
in such a manner as not to attract public notice, or to jjroduce
an wppeal to the courts of Westminster Hall.
Such an army as has been described was not very likely to
enslave five millions of Englishmen. It would indeed have
been unable to suppress an insurrection in London, if the train-
bands of ihe City had joined the insurgents. Nor could the
King expect that, if a rising took place in England, he would
obtain effectual help from his other dominions. For, though
both Scotland ^nd Ireland supported separate military estab-
lishments, those establishments were not more than sufficient to
keep down the Puritan malecontents of the former king--
dom and the Popisn malecontents of the latter. The gov-
ernment had, howevei, an important military resource which
must not be left unnoticed. There were in the pay of the
United Provinces six fine r'egiments, of which three had been
raised in England and three ^li Scotland. Their native prince
had reserved to himself the power of recalling tliem, if he
needed their help against a foreign or domestic enemy. In the
meantime they were maintained -s^jithout any charge to him,
and were kept under an excellent discipline, to which he could
not have ventured to subject them.*
If the jealousy of the Parliament and of the nation made
it impossible for the King to maintain a formidable standing -
army, no similar impediment prevented him from making Eng- |
land the first of maritime powers. Both Whigs and Tories
were ready to applaud every step tending to increase the effi-
ciency of that force which, while it was the best protection of
the island against foreign enemies, was powerless against civil
liberty. All the greatest exploits achieved within the memory
of that generation by English soldiers had been achieved in
'war against English princes. The victories of our sailors had
been won over foreign foes, and had averted havoc and rapine
* Most of the materials which I have used for tliis account of the regular
army -will he found in the Historical Records of Regiments, published by com-
mand of King William the Fourth, and under the direction of the Adjutant
General. See also Chamberlayne's State of England, 1G81 ; Abridgment of the
English Jlilitary Discipline, printed by especial command, 1C85 ; Exercise of
F'Ktt, by their Majesties' command, 1690.
18
274 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
from our own soil. By at least half the nation the battle of
Naseby was remembered with horror, and the battle of Dunbar
with pride chequered by many painful feelings : but the defeat
of the Armada, and the encounters of Blake with the Holland-
ers and Spaniards were recollected with unmixed exultation by
all jiarties. Ever since the Restoration, the Commons, even
when most discontented and most parsimonious, had always
been bountiful to profusion where the Interest of the navy was
concerned. It had been represented to them, while Danby was
minister, that many of the vessels in the royal fleet were old
and unfit for sea ; and, although the House was, at that time,
in no giving mood, an aid of near six hundred thousand jjounds
had been granted for the building of thirty new men of war.
But the liberality of the nation had been made fruitless by
the vices of the government. The list of the King's ships, it
is true, looked well. There were nine first rates, fourteen sec-
ond rates, thirty-nine third rates, and many smaller vessels.
The first rates, indeed, were less than the third rates of oui
time ; and the third rates would not now rank as very large
frigates. This force, however, if it had been efficient, would
in those days have been regarded by the greatest potentate as
formidable. But it existed only on paper. When the reign of
Charles terminated, his navy had sunk into degradation and
decay, such as would be almost incredible if it were not cer-
tified to us by the independent and concurring evidence of wit-
nesses whose authority is beyond exception. Pepys, the ablest
man in the English Admiralty, drew up, in the year 1 684, a.
memorial on the state of his department, for the information of
Charles. A few months later Bonrepaux, the ablest man in
the French Admiralty, having visited England for the especial
purpose of ascertaining her maritime strength, laid the result^
of his inquiries before Lewis. The two reports are to the same
effect. Bonrepaux declared that he found everything in dis-
order and in miserable condition, that the superiority of the
French marine was acknowledged with shame and envy at
Whitehall, and that the state of our shipping and dockyards
was of itself a sufficient guarantee that we should not meddle in
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 275
the disputes of Europe.* Pepys informed Lis master that the
naval administration was a prodigy of wastefulness, corruption,
ignorance, and indolence, that no estimate could be trusted,
that no contract was performed, that no check was enforced.
The vessels which the recent liberality of Parliament liad en-
abled the government to build, and which had never been out
of harbour, had been made of such wretched timber that they
■vere more unfit to go to sea than the old hulls which had been
battered thirty years before by Dutch and Spanish broadsides.
Some of the new men of war, indeed, were so rotten that, un-
less speedily repaired, they would go down at their moorings.
The sailors were paid with so little punctuality that they were
glad to find some tisurer who would purchase their tickets at
forty per cent, discount. The commanders who had not power-
ful friends at court were, even worse treated. Some oflScers, to
whom large arrears were due, after vainly importuning the gov-
ernment during many years, had died for want of a morsel of
bread.
Most of the ships which were afloat were commanded by men
who had not been bred to the sea. This, it is true, was not an
abuse introduced by the government of Charles. No state, an-
cient or modern, had, before that time, made a complete separa
lion between the naval and military service;. In the great civ-
ilised nations of antiquity, Cimon and Lysander, Pompey and
Agrippa, had fought battles by sea as well as by land. Nor had
the impulse which nautical science received at the close of
the fifteenth century produced any new division of labour.
At Flodden the right wing of the victorious army was led by
the Admiral of England. At Jarnac and Moncontour the
Huguenot ranks were marshalled by the Admiral of France.
Neither John of Austria, the conqueror of Lepanto, nor Lord
g
* I refer to a despatch of Bonrepaux to Seignelay, dated Feb. T"g^. 1686. It waa
transcribed for Mr. Fox from the French archives, during the peace of Amiens,
and, with the other materials brought together by tliat great man, was entrusted
to me by the kindness of the late Lady Holland, and of the present Lord Hol-
land. I ought to add that, even in the midst of the troubles which have lately
agitated Paris, T found no difficulty in obtaining, from the liberality of the func-
Uouaries there, exU'acts supplying some chasms in Mr. Fox's collection. (1848.)
?
276 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Howard of Effingham, to whose direction the marhie of Kngland
was confided when the Spanish invaders were approacliing our
shores, had received the education of a sailor. Raleigh, highly
celebrated as a naval commander, had served during many years
as a soldier in France, the Netherlands, and Ireland. Blake had
distinguished himself by his skilful and valiant defence of au
inland town before he humbled the pride of Holland and of Cas-
tile on the ocean. Since the Restoration the same system had
been followed. Great fleets had been entrusted to the direction
of Rupert and Monk ; Rupert, who was renowned chiefly as a
hot and daring cavalry otHccr, and Monk, Avho, when he wished
his ship to change her course, moved the mirth of his crew by
calling out, " AVheel to the left ! "
But about this time wise men began to perceive that the
rapid improvement, both of the art of war and of the art of nav-
igation, made it necessary to draw a line between two profes-
sions which had hitherto been confounded. Either the command
of 'a regiment or the command of a sliij) was now a matter quite
sufficient to occupy the attention of a single mind. In the year
1672 the French government determined to educate young men
of good family from a very early age especially for the sea ser-
vice. But the English government, instead of following this
excellent exam])le, not only continued to distribute high naval
commands among landsmen, but selected for such commands
landsmen who, even on land, could not safely have been put in
"any important trust. Any lad of noble birth, any dissolute
courtier for whom one of the King's mistresses would speak a
word, might hope that a ship of the line, and with it the honour
of the country and the lives of hundreds of brave men, would
be committed to his care. It mattered not that he had never in
his life taken a voyage except on the Thames, that he could not
keep his feet in a breeze, that he did not know the difference
between latitude and longitude. No previous training was
thought necessary ; or, at most, he was sent to make a short
trip in a man of war, where he was subjected to no discipline,
where he was treated with marked respect, and where he lived
in a round of revels and amusements, If, iu the intervals of
STATK OP KNOLAND IN 1685. 277
feasting, drinking and gambling, he succeeded in learning the
meaning of a few technical phrases and the names of the points
of the compass, he was thought fully qualified to take charge of
a three-decker. This is no imaginary description. In 1666,
John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, at seventeen years of age, vol-
unteered to serve at sea against the Dutch. He passed six
weeks on board, diverting hmiself, as well as he could, in tha
society of some young libertines of rank, and then returned
Ijoine to take the command of a troop of horse. After this he
was never on the water till the year 1672, when he again joined
the fleet, and was almost immediately appointed Captain of a
ship of eighty-four guns, reputed the finest in the navy. He
was then twenty-three years old, and had not, in the whole
course of his life, been three months afloat. As soon as he came
back from sea he was made Colonel of a regiment of foot.
This is a specimen of the manner in which naval commands ol
the highest importance were then given ; and a very favour-
able specimen ; for Mulgrave, though he wanted experience,
wanted neither parts nor courage. Others were promoted in the
same way who not only were not good officers, but who were
intellectually and morally incapable of ever becoming good offi-
cers, and whose only recommendation was that they had been
ruined by folly and vice. The chief bait which allured these
men into the service was the profit of conveying bullion and
other valuable commodities from .port to port ; for both tha
Atlantic and the Mediterranean were then so much infested by
pirates from Barbary that merchants were not willing to trust
precious cargoes to any custody but that of a man of war. A
Captain might thus clear several thousands of pounds by a short
voyage ; and for this lucrative business he too often neglected
the interests of his country and the honour of his flasf, made
mean" submissions to foreign powers, disobeyed the most direct
injunctions of his superiors, lay in port when he was ordered to
chase a Sallee rover, or ran with dollars to Leghorn when his
instructions directed him to repair to Lisbon. And all this ha
did with impunity. The same interest which had placed him in a
jiost for which he was unfit maintained him there. No Admiral
278 ' HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
bearded by these corrupt and dissolute minions of the palace,
dared to do more than mutter something about a court martial. If
any officer showed a higher sense of duty than his fellows, he
soon found that he lost money without acquiring honour. One
Captain, who, by strictly obeying the orders of The Admirality,
missed a cargo which would have been worth four thousand
pounds to him, was told by Charles, with ignoble levity, that he
was a great fool for his pains.
The discipline of the navy was of a piece throughout. As
the courtley Captain despised the Admiralty, he was in turn
despised by his crew. It could not be concealed that he was
inferior in seamanship to every foremast man on board. It was
idle to expect that old sailors, familiar with the hurricanes of
the tropics and with the icebergs of the Arctic Circle, would
pay prompt and respectful obedience to a chief who knev/ no
more of winds and waves than could be learned in a gilded
barge between Whitehall stairs and Hampton Court. To trust
such a novice with a working of a ship was evidently impos
sible. The direction of the navigation was therefore taken from
the Captain and given to the Master; but this partition of
Authority produced innumerable inconveniences. The line of
demarkation was not, and perhaps could not be, drawn with pre-
cision. There was therefore constant wrangling. The Cap-
tain, confident in j^roportion to his ignorance, treated the
Master with lordly contempt. The Master well aware of the
danger of disobliging the powerful, too often, after a struggle,
yielded against his better judgment ; and it was well if the loss
of ship and crew was not the consequence. In general the
least mischievous of the aristoci-atical Captains were those who
completely abandoned to others the direction of the vessels, and
thought only of making money and spending it. The way in
which these men lived was so ostentacious and voluptuous that,
greedy as they were of gain, they seldom became rich. They
dressed as if for a gala at Versailles, ate off plate, drank the
richest wines, and kept harems on board, while hunger and
scurvy raged among the crews, and while corpses were daily
flung out of the portholes.
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685, t79
Such was the ordinary character of those who were then
called gentlemen Captains. Hingled with them were to be
found, happily for our country, naval commanders of a very
different description, men whose whole life had been passed oa
the deep, and who had worked and fought their way from the
lowest offices of the forecastle to rank and distinction. One of the
most eminent of these officers was Sir Christopher Mings, who
entered the service as a cabin boy, who fell fighting bravely
against the Dutch, and whom his crew, weeping and vowing
vengeance, carried to the grave. From him sprang, by a singu-
lar kind of descent, a line of valiant and expert sailors. His
cabin boy was Sir John Narborough ; and tho cabin boy of Sir
John Narborough was Sir Cloudesley Shovel. To the strong
natural sense and dauntless courage of this class of men Eng-
land owes a debt never to bo forgotten. It was by such reso-
lute hearts that, in spite of much maladministration, and in
spite of the blunders and treasons of more courtly admirals, our
coasts were protected and the reputation of our flag upheld dur-
ing many gloomy and perilous years. But to a landsman these
tarpaulins, as they were called, seemed a strange and half
savage race. Ail their knowledge was professional ; and their
professional knowledge was practical rather than scientific. Off
their own element they were as simple as children. Their de-
portment was uncouth. There was roughness in their very
good nature ; and their talk, where it was not made up of
liautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and
curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school were formed
those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in the next age,
drew Lieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion. But it
does not appear that there was in the service of any of the
Stuarts a single naval officer such as, according to the notions
of our times, a naval officer ought to be, that is to say, a man
versed in the theory and practice of his calling, and steeled
against all the dangers of battle and tempest, yet of cultivated
mind and polished manners. There were gentlemen and there
were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the sea-
men were not gentlemen ; and the gentlemen were not seamen.
2S0 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
The English navy at that time might, according to the most
exact estimates which have come dow^n to us, have been kept in
an efficient state for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds
a year. Four hundred thousand pounds a year was the
sum actually expended, but e:;pended, as we have seen, to
very little purpose. The cost of the French marine was nearly
the same ; the cost of the Dutch marine considerably more.*
The charge of the English ordnance in the seventeenth cen^
tury was, as compared with other military and naval charges,
much smaller than at present. At most of the garrisons there
were gunners ; and here and there, at an important post, an en-
gineer was to be found. But there was no regiment of artillery,
no brigade of sappers and minei's,,no college in which young
soldiers could learn the sci itific part of the art of war. The
difficulty of moving fijld pieces was extreme. When, a few
years later, William marched from Devonshire to London, the
apparatus which he brought with him, though such as had long
been in constant use on the Continent, and such as would now
be regarded at Woolwich as rude and cumbrous, excited in our
ancestors an admiration resembling that which the Indians of
America felt for the Castilian harquebusses. The stock of gun-
powder kept in the English forts and arsenals was boastfully
mentioned by patriotic writers as something which might well
impress neighbouring.nations with awe. It amounted to fourteen
or fifteen thousand barrels, about a twelfth of the quantity
which it is now thought necessary to have in store. The expen-
diture under the head of ordnance was on an averasre a little
above sixty thousand pounds a year.f
* My information respecting the condition of tlie navy, at this time, is cliiefly
derived from Pepys. His report, presented to Charles the Second in May, 1684,
has never, I believe, been printed. The manuscript is at Magdalene College,
Cambridge. At Magdalene College is also a valuable mdnuseript containing a
detailed account of the maritime establishments of the country in December,
1G84. Pepys's " Memoirs relating to the State of the Royal Navy for Ten Years,
determined December, 1688," and his diary and correspondence during his mis-
sion to Tangier, are in print. I have made large use of them. See also Shef-
field's Memoirs, Teonge's Diary, Aubrey's Lite of Monk, the Life of Sir Cloudes-
ley Shovel, 1708, Commons' flournals, March 1 and March 20, 168ti-9.
Cbamberlayiie's State of England, 1684 ; Commons' Journals, March 1, and
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 281
The whole effective cliurge of the armj-, navy, and ordnance,
was about seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The non-
effective charge, which is now a heavy part of our public bur-
dens, can hardly be said to have existed. A very small number
of naval officers, who were not employed in the public service,
drew half pay. No Lieutenant was on the list, nor any Captain
who had not commanded a ship of the first or second rate. As
the country then possessed only seventeen ships of the first and
second rate that had ever been at sea,, and as a large proportion
of the persons who had commanded such ships had good posts
on shore, the expenditure under this head must have been small
indeed.* In the army, half pay was given merely as a special
and temporary allowance to a small nuober of officers belong-
ing to two regiments, which were peculiarly situated. f Green-
wich Hospital had not been founded. Chelsea Hospital was
building : but the cost of that institution was defrayed partly by
a deduction from the pay af the troops, and partly by private
subscription. The King promised to conti'ibute only twenty
thousand pounds for architectural expenses, and five thousand
a year for the maintenance of the invalids. $ It was no part of
the plan that there shoulJ be outpensioners. The whole non-
effective charge, military and naval, can scarcely have exceeded
ten thousand pounds a year. It now exceeds ten thousand
pounds a day.
Of the expense of civil government only a small portion
was defrayed l»y the crown. The great majority of the func-
tionaries whose business was to admhiister justice and preserve
order either gave their services to the public gratuitously, or
were remunerated in a iiumner which caused no d)-aiu on the
revenue of the state. Tiie sheriffs, mayors, and aldermen of
the towns, the country gentlemen who were in the commission
March 20, 1688-9. In 1833, itwas determined, after full enquiry, that a hundred
and seventy thousand barrels of gunpowder should constantly he kept in store.
* It appears from the records ot the Admiralty, that Flag officers were allowed
half pay m I'CGS, Captains of first and second rates not till 1674.
t Warrant in the War Office Kecords, dated March 26, 1678.
t Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 27, 1682. I have seen a privy seal, dated May 17, 1683,
which confirms Evelyn's testimony.
282 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
of the jDeace, the headboroughs, bailifPs, and petty constables,
cost the King nothing. The superior courts of law were
chiefly supported by fees.
Our relations with foreign courts had been put on the most
economical footing. The only diplomatic agent who had the
title of Ambassador resided at Constantinople, and was partly
supported by the Turkish Company. Even at the court of
Versailles England had only an Envoy ; and she had not even
an Envoy at the Spanish, Swedish, and Danish courts. The
whole expense under this head cannot, in the last year of the
reign of Charles the Second, have much exceeded twenty
thousand pounds.*
In this frugality there was nothing laudable. Charles was,
as usual, niggardly in the wrong place, and munificent in the
wrong place. The public service was starved that courtiers
might be pampered. The expense of the navy, of the ordnance,
of pensions to needy old officers, of missions to foreign courts,
must seem small indeed to the present generation. But the
personal favourites of the sovereign, his ministers, and the
creatures of those ministers, were gorged with public money.
Their salaries and pensions, when compared with the incomes
of the nobility, the gentry, the commercial and professional
men of that age, vvill appear enormous. The greatest estates
in the kingdom then very little exceeded twenty thousand a
year. The Duke of Ormond had twenty-two thousand a year.f
The Duke of Buckingham, before his extravagance had im-
paired his great property, had nineteen thousand six hundred a
year.t George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, who had been re-
warded for his eminent services with immense grants of crown
land, and who had been notorious both for covetousness and for
parsimony, left fifteen thousand a year of real estate, and sixty
thousand pounds in money which probably yielded seven per
* James the Second sent Envoys to Spain, Sweden, and Denmark ; yet in his
reign the diplomatic expenditure was little more than 30,000/. a year. Seethe
Commons' Journals, March 20, 1688-9 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684,
1687.
t Carte's Life of Ormond.
t Pepys's Diary, Feb. 14, 1661.
V
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 283
cent.* These three Dukes were supposed to be three of the
very richest subjects in England. The Archbishop of Canter-
bury can hardly have had five thousand a year.f The average
income of a temporal peer was estimated, by the best informed
persons, at about three thousand a year, the average income of
a baronet at nine hundred a year, the average income of a
member of the House of Commons at less than eight hun-
dred a year. J A thousand a year was thought a large revenue
for a barrister. Two thousand a year was hardly to be made
in the Court of King's Bench, except by the crown lawyers. §
It is evident, therefore, that an official man would have been
well paid if he had received a fourth or fifth part of what
would now "be an adequate stipend. In fact, however, the
stipends of the higher class of official men were as large as at
present, and not seldom larger. The Lord Treasurer, for ex-
ample, had eight thousand a year, and, when the Treasury was in
commission, the junior Lords had sixteen hundred a year each.
The Paymaster of the F'orces had a poundage, amounting, in
time of peace, to about five thousand a year, on all the money
which passed through his hands. The Groom of the Stole had
five thousand a year, the Commissioners of the Customs twelve
hundred a year each, the Lords of the Bedchamber a thousand
a year each.|| The regular salary, however, was the smallest
part of the gains of an official man at that age. From the
noblemen who held the white staff and the great seal, down to
the humblest tidewaiter and gauger, what would now be called
gross corruption was practised without disguise and without
* See the Report of the Bath and Montague ease, which was decided by Lord
Keeper Somers, in December, 1693.
t During three quarters of a year, beginning from Christmas, 1689, tlie reve-
nues of the see of Canterbury were received by an officer appointed by tlie
crown. That officer's accounts are now in the British Museum. (Langdo\vne
MSS. 885.) The gross revenue for the three quarters was not quite four thousand
pounds ; and the difference between the gross and the net revenue was evidently
something considerable.
t King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of
Trade. Sir W. Temple says, " The revenues of a House of Commons have sel-
dom exceeded four hundred thousand pounds." Memoirs, Third Part.
§ Langton's Conversations with Chief Justice Hale, 1672.
II Commons" Journals, April 27, 1689 ; CHanjberla^ne's St»te of England, 1684.
284 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
♦ '
reproach. Titles, places, commissions, pardons, were daily sold
in market overt by the great dignitaries of the realm ; and
every clerk in every department imitated, to the best of his
power, the evil example.
During th« last century no prime minister, however power-
ful, has become rich in office ; and several prime ministers have
impaired their private fortune in sustaining their public charac-
ter. In the seventeenth century, a statesman Avho was at the
head of affairs might easily, and without giving scandal, accu-
mulate in no long time an estate amply sufficient to support a
dukedom. It is probable that the income of the prime minis-
ter, during his tenure of power, far exceeded that gf any other
subject. The place of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was popu-
larly reported to be worth forty thousand pounds a year.* The
gains of the Chancellor Clarendon, of Arlington, of Lauderdale,
and of Danby, were certainly enormous. The sumptuous palace
to which the populace of London gave the name of Dunkirk
House, the stately pavilions, the fishponds, the deer park and
the orangery of Euston, the more tlian Italian luxury of TIam,
with its busts, fountains, and aviaries, were among the many
signs which indicated what was the shortest road to boundless
wealth. This is the true explanation of' the unscrupulous vio-
lence with which the statesmen of that day struggled for office,
of the tenacity with which, in spite of vexations, humiliations
and dangers, they clung to it, and of the scandalous compliances
to which they stooped in order to retain it. Even in our own
age, formidable as is the power of opinion, and high as is
the standard of integrity, there would be great risk of a
lamentable change in the character of our public men, if the
place of First Lord of the Treasury or Secretary of State were
worth a hundred thousand pounds a year. Happy for ouf coun-
try the emoluments of the highest class of functionaries have
not only not grown in proportion to the general growth of our
opulence, but have positively diminished.
The fact that the sura raised in England by taxation has, in
* See the Travels of the Grand Duk© Cosmo.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 285
a time not exceeding two long lives, been multiplied forty-fold,
is strange, and may at first sight seem appalling. But those
who are alarmed by the increase of the public burdens may
perhaps be reassured when they have considered the increase
of the public resources. In the year 1685, the value of the
produce of the soil far exceeded the value of all the other fruits
of human industry. Yet agriculture was in what would now be
considered as a very rude and imperfect state. The arable land
and pasture land were not supposed by the best political arith-
meticians of that age to amount to much more than half the
area of the kingdom.* The remainder was believed to consist
of moor, iorest, and fen. These computations are strongly con-
firmed by the road books and maps of the seventeenth century.
From those books and maps it is clear that many routes which
now pass through an endless succession of orchards, cornfields,
hayfields, and beanfields, then ran through nothing but heath,
swamp, and warren.f In the drawings of English landscapes
made in that age for the Grand Duke Cosmo, scarce a hedgerow
is to be seen, and numerous tracts, now rich with cultivation,
appear as bare as Salisbury Plain. $ At Enfield, hardly but of
eight of the smoke of the capital, was a region of five and
twenty miles in circumference, which contained only three
houses and scarcely any enclosed fields. Deer, as free as in an
American forest, wandered there by thousands. § It is to be
remarked, that wild animals of large size were then far more
numerous than at present. The last wild boars, indeed, which
* King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of
Trade.
t See the Itinerarium Angliae, 1675, by John Ogilby, Cosmographer Royal.
He describes great part of the land as wood, fen, heath on both sides, marsh on
both sides. lu some of his maps the roads through enclosed country are marked
by lines, and the roads through unenclosed country by dots- The proportion of
unenclosed country, which, if cultivated, must have been wretchedly cultivated,
seems to have been very great. From Abingdon to Gloucester, for example, a
distance of forty or fifty miles, there was not a single enclosure, and scarcely
one enclosure between Biggleswade and Lincoln.
t Large copies of these highly interesting drawings are in the noble collec-
tion bequeathed by Mr. Grenville to the British Museum. See particularly the
drawings of Exeter and Northampton.
§ Evelyn's Diary, June 2, 1675.
286 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
had been preserved for the royal diversion, and had been
allowed to ravage the cultivated land with their tusks, had
been slaughtered by the exasperated rustics during the license
of- the civil war. The last wolf that has roamed our island had
been slain in Scotland a short time before the close of the reign
of Charles the Second. But many breeds, now extinct, or rare,
both of quadrupeds and birds, were still common. The fox,
whose life is now, in many counties, held almost as sacred as
that of a human being, was then considered as a mere nuisance.
Oliver Saint John told the Long Parliament that Strafford was
to be regarded, not as a stag or a hare, to whom some law was
to be given, but as a fox, who was to be snared by any means,
and knocked on the head without pity. This illustration would
be by no means a happy one, if addressed to country gentlemen
of our time : but in Saint John's days there were not seldom
great massacres of foxes to which the peasantry thronged with
all the dogs that could be mustered : traps were set : nets were
spread : no quarter was given ; and to shoot a female with cub
was considered as a feat which merited the warmest gratitude
of the neighbourhood. The red deer were then as common in
Gloucestershire and Hampshire, as they now are among the
Grampian Hills. On one occasion Queen Anne, travelling to
Portsmouth, saw a herd of no less than five hundred. The
wild bull with his white mane was still to be found wandering
in a few of the southern forests. The badger made his dark
and tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the copse-
wood grew thick. The wild cats were frequently heard by
night wailing round the lodges of the rangers of "Whittlebury
and Needwood. The yellow-breasted marfin was still pursued
in Cranbourne Chase for his fur, reputed inferior only to that
of the sable. Fen eagles, measuring more than nine feet
between the extremities of the wings, preyed on fish along the
coast of Norfolk. On all the downs, from the British Channel
to Yorkshire huge bustards strayed in troops of fifty or sixty,
and were often hunted with greyhounds. The marshes of
Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire were covered during some
months of every year by immense clouds of cranes. Some of
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 287
these races the progress of cultivation has extirpated. Of
others the numbers are so much diminished that men crowd to
gaze at a specimen as at a Bengal tiger, or a Polar bear.*
The progress of this great change can nowhere be more p
clearly traced than in the Statute Book. The number of en-
closure acts passed since King George the Second came to the
throne exceeds four thousand. The area enclosed under the
authority of those acts exceeds, on a moderate calculation, ten
thousand square miles. How many square miles, which were
formerly uncultivated or ill cultivated, have, during the same
period, been fenced and carefully tilled by the proprietors with-
out any application to the legislature, can only be conjectured.
But it seems highly probable that a fourth part of England has
been, in the course of little more than a century, turned from a
wild into a garden.
Even in those parts of the kingdom which at the close of the
reiffu of Charles the Second were the best cultivated, the farm-
iug, though greatly improved since the civil war, was not such
as would now be thought skilful. To this day no effectual
steps have been taken by public authority for the purpose of
obtaining accurate accounts of the produce of the English soil.
The historian must therefore follow, with some misgivings, the
guidance of those writers on statistics whose reputation for dili-
gence and fidelity stands highest. At present an average crop
of wheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, is supposed considerably
to exceed thirty millions of quarters. The crop of wheat would
be thousfht wretched if it did not exceed twelve millions of
quarters. According to the computation made in the year 1696
by Gregory King, the whole quantity of wheat, rye, barley?
oats, and beans, then annually grown in the kingdom, was some-
what less than ten millions of quarters. The wheat, which was
then cultivated only on the strongest clay, and consumed only
by those who were in easy circumstances, he estimated at less
* See White's Selborne ; Bell's History of British Quadrupeds; Gentleman's
Recreation, 1686; Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire, 1685 ; Morton's History
of Northamptonshire, 1712 ; "Willoughby's Ornithology, by Ray, 1G78 ; Latham's
General Synopsis of Birds ; and Sir Thomas Browne's Account of Birds found in
Norfolk.
288 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
tliaa two millions of quarters. Charles Davenant, an acute
and well informed though most unprincipled and rancorous
politician, differed from King as to some of the items of the
account, but came to nearly the same general conclusions.*
The rotation of croj^s was very imperfectly understood. It
was known, indeed, that some vegetables lately introduced into
our island, particularly the turnip, afforded excellent nutriment
in winter to sheep and oxen : but it was not yet the practice to
feed cattle in this manner. It was therefore by no means easy
to keep them alive during the season when the grass is scanty.
They were killed and salted in great numbers at the beginning
of the cold weather ; and, during several months, even the gen-
try tasted scarcely any fresh 'animal food, except game and
river fish, which were consequently much more imjjortaut arti-
cles in housekeeping than at present. It appears from the
Northumberland Household Book that, in the reign of Henry
the Seventh, fresh meat was never eaten even by the gentlemen
attendant on a great Eai'l, except during the short interval
between Midsummer and Michaelmas. But in the course of
two centuries an improvement had taken place ; and under
Charles the Second it was not till the beginning of November
that families laid in their stock of salt provisions, then called
Martinmas beef.f
The sheep and the ox of that time were diminutive when
compared with the sheep and oxen which are now driven to our
markets, t Our native horses, though serviceable, were held in
small esteem, and fetched low prices. They were valued, one
with another, by the ablest of tlio 3 who computed the national
wealth, at not more than fifty shillings each. Foreign breeds
were greatly preferred. Spanish jennets were regarded as the
finest chargers, and were imported for purposes of pageantry
and war. The coaches of the aristocracy were drawn by grey
Flemish mares, which trotted, as it was thought, with a peculiar
* King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of
Trade.
•See the Almanacks of 1684 and 1C.S5.
J See Mr. M'Cullocli's Statistical Account of the British Empire, Part ITL
chap. i. sec. 6.
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 289
grace, and endured better than any cattle reared m our island
the work of dragging a ponderous equipage over the rugged
pavement of London. Neither the modern dray horse nor the
modern race horse was then known. At a much later period the
ancestors of the gigantic quadrupeds, which all foreigners now
class among the chief wonders of London, were brought from
the marshes of Walcheren ; the ancestors of Childers and Eclipse
from the sands of Arabia. Already, however, there was among
our nobility and gentry a passion for the amusements of the
turf. The importance of improving our studs by an infusion of
new blood was strongly felt ; and with this view a considerable
number of barbs had lately been brought into the 'country. Two
men whose authority on such subjects was held in great esteem,
the Duke of Newcastle and Sir John Fen wick, pronounced that
the meanest hack ever imported from Tangier would produce a
finer progeny than could be expected from the best sire of our
native breed. They would not readily have believed that a
time would come when the princes and nobles of nei"-hbourino-
lands would be as eager to obtain horses from England as ever
the English had been to obtain horses from Barbary.*
The increase of vegetable and animal produce, though great,
seems small when compared with the increase of our mineral
wealth. In 1G85 the tin of Cornwall, which had, more than
two thousand years before, attracted the Tyrian sails beyond
the pillars of Hercules, was still one of the most valuable sub-
terranean productions of the island. The quantity annually
extracted from the earth was found to be, some years later,
sixteen hundred tons, probably about a third of what it now is.f
But the veins of copper which lie in the same region were, in
the time of Charles the Second, altogether neglected, nor did
any landowner take them into the account in estimating the
* King and Davenant as be!'ore ; The rhike of Newcastle on Horsemanstip ;
Gentleman's Recreation, ICSG. The " dappled Flandera mares " were marks of
greatness in the time of Pope, and eveti later.
The vulgar proverb, that the grey mare is the better horse, originated, I sus-
pect, in the preference generally given to the grey mares of Flanders over the
finest coach horses of England.
t See a curious note by Tonkin, in Lord De Dunstanville's edition of Carew*»
Survey of Cornwall.
19
P
290 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
value of bis property. Cornwall and Wales at present yield
annually near fifteen thousand tons of copper, worth near a
million and a half sterling ; that is to say, worth about twice as
much as the annual j^i'oduce of all English mines cf all descrip-
tions in tbe seventeenth century.* The first bed of rock salf
had been discovered in Cheshire not long after the Restoration,
but does not appear to have been worked till much later. The
salt which was obtained by a rude pi^ocess from brine pits was
held in no high estimation. The pans in which the manufacture
was carried on exhaled a sulphurous stench ; and, when the
evaporation was complete, the substance which was left was
scarcely fit to be used with food. Physicians attributed the
scorbutic and pulmonary complaints which were common among!
the English to this unwholesome condiment. It was therefore
seldom used by the upper and middle classes ; and there was r>
regular and considerable importation from France. At presen!
our springs and mines not only supply our own immense deman*',
but send annually more tlian seven hundred millions of poun</
of excellent salt to foreign countries.!
Far more important has been the improvement of our iro
works. Such works had long existed in our island, but had no.
prospered, and had been regarded with no favourable eye by the
government and by the public. It was not then the practice to
employ coal for smelting the ore ; and the rapid consumption
of wood excited the alarm of politicians. As early as the reign
of Elizabeth, there had been loud complaints that whole forests
were cut down for the purpose of feeding the furnaces ; and the
Parliament had interfered to proliibit the manufacturers from
burning timber. The manufacture consequently languished.
At the^ close of the reign of Charles the Second, great part of
the iron which was used in this country was imported from
abroad ; and the whole quantity cast here annually seems not
* Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall. 1758. Tlie quantity of copper now
produced, I have taken from parliamentary returns. Davenant, in 1700, estimated
the annual produce of all the mines of England at between seven and aight
hundred thousand pounds.
t Philosophical Transactions , No. 53. Nov. 1669, No. 66. Dec 1670, No. 103.
May 1674, No 156. Feb. 1683-4.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 291
to have exceeded ten thousand tons. At present the trade is
thought to be in a depressed state if less than a million of tons
are produced in a year.*
One mineral, perhaps more important than iron itself,
remains to be mentioned. Coal, though very little used in any
species of manufacture, was already the ordinar)'- fuel in some
districts which were fortunate enough to possess large beds, and
in the capital, which could easily be supplied by water carriage.
It seems reasonable to believe that at lear,t one half of the quan-
tity then extracted from the pits was consumed in London. The
consumption of London seemed to the writers of that age enor-
mous, and was often mentioned by them ai a proof of the great
ness of the imperial city. Tliey scarcely hoped to be believed
when they affirmed that two hundred and eighty thousand chal-
drons, that is to say, about three hundred and fifty thousa.id
tons, were, in the last year of the reign of Charles the Second,
brought to the Thames. At present three millions and a half of
tons are required yearly by the metropolis ; and tlie whole
annual produce cannot, on the most moderate computation, l)e
estimated at less than thirty millions of tons.f
Wliile these great changes have been in progress, the rent
of land has, as might be expected, been almost constantly rising.
In some districts it has mu!ti[)lied more than tenfold. In some
it lAs not more than doubled. It has probably, on the average^
quadrupled.
Of the rent, a large proportion was divided among the couu
try gentlemen, a class of persons whose position and character
it is most important that we should clearly understand ; for by
their influence and by their passions the fate of the nation was.
at several important conjunctures, determined.
* Yarra-itoii, England's Improvement by Sea and Land, 1CT7 ; Porter's Pro-
gress of tho Nuiio . See also a remarkably perspicuous history, iu email compass,
of ibe E iglish iron ,vo;ks, in M . M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British
Empire.
t See Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684, 16&7 ; Anglise Metropolis, 1691 ;
M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire, Part III. chap. ii. (edition
of 1847). In 1845 the quantity of coal brought into London appeared, by the Pal
liamentary returns, to be 3.469,000 tons. (1818.) In 1854 the quanti^ of co^
brought into London amounted to 4,378,000 tons. (1857.)
292 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
We should be much mistaken if we pictured to ourselves the
squires of the seveuteeuth ceutury as men beariug a close re-
semuJaiice to their desceudiiiits, the county members aud chair-
men of quarter sessions with whom we are familictr. ■ The
modern couutry gentleman generally receives a liberal educa-
tion, passes from a distiiiguisiied school to a distinguished
college, and has ample opporiuuity to become an excellent
scholar. He has generally seen something of foreign countries.
A considerable part of his life has generally been passed in the
capital ; and the relinements of the capital follow him into the
country. There is perhaps no class of dwellings so pleasing
as the rural seats of the English gentry. In the parks aud
pleasure grounds, nature, dressed yet not disguised by art, wears
her most alluring form. In the buildings, good sense and good
taste combine to produce a happy union of the comfortable and
the graceful. The pictures, fhe musical instruments, the library,
would in jiny other country be considered as proving the owner
to be an eminently polished and accomplished man. A country
gentleman who witnessed the Revolution was probably in re-
ceipt of about a fourth .part of the rent which his acres now
yield to his posterity. He wa<!. therefore, as compared with his
posterity, a poor man. aud \v i< (fonerally under the necessity of
residing, with little interruption on his estate. To travel on
the Continent, to maintain an establishment in London, or even
to visit London frequently, were pleasures in which only the
great proprietors could indulge. It may be confidently affirmed
that of the squires whose names were then in the Commissions
of Peace and Lieutenancy not one in twenty went to town once
in five years, or had ovor in his life wandered so far as Paris.
Many lords of manors liad received an education differing little
from that of their monial servants. The heir of an estate often
passed his boyhood and youth at the seat of his family with no
better tutors than grooms and gamekeepers, and scarce attained
learning enouoh to sign his name to a Mittimus. If he went
to school and to college, he general] v returned before he was
twenty to the seclusion of the old hall, and there, unless his
mind were very happily constituted by nature, soon forgot hlg
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1680. 293
academical pursuits in rural business and pleasures. His chief
serious employment was the care of his property. He examined
samples of grain, handled pigs, and, on market days, made bar-
gains over a tankard with drovers and hop merchants. His
chief pleasures were commonly derived from field sports and
from an unrelined sensuality. His language and pronunciation
were such as we should now expect to hear only from the most
ignorant clowns. His oaths, coarse jests, and scurrilous terms
Df abuse, were uttered with tho broadest accent of his province.
It was easy to discern, from the first words which he spoke,
whether he came from Somersetshire or Yorkshire. He
troubled himself little about decorating his abode, and, if he
attempted decoration, seldom produced anything but deformity.
Tlie litter of a farmyard gathered under the windows of his
b<idcham-lier, and the cabbages and gooseberry bushes grew
close to his hall door. His table was loaded with coarse plenty ;
and guests were cordially welcomed to it. But, as the habit of
di-inking to excess was general in the class to which he belonged,
and as his fortune did not enable him to intoxicate large assem-
blies dally with claret or canaiy, strong beer was the ordinary
beverage. The quantity of beer consumed in those days was
indeed enormous. For beer then was to the middle and lower
classes, not only all that beer is, but all that wine, tea, and
ardent spirits now are. It was only at great houses, or on great
occasions, that foreign drink was placed on the board. The
ladies of the house, whose business it had commonly been to
cook the repast, retired as soon as the dishes had been devoured,
and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco. The coarse
jollity of the afternoon was often prolonged till the revellers
were laid under the table.
It. was very seldom that the country gentleman caught
glimpses of the great world ; and what he saw of it tended
rather to confuse than to enlighten his understandinfr. His
opinions respecting religion, government, foreign countries
and former times, having been derived, not from study, from
observation, or from conversation with enlightened companions,
but from such traditions as were current in his own small circle,
!f94 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
were the opinions of a child. He adhered to them, however,
with the obstinacy which is generally found in ignorant men
accustomed to be fed with flattery. Ills animosities were nume«
rous and bitter. He hated Frenchmen and Italians, Scotchmen
and Irislimen, Papists and Presbyterians, Independents and
Baptists, Quakers and Jews. Towards London and Londoners
he felt an aversion which more than once produced important
political effects. His wife and daughter were in tastes and
acquirements below a housekeeper or a stillroom maid of the
l)resent day. They stitched and spun, brewed gooseberry wine,
cured marigolds, and made the crust for the venison pasty.
From this description it might be supposed that the En^rlish
esquire of the seventeenth century did not materially differ
from a rustic miller or alehouse keeper of our time. There are,
however, some important parts of his character still to.be noted,
which will greatly modify this estimate. Unlettered as he was
and unpolished, he was still in some most important points a
gentleman. He was a member of a proud and powerful aristoc-
racy, and was distinguishe I by many both of the good and of
the bad qualities which belong to aristocrats. His family pride
was beyond that of a Talbot or a Howard. He knew the
genealogies and coats of arms of all his neighbours, and could
tell which of them had assumed supporters without any right,
and which of them were so unfo''tunate as to be greatgrandsons
of aldermen. He was a magistrate, and, as such, administered
gratuitously to those who dwelt around him a rude patriarchal
justice, which, in spite of innumerable blunders and of occasional
acts of tyranny, was yet better than no justice at all. He was
an officer of the trainbands ; and his milicary dignity, though it
might move the mirth of gallants who had served a campaign in
Flanders, raised his character in his own eyes and in the eyes of
his neighbours. Nor indeed was his soldiership justly a subject
of derision. In every county there were elderly gentlemea who
had seen service wliich was no child's play One had been
knighted by Charles the First, after the battle of Edgehill.
Another still wore a patch over the scar which he had received
at Naseby. A third had defended his old house till Fairfax had
STATE OF KNGLAND IN 1685. 295
blown iu the door with a petard. The presence of these old
Cavaliers, with their old swords and holsters, and with their old
^.tories about Goring and Lunsf ord, gave to the musters of militia
'in earnest and warlike aspect which would otherwise have been
wanting. Even those country ejentlemen who were too vounrr
to have themselves exchanged blows with the cuirassiers of t'.ic
Parliament had, from childhood, been surrounded by the traces
if recent war, and fed with stories of the martial exploits of
their fathers and uncles. Thus the character of tlie English
esquire of the seventeenth century was compounded of two
elements which we seldom or never find united. His ifjnorance
and uncouthness, his low tastes and gross jjhrases, would, in our
time, be considered as indicating a nature and a breeding
thoroughly plebeian. Yet ho was essentially a patrician, and
had, in large measure, both tlie virtues ami the vices which
nourish among men set from their birth in high place, and used
to respect themselves and to be respected by others. It is not
easy for a generation accustomed to find chivalraus sentiments
only in company with liberal studies and polished manners to
image to itself a man with the deportment, the vocabulary, and
the accent of a carter, yet punctilious on matters of genealogy
and precedence, and ready to risk his life rather than see a stahi
cast on the honour of his house. It is however only by thus
joniing together things seldom or never found together in our
own experience, that we can form a just idea of that rustic
aristocracy which constituted the main strength of the armies of
Charles the First, and which long supported, with strange fidelity,
the interest of his descendants.
The gross, uneducated, untravelled country gentleman was
commonly a Tory ; but, though devotedly attached to hereditary-
monarchy, he had no partiality for courtiers and ministers. He
thought, not without reason, that Whitehall was filled with the
most corrupt of mankind, and that of the great sums which the
House of Commons had voted to the crown since the Restoration
part had been embezzled by cunning politicians, and part squan-
dered on buffoons and foreign courtesans. His stout English
hiuu-^ owelled with indignation at the thought that the govero
296 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ment of Jus country should be subject to French dictation.
Being himself generally an old Cavalier, or the sou of an old
Cavalier, he reflected with bitter resentment on the ingratitude
with which the Stuarts had requited their best friends. Those
who lieai'd him grumble at the neglect with which he was treated,
and at the profusion with which wealth was lavished on the
bastards of Nell Gwynn and Madam Carwell, would have sup-
posed him ripe for rebellion. But all this ill humour lasted
only till the throne was really in danger. It was precisely when
those whom the sovereign had loaded with wealth and honours
shrank from his side that the country gentlemen, so surly
and mutinous in the season of his prosperity, rallied round
him in a body. Thus, after murmuring twenty years at the
misgovernment of Charles the Second, they came to his rescue
in his' extremity, when his own Secretaries of State and. the
Lords of his own Treasury had deserted him, and enabled liim
to gain a comj^lete victory over the opposition ; nor can there l-o
any doubt that they would have shown equal loyalty to his
brother James, if James would, even at the lust moment, have
refrained from outrairinfj their stroufjest feeling. For there
was one institution, and one only, which they prized even more
than hereditary monarchy ; and that institution was the Church of
England. Their love of the Church was not, indeed, the effect
of study or meditation. Few among them could have given any
reason, drawn from Scripture or ecclesiastical history, for adher-
ing to her doctrines, her ritual, and her polity ; cor were they,
as a class, by any means strict observers of that code of morality
which is common to all Christian sects. But the experience of
many ages proves that men may be ready to fight to the death,
and to persecute without pity, for a religion whose creed they
donotunderstand, and whose precepts they habitually disobey.*
The rural clergy were even more vehement m Toryism than
the rural gentry, and were a class scarcely less important. It
• My nolion of the country gentleman of the seventeenth century has been de-
rived from sources too numerous to be reoapilulared. Imust leave my descrip-
tion to the judgment of those who have studied tho history and the lighter liter*
atureof that age.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 297
is to be observed, however, that the individual clergyman, as
compared ■witli tlie individual gentleman, then ranked much
lower than in our days. The main support of the Church was
derived from the tithe ; and the tithe bore to the rent a much
smaller ratio than at present. King estimated the whole incomft
of the parochial and collegiate clergy at only four hundred and
eighty thousand pounds a year ; Davenant at only five hundred
and forty-four thousand a year. It is certainly now more than
seven times as great as the larger of these two sums. The aver-
age rent of the land has not, according to any estimate, increased
proportionally. It follows that the rectors and vicars must have
been, as compared with the neighbouring knights and squires,
much poorer in the seventeenth than in the nineteenth century.
The place of the clergyman in society had been completely
changed by the Reformation. Before that event, ecclesiastics
had formed the majority of the House of Lords, had, in
wealth and splendour, equalled, and sometimes outshone, the
greatest of the temporal barons, and had generally held the
highest civil offices. Many of the Treasurers, and almost all
the Chancellors of the Plantagenets were Bishops. The
Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and the IMaster of the Rolls
were ordinarily churchmen. Churchmen transacted the most
important diplomatic business. Indeed all tliat large portion
of the administration which rude and warlike nobles were
incompetent to conduct was considered as especially belong-
ing to divines. Men, therefore, who were averse to the life
of camps, and who were, at the same time, desirous to rise iu
the state, commonly received the tonsure. Amonsc them wero
sons of all the most illustrious families, and near kinsmen of
the throne. Scroops and Nevilles, Bourchiers, Staffords and
Poles. To the religious houses belonged the rents of im-
mense domains, and all that large portion of the tithe which
is now in the hands of laymen. Down to the middle of the
reign of Henry the Eiglith, therefore, no line of life was so
attractive to ambitious and covetous natures as the priesthood.
Then came a violent revolution. The abolition of the monas-
teries deprived the Church at once of the greater part of
298 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
her wealth, and of her predominance in the Upper House of
Parliament. There was no longer an Abbot of Glastonbury or
an Abbot of Reading seated among the peers, and possessed of
revenues equal to those of a powerful Earl. The princely
splendour of William of Wykehara and of William of Waynflete
had disappeared. The scarlet hat of the Cardinal, the silver
cross of the Legate, were no more. Tiie clergy had also lost
the ascendency which is the natural reward of superior mental
cultivation. Once the circumstance that a m:in could read had
raised a presumption that he was in orders. ]5iit, in an age
which produced such laymen as William Cecil and Nicholas
Bacon, Roger Ascham and Thomas Smith, Walter Mildmay and
Francis Walsingham, there was no reason for calling away
prelates from their dioceses to negotiate treaties, to superintend
the finances, or to administer justice. The spiritual character
not only ceased to be a qualification for high civil office, but
began to be regarded as a disqualification. Those worldiy
motives, therefore, which had formerly induced so manj^ able,
aspiring, and high born j-ouths to assume the ecclesiastical habit,
ceased to operate. Not one parish in two hundred then afforded
what a man of family considered as a maintenance. There
were still indeed prizes in the Church : but they were few ; and
even the highest were mean, when compared with the glory
which had once surrounded the princes of the hierarchy. The
state kept by Parker and Grindal seemed beggai-ly to those who
remembered the imperial pomj) of Wolsey, his palaces, which
had become the favorite abodes of royalty, Whitehall and
Hampton Court, the three sumptuous tables daily spread in his
refectory, the forty-four gorgeous copes in his chapel, his run-
ning footmen in rich liveries, and his body guards with gilded
poleaxes. Thus the sacerdotal office lost its attraction for the
higher classes. During the century which followed the acces-
sion of Elizabeth, scarce a single person of noble descent took
orders. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, two
sons of peers were Bishops ; four or five sons of peers were
priests, and held valuable preferment : but these rare excep'
tious did not take away' the reproach which lay on the body.
6TATE OP ENGLAND IN 1G85. '^^^
The clergy were regarded as, on the whole, a plebeian class.*
And, indeed, for one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten
were mere menial servants. A large pi'oportion of those divines
who had no benefices, or whose benefices were too small to
afford a comfortable revenue, lived in the houses of laymen. It
had long been evident that this practice tended to degrade the
priestly character. Laud had exerted himself to effect a change ;
and Charles the First had repeatedly issued positive orders that
none but men of liigh rank should presume to keep domestic
chaplains. t But these injunctions had become obsolete. Indeed
during the domination of the Puritan, many of the ejected
ministers of the Ch.urch of England could obtain bread and
shelter only by attaching themselves to the households of roy-
alist gentlemen ; and the habits which had been formed in those
times of trouble continued long after the reestablishment of
monarchy and episcopacy. In the mansions of men of liberal
sentiments and cultivated understandings, the chaplain was
doubtless treated with urbanity and kindness. Ills conversation,
his literary assistance, his spiritual advice, were considered as
an ample return for his food, his lodging, and his stipend. But
this was not the general feeling of the country gentlemen. The
coarse and ignorant squire, who thought that it belonged to his
dignity to have grace said every day at his table by an ec-
clesiastic in full canonicals, found means to reconcile dignity
with economy. A young Levite — such was the phrase then in
use — might be had for his board, a small garret, and ten pounds
a year, and might not only perform his own professional func-
tions, might not only be the most patient of butts and of listen-
ers, might not only be always ready in fine weather for bowls,
and in rainy weather for shovelboard, but might also save the
* Tn the eighteenth century "he great increase in the value of benefices pro-
duced ;i cliange. The younger sons of the nobility were allured back to the
clerical profession. Warburton in a letter to Hurd, dated the 5th of July, 1752,
mentions this change, which was then recent. " Our grandees have at last found
their way back into the Church. 1 only wonder they have been so long about it.
But be assured that nothing but a now religious revolution, to sweep away the
fragments that Henry the Eighth left after banqueting his courtiers, will drive
them out again."
t See HeyUn's Cyprianus Anglicus
300 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
expense of a gardener, or of a groom. Sometimes the reverend
man nailed up the apricots ; and sometime^ he curried the coach
horses. He cast up the farrier's bills. He walked ten miles
with a message or a parcel. He was permitted to dine with tlie
family ; but he was expected to content himself with the plain-
est fare. He midit fill himself with the corned beef and the
carrots : but, as soon as the tarts and cheesecakes made their
appearance, he quitted his seat, and stood aloof till he was sum-
moned to return thanks for the repast, from a great part of
which he had been excluded.*
Perhaps, after some years of service, he was presented to a
living sufficient to support him ; but he often found it necessary
to i^urchase his preferment by a sj^ecies of Simony, which fur-
nished an inexhaustible subject of pleasantry to three or four
generations of scoffers. With his cure he was expected, to
take a wife. The wife had ordinarily been in the patron's
service ; and it was well if she was not suspected of standing
too high in the patron's favor. Indeed the nature of the mat
rimonial connections which the clergymen of that age were h
the habit of forming is the most certain indication of the place
which the order held in the social system. An Oxonian, writing
a few months after the death of Charles the Second, complained
bitterly, not only tlrat the country attorney and the country
apothecary looked down with disdain on the country clergyman,
but that one of the lessons most earnestly inculcated on every
girl of honourable family was to give no encouragement to a
lover in orders, anct that, if any young lady forgot this precept,
she was almost as much aisgraced as by an illicit amour. "}
Clarendon, who assurealy bore no ill will to the priesthood^
« Eachard, Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy ; Oldham, Satire addressed
to a Friend about to leave the University ; Tatler, 255, 258. That the Enjilisb
clergy were a lowborn class, is remarked in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo,
Appendix A.
t "A causidico, metficastro, ipsaque artificum f.arras;ine, ecclesife rector aut
Vicarius contemnitur et fit ludibrio. Gentis et familite iiitor sacris ordinibua
poUutus eensetur: fneminisque natalitio insigiiibns unicum inculcatnr sippiua
prseceptum, ne modestl?e naufragium faciant. ant, (qnod idem auribus tam de-
licatulis sonat,) ne clerico i5e nuptas dari patiantur."— Anglias Notitia, by T.
Wood, of New College, Oxford, 1686.
/.N
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685 301
mentious it as a sign of the confusion of ranks wliich the great
rebellion had pi'oduced, that some damsels of noble families had
bestowed themselves on divines.* A waiting woman was gen-
erally considered as the most suitable helpmate for a parson.
Queen Elizabeth, as head of the Church, had given what seemed
to be a formal sanction to this prejudice, by issuing special
orders that no clergyman should presume to espouse a servant
girl, without the consent of tlie master or mistress. f During
several generations accordingly tlie relation between divines
and handmaidens was a theme for endless jest ; nor would it be
easy to find, in the comedy of the seventeenth century, a single
instance of a clergyman who wins a spouse above the rank of
cook.t Even so late as the time of George the Second, the
keenest of all observers of life and manners, himself a priest,
remarked that, in a great household, the chaplain was the
resource of a lady's maid whose character had been blown
upon, and who was therefore forced to give up hopes of catch-
ing the steward. §
In general the divine who quitted his chaplainship for a,
benefice and a wife found that he had only exchanged one class
of vexations for another. Hardly one living in fifty enabled
the incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. As children
multiplied and grew, the household of the priest became more
and more beggarly. Holes appeared more and more plainly in
the thatch of his parsonage and in his single cassock. Often
it was only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine, and by
loading dungcarts, that he could obtain daily bread ; nor did his
utmost exertions always prevent the bailiffs from taking his con-
* Clarendon's Life. ii. 21.
t See the injunctions of 1550, in Bishop Sparrow's Collection. Jeremy Collier,
in his Essay on Pride, speaks of this injunction with a bitterness which proves
that his own pride had not been effectually tamed.
t Eoger and Abigail in Fletcher's Scornful Lady, Bull and the Nurse in
Vanbrugh's Eelapse. Smirk and Susan in Shadwell's Lancashire "Witches, ara
instances.
§ Swift's Directions to Servants. In Swift's Remarks on the Clerical Residence
Bill, he describes the family of an English vicar thus : — " His wife is little better
than a Goody, in her birth, education, or dress His daughters shall go
to service, or be sent apprentice to the sempstress of the next town."
302 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
cordance and his inkstand in execution. It was a white day on
which he was admitted into the kitchen of a great house, and
regaled by the servants with cold meat and ale. His children
were brought up like the children of the neighbouring peasantry.
His boys followed the plough ; and his girls went out to ser-
vice.* Study ho found impossible : for the advowson of his
living would hardly have sold for a sum sufficient to purchase a
good theological library ; and he might be considered as unusu-
ally lucky if he had ten or twelve dogeared volumes among the
pots and pans on his shelves. Even a keen and strong intellect
might be expected to rust in so unfavourable a situation.
Assuredly there was at that time no lack in the English
Church of ministers distinguished by abilities and learning.
But it is to be observed that these ministers were not scattered
among the rural population. They were brought together at a
few places where the means of acquiring knowledge were
abundant, and where the opportunities of vigorous intellectual
exercise were frequent. f At such places were to be found
divines qualified by parts, by eloquence, by wide knowledge of
literature, of science, and of life, to defend their Church vic-
toriously against heretics and sceptics, to command the attention
of frivolous and worldly congregations, to guide the delibera-
tions of senates, and to make religion respectable, even in the
most dissolute of courts. Some laboured to fathom the abysses
of metaphysical theology : some were deeply versed in biblical
criticism ; and some threw light on the darkest parts of ecclesi-
astical history. Some proved themselves consummate masters
of logic. Some cultivated rhetoric with such assiduity and suc-
cess that their discourses are still justly valued as models of
style. These eminent men were to be found, with scarcely a
* Eren in Tom Jones, published two generations later, Mrs. Seagrim, the vrif a
of a gamekeeper, and Mrs. Honour, a waitingwoman, boast of their descent from
clergymen. "It is to be hoped," says Fielding, "such instances -will in future
ages, when some provision is made for the families of the inferior clergy, appear
stranger than they can be thoughfat present.
t This distinction between country clerjrv and town clergy is strongly marked
by Eachard, and cannot but be observed by every person who has studied the
ecclesiastical history ©f that age.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1 G85. 303
Bingle exception,- at the Universities, at the great Cathedrals, or
ill the capital. Barrow had lately died at Cambridge ; and
Pearson had gone thence to the episcopal bench. Cudworth
and Henry More were still living there. South and Pococke,
Jane and Aldrich, were i\t Oxford, Prideaux was in the close
of Norwich, and Whitby in the close of Salisbury. But it was
chiefly by the London clergy, who were always spoken of as a
class apart, that the fame of their profession for learning and
eloquence was upheld. Tlie principal pulpits of the metropo-
lis were occupied about this time by a crowd of distinguished
men, from among whom was selected a large proportion of the
rulers of the Church. Sherlock preached at the Temple, Til-
lotson at Lincoln's Inn, Wake and Jeremy Collier at Gray's Inn,
Burnet at the Rolls, Stillingfleet at Saint Paul's Cathedral,
Patrick at Saint Paul's in Covent Garden, Fovder at Saint
Giles's, Cripplegate, Sliarp at Saint Giles's in the Fields, Teni-
son at Saint Martin's, Sprat at Saint Margaret's, Beveridge at
Saint Peter's in Cornhill. Of these twelve men, all of high
note in ecclesiastical history, ten became Bishops, and four
Archbishops. Meanwhile almost' the only important theologi-
cal works which came forth from a rural parsonage were those
of George Bull, afterwards Bishop of Saint David's ; and Bull
never would have produced those works, had he not inherited
an estate, by the sale of which he was enabled to collect a
library, such as probably no other country clergyman in Eng-
land possessed.*
Thus the Anglican priesthood was divided into two sections,
which, in acquirements, in manners, and in social position,
differed widely from each other. One section, trained for cities
and courts, comprised men familiar with all ancient and modern
learning ; men able to encounter Hobbes or Bossuet at all the
weapons of controversy ; men who could, in their sermons, set
forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity with such justness
of thought, and such energy of language, that the indolent
Charles roused himself to listen, and the fastidious Buckingharn
* Nelson's I/lfe of Bull. As to the extreme difficulty ■which the country
clergy found iu i)rocuring books, see the Life of Thomas.Bray, the founder of tb^
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
304 HISTOKT OF ENGLAND.
forgot to sneer ; men whose address, politeness, and knowledge
of the world qualified them to manage the consciences of the
wealthy and noble ; men with whom Halifax loved to discuss
the interests of empires, and from whom Dryden was not
ashamed to own that he had learned to write.* The other sec-
tion was destined to ruder and humbler service. It was dis-
persed over the country, and consisted chiefly of persons not at
all wealthier, and not much more refined, than small farmers or
upper servants. Yet it was in these rustic priests, who derived
but a scanty subsistence from their tithe sheaves and tithe pigs,
and who had not the smallest chance of ever attaining high pro-
fessional honours, that the professional spirit was strongest.
Among those divines who were the boast of the Universities
and the delight of the capital, and who had attained, or might
reasonably expect to attain, opulence and lordly rank, a party,
respectable iu numbers, and more respectable in character,
leaned towards constitutional principles of government, lived
on friendly terms with Presbyterians, Independents, and Bap-
tists, would gladly have seen a full toleration granted to all
Protestant sects, and would even have consented to make
alterations in the Liturgy, for the purpose of conciliating
honest and candid Nonconformists. But such latitudinarian-
ism was held in horror by the country parson. He took, in-
deed, more pride in his ragged gown than his superiors in
their lawn and their scarlet hoods. The very consciousness
that there was little in his worldly circumstances to distinguish
him from the villagers to whom he preached led him to hold
immoderately high the dignity of that sacerdotal office which
was his single title to reverence. Having lived in seclusion,
and having had little opportunity of correcting his opinions by
reading or conversation, he held and taught the doctrines of in-
defeasible hereditary right, of passive obedience, and of non-
resistance, in all their crude al)surdity. Having been long en-
gaged in a petty war against the neighbouring dissenters, he
* " I have frequently lieard him (Dryden) own with pleasure, that if he had
any talent for English prose it was owing to his liaving often read the wiitings of
tlie great Archbishop Tillotson."— Cougreve's Dedication of Drydeii's Plays.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. , 305
too often hated them for the wrong which he had done them,
and found no fault with the Five Mile Act and the Conventicle
Act, except that those odious laws had not a sharper edge.
Whatever influence his office gave him was exerted Avith pas-
sionate zeal on the Tory side ; and that influence was immense.
It would be a great error to imagine, because the country rec-
tor was in general not regarded as a gentleman, because he
could not dare to aspire to the hand of one of the young ladies
at the manor house, because he was not asked into the parlours
of the great, but was left to drink and smoke with grooms and
butlers, that the power of the clerical, body was smaller than at
present. The influence of a class is by no means proportioned
to the consideration which the members of that class enjoy in
their individual capacity. A Cardinal is a much more exalted
personage than a begging friar: but it would be a grievous
mistake to suppose that the College of Cardinals has exercised
a greater dominion over the public mind of Europe than the
Order of Saint Francis. In Ireland, at present, a peer holds a
far higher station in society than a Roman Catholic priest : yet
there are in JMunster and Connaught few covmties where a
combination of priests would not carry an election a^;ainst a
combination of peers. In the seventeenth century the pulpit
was to a large portion of the population what the periodical
press now is. Scarce any of the clowns who came to the par-
ish church ever saw a Gazette or a political pamphlet. Ill in-
formed as their spiritual pastor might be, he was yet better
informed than themselves : he had every week an opportunity
of haranguing them ; and his harangues were never answered.
At every important conjuncture, invecthes against the "Whigs
and exhortations to obey the Lord's anointed resounded at once
from many thousands of pulpits ; and the effect was formidable
indeed. Of all the causes which, after the dissolution of the
Oxford Parliament, produced the violent reaction against the
Exclusionists, the most potent seems to have been the oratory
of the country clergy.
The power which the country gentleman and the country
clergyman exercised in the rural districts was in some measure
20
306 BISTORT OF ENGLAND.
counterbalanced by the power of the yeomanry, an eminently
manly and truehearted race. The jjetty proprietors who cul-
tivated their own fields with their own hands, and enjoyed a
modest competence, without affecting to have scutcheons and
crests, or aspiring to sit on the bench of justice, then formed a
much more important part of the nation tlian at present. If
we may trust the best statistical writers of that age, not less
than a hundred and sixty thousand proprietors, who with their
families must have made up more than a seventh of the whole
population, derived their subsistence from little freehold estates.
The average income of these small landholders, an income made
up of rent, profit, and wages, was estimated at between sixty
and seventy pounds a year. It was computed that the number
of persons who tilled their own land was greater than the num-
ber of those who farmed the land of others.* A large portion
of the yeomanry had, from the time of the Reformation, leaned
towards Puritanism, had, in the civil war, taken the side of the
Parliament, had, after the Restoration, persisted in hearing
Presbyterian and Independent preachers, had, at elections,
strenuously supported the Exclusionists, and had continued,
even after the discovery of the R3'e House plot and the pro-
scription of the Whig leaders, to regard Popery and arbitrary
power with unmitigated hostility.
Great as has been the change in the rural life of England
since the Revolution, the change which has come to pass in the
cities is still more amazing. At present above a sixth part of
the nation is crowded into i^rovincial towns gf more than thirty
thousand inhabitants. In the reign of Charles the Second no
provincial town in thS kingdom contained thirty thousand in-
habitants ; and only four provincial towns contained so many
} s ten thousand inhabitants.
Next to the capital, but next at an immense distance, stood
".Bristol, then the first English seaport, and Norwich, then the
Hrst English manufacturing town. Both have since that time
!)een far outstripped by younger rivals ; yet both have madd
'* I have taken Darenaufa estimate, wbioh U a little lovrer tUan £ing'9.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1 G85. 307
great positive advances. Tlie population of Bristol has quad-
rupled. Tlie population of Norwich has more than doubled.
Pepys, who visited Bristol eight years after the Restoration,
was struck by the splendour of the city. But his standard was
not high ; for he noted down as a wonder the circumstance that,
in Bristol, a man might look round him and see nothing but
houses. It seems that, in no other place with which he was ac-
quainted, except London, did the buildings completely shut out
the woods and fields. Large as Bristol might then appear, it oc-
cupied but a very small portion of the area on which it now
stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose out of a laby-
rinth of narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If
a coach or a cart entered those alleys, there was danger that it
would be wedged between the houses, and danger also that it
would break in the cellars. Goods were therefore conveyed
'about the town almost exclusively in trucks drawn by dogs ; and
the richest inhabitants exhibited their wealth, not by riding in
gilded carriages, but by walking the streets with trains of ser-
vants in rich liveries, and by keeping tables loaded with good
cheer. The pomp of the christenings and burials far exceeded
what was seen at any other place in England. The hospitality
of the city was widely renowned, and especially the collations
with which the sugar refiners regaled their visitors. The repast
was dressed in the furnace, and was accompanied by a rich bev-
erage made of the best Spanish wine, and celebrated over the
whole kingdom as Bristol milk. This luxury was supported by
a thriving trade with the North American plantations and with
the West Indies. The passion for colonial traffic was so strong
that there was scarcely a small shopkeeper in Bristol who had
not a venture on board of some ship bound for Virginia or the
Antilles. Some of these ventures indeed were not of the most
honourable kind. There was, in the Transatlantic possessions
of the crown, a great demand for labour; and this demand was
partly supplied by a system of crimping and kidnapping at the
principal P^nglish seaports. Nowhere was this system in such
active and extensive operation as at Bristol. Even the first
magistrates of that city were not ashamed to enrich themselves
308 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
by so odious a commerce. The number of houses appears, from
the returns of the hearth money, to have been in the year 1685,
jufct five thousand three hundred. We can hardly suppose the
number of persons in a house to have been greater than in the
city of London ; and in the city of London we learn from the best
authority that there were then fifty-five persons to ten houses.
The population of Bristol must therefore have been about
twenty-nine thousand souls.*
Norwich was the capital of a large and fruitful province.
It was the residence of a Bishop and of a Chapter. It was the
chief seat of the chief manufacture of the realm. Some men
distinguished b}^ learning and science had recently dwelt there ;
and no place in the kingdom, except the capital and the L'niver-
sities, had more attractions for the curious. The library, the
museum, the aviary, and the botanical garden of Sir Thomas
Browne, were thought by Fellows of the Royal Society well
worthy of a long pilgrimage. Norwich had ako a court in
miniature. In the heart of the city stood an old palace of the
Dukes of Noil'olk, said to be the largest town house in the
kingdom out of London. In this mansion, to which were an-
nexed a tennis court, a bowling green, and a wilderness stretch-
ing along the banks of the Wansum, the noble family of How-
ard frequently resided, and kept a state resembling that of
petty sovereigns. Drink was served to guests in goblets of pure
gold. The very tongs and shovels were of silver. Pictures by
Italian masters adorned the walls. The- cabinets were filled with
a fine collection of gems purchased by that Earl of Arundel
whose marbles are now among the ornaments of Oxford. Here,
in the year 1671, Charles and his court were sumptuously en-
tertained. Here, too, all comers w^re annually welcomed, from
• Evelyn's Diarj-, June 27, 1654 ; Pepys's Diary, June 13, 1C68 Koger i-Torth's
Lives of Lord Keeper Guildford, and of Sir Dudley Korth ; Petty's Political
Arithmetic. I have taken Petty's facts, but, in drawing inferences from them,
I have been guided by King and Davenant, who, though not abler men than he,
had the advantage of comin" nfter him. As 1o the kidnapping for which Bristol
was infamous, see North's Lifo of Guildford, 121, 216, .and the harangue of Jef-
freys on the pubject, in the Impartial Histor>- of his Life and Death, printed with
the Bloody Assizes. His style was, as ubup.I, coarse ; but I cannot reckon tha
reprimand which he gave to the magistrates of Bristol among his crimes.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 309
Christmas to Twelfth Niglit. Ale flowed in oceans for the popu-
hxce. Three coaches, one of which had heen built at a cost of
five hundred pounds to contain fourteen persons, were sent every
afternoon round the city to bring ladies to the festivities ; and
the dances were always followed by a luxurious banquet. When
the Duke of Norfolk came to Norwich, he was greeted like a
King returning to his caj^ital. The bells of the Cathedral and
of St. Peter Mancroft were rung : the guns of the castle were
fired ; and the Mayor and Aldermen waited on their illustrious
fellow citizen with complimentary addresses. In the year 1693
the population of Norwich was found by actual enumeration, to
be between twenty-eight and twenty-nine thousand souls.*
Far below Norwich, but still high in dignity and impor-
tance, were some other ancient capitals of shires. In that age
it was seldom that a country gentleman went up with his family
to London. The county town was his metropolis. He some-
times made it his residence during part of the year. At all
events, he was often attracted thither by business and pleasure,
by assizes, quarter sessions, elections, musters of militia, festi-
vals, and races. There were the halls where the judges, robed
in scarlet and escorted by javelins and trumpets, opened the
King's commission twice -a year. Tliere were the markets at
wliich the corn, the cattle, the wool, and the hops of the sur-
I'ounding csuutry were exposed to sale. There were the great
fairs to which merchants came down from London, and where the
rural dealer laid in his annual stores of sugar, stationery,
cutlery, and muslin. There were the shops at which the best
families of the neighbourhood bought 'grocery and millinery.
Some of these places derived dignity from interesting historical
recollections, from cathedrals decorated by all the art and
magnificence of the middle ages, from palaces where a long
succession of prelates had dwelt, from closes surrounded by the
venerable abodes of deans and canons, and from castles which
had in the old time repelled the Nevilles or de Veres, and
* Fuller's Worthies ; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 17, 1G7! ; Journal of T. Browne, son
f>f Sir Thomas Browne, Jan. 16G3-4 ; Blomefield's History of Norfolk ; History of
the City and County of Norwich, 2 vols. 1768.
310 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
*
which bore more recent traces of the vengeance of Rupert or
of Cromwell.
Conspicuous amongst these interesting cities were York,
the capital of the north, and Exeter, the capital of the west.
Neither can have contained much more than ten thousand
inhabitants. Worcester, the queen of the cider land, had but
eight thousand ; Nottingham probably as many. Gloucester,
renowned for that resolute defence which had been fatal to
Charles the First, had certainly between four and five thou-
sand ; Derby not quite four thousand. Shrewsbury was the
chief place of an extensive and fertile district. The Court of
the Marches of Wales was held there. In the language of the
gentry many miles round the Wrekin, to go to Shrewsbury was
to go to town. The provincial wits and beauties imitated, as
well as they could, the fashions of Saint James's Park, in the
walks along the side of the Severn. The inhabitants were
about seven thousand.*
The population of every one of these places has, since the
Revolution, much more than doubled. The population of some
has multiplied sevenfold. The streets have been almost entirely
rebuilt. Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber
The pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the
principal shops, and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings
occupied by the gentry would, in the seventeenth cgntury, have
seemed miraculous. Yet is the relative importance of the old
capitals of counties by no means what it was. Younger towns,
towns which are rarely or never mentioned in our early history
* The population of York appears, from the return of baptisms and burials,
in Drake's History, to have been about 13,000 in 1730. Exeter had only 17,000
inhabitants in 1801. The population of V^oreester was numbered just before the
siege in 1646. See Nash's Historj' of Worcestershire. I have made allowancei
for the increase which must be supposed to have taken place in forty years. In,
1740, the population of Nottingham was found, by enumeration, to be just 10.000.'
See Bering's Histeiy. The population of Gloucester may readily be inferred
from the number of houses which King found in the returns of hearth money,
and from the number of births and burials which is given in Atkyns's History.
The population of Derby was 4000 hi 1712. See "Wolley's MS. History, quoted in
Lyson's Magna Britannia. The population or Shrewsbury was ascertained, in
1695, by .ictual enumeration. As to the gaieties of Shrewsbury, see Farquhar's
Recruiting Officer. Farquhar's description is borne out by a ballad in the Pepyslar
Library, of which the burden is " Shrewsbury for me."
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. ^il
»imA which sent no representatives to our early Parliaments,
ha*^e, within the memory of persons still living, grown to a
greatness which this generation contemplates with wonder and
pride, not unaccompanied by awe and anxiety.
The most eminent of these towns were indeed known in the
seventeenth century as respectable seats of industry. Nay,
their rapid progress and their vast opulence were then some-
times described in language which seems ludicrous to a man
who has seen their present grandeur. One of the most popu-
lous and prosperous among them was Manchester. Manchester
had been required by the Protector to send one representative
to his Parliament, and was mentioned by writers of the time of
Charles the Second as a busy and opulent place. Cotton had,
during half a century, been brought thither from Cyprus and
Smyrna; but the manufacture was in its infancy. Whitney
had not yet taught how the i-aw material might be furnished in
quantities almost fabulous. Arkwright had not yet taught how
it might be worked up with a speed and precision which seem
magical. The whole annual import did not, at the end of the
seventeenth century, amount to two millions of pounds, a quan-
tity which would now hardly supply the demand of forty-eight
hours. That wonderful emporium, which in population and
wealth far surpasses capitals so much renowned as Berlin,
Madrid, and Lisbon, was then a mean and ill built market town
containing under six thousand people. It then had not a single
press. It now supports a hundred printing establishments. It
then had not a single coach. It now supports twenty coach-
makers.*
Leeds was already the chief seat of the woollen manufactures
of Yorkshire ; but the elderly inhabitants could still remember
the time when the first brick house, then and long after called
the Red House, was built. They boasted loudly of their in-
* Blome's Britannia, 167.3 ; Aikin's Countiy round Manchester ; Manchester
Directory, 1845 ; Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture. The best Informa-
tion which I liave been able to find, touching the population of Manchester in
the seventeenth century, is contained in a paper drawn up by the Reverend R.
Parklngon, and published in the Journal of the Statistical Society for Octobej
1842.
312 HiSTonr of England.
creasing wealth, and of the immense sales of cloth which took
place in the open air on the bridge. Hundreds, nay thousands
of pounds, had been paid down in the course of one busy mai'ket
day. The rising importance of Leeds had attracted the notice
of snccessive governments. Charles the First had c^ranted mu-
nicipal privileges to the town. Oliver had invited it to send one
member to the House of Commons. But from the returns of the
hearth money it seems certain that the whole population of the
borough, an extensive district which contains many hamlets,
did not, in the reign of Charles the Secondl, exceed seven thou
eand souls. In 1841 there were more thau a hundred and fifty
thousand.*
About a day's journey goutUof "Leeds, on the verge of a wild
moorland tract, lay an ancient manor, now rich with cultivation,
then barren and unenclosed, which was known by the name of
Hallamshire. Iron abounded there ; and, from a very early
period, the rude whittles fabricated there had been sold all ovei
the kingdom. They had indeed been mentioned by Geoffrey
Chaucer in one of his Canterbury Tales. But the manufacture
appears to have made little progress during the three centuries
which followed his time. This languor may perhaps be explain-
ed by the fact that the trade was, during almost the whole of
this long period, subject to such regulations as the lord and his
court leet thought fit to impose. The more delicate kinds of
cutlery were either made in the capital or brought from the
Continent. Indeed it was not till the reign of George the First
that the English surgeons ceased to import from France those
exquisitely fine blades which are required for operations on the
human frame. Most of the Hallamshire forges were collected
in a market town which had sprung up near the castle of the
proprietor, and which, in the reign of James the First, had been
a singularly miserable place, containing about two thousand in-
habitants, of whom a third were half starved and half naked beg-
gars. It seems certain from the parochial registers that the
• Thoresby's DucatusLeodensIs ; Wliitalcer's Loidls and Elmete ; Wardell'i
Municipal History of tha Borough of Leeds. (1848.) In 1851 Leeds had 172,00i
Inhabitants. (1857.)
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 315
population did not amount to four thousand at the end of the
reign of Charles the Second. The effects of a species of toi*
singularly unfavourable to the health and vigour of the humai<
frame were at once discerned by every traveller. A large propor
tion of the people had distorted limbs. This is that Sheffield
which now, with its dependencies, contains a hundred and twenty
thousand souls, and which sends forth its admirable knives, razors,
and lancets to the farthest ends of the world.*
Birmingham had not been thought of sufficient importance
to return a member to Oliver's Parliament. Yet the manufac-
turers of Birmingham were already a busy and thriving race.
They boasted that their hardware was highly esteemed, not in-
deed as now, at Pekin and Lima, at Bokhara and Timbuctoo,
but in Loudon, and even as far off as Ireland. They had ac-
quired a less honourable renown as coiners of bad money. In
allusion to their spurious groats, some Tory wit had fixed on
demagogues, who hypocritically affected zeal against Popery,
the nickname of Birminghams. Yet in 1685 the population,
which is now little less than two hundi'ed thousand, did not
amount to four thousand. Birmingham buttons were just
beginning to be known ; of Birmingham guns nobody had yet
heard ; and the place whence, two generations later, the mag-
nificent editions of Baskerville went forth to astonish all the
librarians of Europe, did not contain a single regular shop
where a Bible or an almanack could be bought. On Market
days a bookseller named Michael Johnson, the father of the
great Samuel Johnson, came over from Lichfield, and opened
a stall during a few hours. This supply of literature was long
found equal to the demand, f
* Hunter's History of H.-illamshire. (1848.) In 1851 the population of Sheffield
had increased to 1.35,000. (1857.)
t Blome's Britannia, T^r.T ; Dugdale's "WarwicksLire ; North's Fxamen, 321;
Preface to Absalom and Achitophel ; lint ton's History of Birmingham ; Boswell'a
Xife of Johnson. In 1690 the burials at Birmingham were 150, the baptisms 1^5,
I think it probable that the annual mortality was little less than one in twenty
five. In London it was considerably greater. A historian of Nottingham, hall
a century later, boasted of the extraordinary salubrity of his town, where tbp nn
nual mortality was one in thirty. See Bering's F'story of Nottingham- (1S48.)
In 1851 the population of Birmingham had increased to 232,000. (1857.)
814 HISTORI OF ENGLAND.
These four chief seats of our great manufactures deserve
especial meation. It would be tedious to enumerate all the
populous and opulent hives of industry which, a hundred and
fifty years ago, were hamlets without parish churches, or deso-
late moors, inhabited only by grouse and wild deer. Nor has
the change beea less signal in those outlets by which the pro-
ducts of the English looms and forges are poured forth over the
whole world. At present Liverpool contains more than three
hundred thousand inhabitants. The shipping registered at her
port amounts to between four and five hundred thousand tons.
Into her custom house has been repeatedly paid in one year a
6um more than thrice as great as the whole income of the Eng-
lish crown in 1 685. The receipts of her post oflTice, even since
the great reduction of the duty, exceed the sum which the post-
age of the whole kingdom yielded to the Duke of York. Her
endless docks, quays, and warehouses are among the wonders of
the world. Yet even those docks and quays and warehouses
seem hardly to suffice for the gigantic trade of the Mersey ; and
already a rival city is growing fast on the opposite shore. In
the days of Charles the Second Liverpool was described as a
rising town which had recently made great advances, and which
maintained a profitable intercourse with Ireland and with the
BUgar colonies. The customs had multiplied eight-fold within
sixteen years, and amounted to what was then considered as the
immense sum of fifteen thousand pounds annually. But the
population can hardly have exceeded four thousand : the ship-
ping was about fourteen hundred tons, less than the tonnage of
a single modern Indiaman of the first class ; and the whole
number of seamen belonging to the port cannot be estimated at
more than two hundred.*
Such has been the progress of those towns where wealth is
created and accumulated. Not less rapid has been the progress
of towns of a very different kind, towns in which wealth, created
• Blome's Britannia ; Gregson's Antiquities of the County Palatine and
Duchy of Lancaster, Part II. ; Petition from Liverpool in the Privy Council
Book, May 10, 1686. In 1690 the hurials at Liverpool were 151, the baptisms 120.
In 1844 the net receipt of the customs at Liverpool was 4.365,52fii. 1*. S4- ilSW^
la 1£51 Liverpool contained 375,000 inhabitants, (185J4
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 315
and accumulated elsewhere, is expended for purposes of health
and recreation. Some of the most remarkable of these gay
places have sprung into existence since the time of the Stuarts.
Cheltenham is now a greater city than any which the kingdom
contained in the seventeenth century, London alone excepted.
But in the • seventeenth century, and at the beginning of the
eighteenth, Cheltenham was mentioned by local historians merely
as^a rural parish lying under the Cotswold Hills, and affording
good ground both for tillage and pasture. Corn grew and cat-
tle browsed over the space now covered by that long succession
of streets and villas.* Brighton was described as a place which
had once been thriving, which had possessed many small fishing
barks, and which had, when at the height of prosperity, contain-
ed above two thousand inhabitants, but which was sinking fast
into decay. The sea was gradually gaining on the buildings,
which at length almost entirely disappeared. Ninety years
awo the ruins of an old fort were to be seen lying among the
pebbles and seaweed on the beach ; and ancient men could still
point out the traces of foundations on a spot where a street of
more than' a hundred huts had been swallowed up by the waves.
So desolate was the place after this calamity, that the vicarage
was thought scarcely worth having. A few poor fishermen,
however, still continued to dry their nets on those cliffs, on
which now a town, more than twice as large and populous as
the Bristol of the Stuarts, presents, mile after mile, its gay and
fantastic front to the sea.f
England, however, was not, in the seventeenth century,
destitute of watering places. The gentry of Derbyshire and of
the neighbouring counties repaired to Buxton, where tliey were
lodged in low rooms under bare rafters, and regaled with oat-
cake, and with a viand which the hosts called mutton, but which
the guests suspected to be dog. A single good house stood near
the spring.^ Tunbridge "Wells, lying within a day's journey of
* Atkyns's Gloucestershire.
t Magna Britannia ; Grose's Antiquities ; New Brightbelmstone Directory,
1770.
i Tour in Derbyslijre, by Thomas Browne, son of Sir Thomas,
SIQ HISTORY, OF ENGLAND.
the capital, and in one of the richest and most highly civilised
parts of the kingdom, had mucii greater attractions. At present
we see there a town which would, a hundred and sixty years
ago, have ranked, in population, fourth or fifth among the towns
of England. The brilliancy of the shops and the luxury of
the private dwellings far surpasses anything that England
could then show. When the court, soon after the Restoration,
visited Tunbridge Wells, there was no town : but, within a
mile of the spring, rustic cottages, somewhat cleaner and
neater than the ordinary cottages of that time, were scattered over
the heath. Some of these cabins were movable and were
carried on sledges from one part of the common to another.
To these huts men of fashion, wearied with the din and smoke
of London, sometimes came in the summer to breathe fresh air,
and to catch a glimpse of rural life. During the season a kind
of fair was daily held near the fountain. The wives and daugh-
ters of the Kentish farmers came from the neisrhbourinsr villages
with cream, cherries, wheatears, and quails. To chaffer with
them, to flirt with them, to praise their straw hats and tight
heels, was a refreshing pastime to voluptuaries sick of the airs of
actresses and maids of honour. Milliners, toymen, and jewellers
came down from London, and opened a bazaar under the trees.
In one booth the politician might find his coffee and the London
Gazette ; in another were gamblers playing deep at basset ; and,
on fine evenings, the fiddles were in attendance, and there were
morris dances on the elastic turf of the bowling green. In
1685 a subscription had just been raised among those who fre~
quented the wells for building a church, which the Tories, who
then domineered everywhere, insisted on dedicating to Saint
Charles the Martyr.*
But at the head of the English watering places, without a
rival, was Bath. The springs of that city had been renowned
from the days of the Romans. It hnd been, during many cen-
turies, the seat of a Bishop. The sick repaired thither from
• Memoires de Grammoiit ; Hasted's Historv of Kent ; Tunbridge Wella, a
Comedy, lfi78; Cp.ugt.on's Tni)bridgia,l}a., 1668 ; M^teUus. a poem en Tunbridge
Wells, 1693.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1635. 317
every part of the realm. The King sometimes held his court
there. Nevertheless, Bath was then a maze of only four or five
hundred houses, crowded within an old wall in the vicinity of
the Avon. Pictures of what were considered as the finest of
those houses are still extant, and greatly resemble the lowest
rag shops and pothouses of Ratcliffe Highway Travellers
indeed complained loudly of the narrowness and meanness of the
streets. That beautiful city which charms even eyes familiar
with the masterpieces of Bramaiite and Palladio, and which the
genms of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of
Jane Austen, has made classic ground, had not begun to exist.
Milsom Street itself was an open field lying far beyond the walls ;
and hedgerows mtersected the space which is now covered by
the Crescent and the Circus. The poor patients to whom the
waters had been recommended lay on straw in a place which, to
use the language of a contemporary physician, was a covert
rather than a lodo-ini;:. As to the comforts and luxuries which
were to be found in the interior of the houses of Bath by the
fashionable visitors who resorted thither in search of health or
amusement, we possess information more complete and minute
than can generally be obtained on such subjects. . A writer who
published an account of that city about sixty years after the
Revolution has accurately desci-ibed the changes which had
taken place within his own recollection. He assures us that, in
his younger days, the gentlemen who visited the springs slept
in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see
occupied by footmen. The floors of the dining rooms were
uncarpeted, and were coloured brown with a wash made of soot
and small beer, in order to hide the dirt. Not a wainscot was
painted. Not a hearth or a chimneypiece was of marble. A
slab of common free-stone and fire irons which had cost from
three to four shillings were thought sufficient for any fireplace.
The best apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuflf, and
were furnished with rushbottomed chairs. Reader* who take
an interest in the progress of civilisation and of the useful arts
will be grateful to the humble topographer who has recorded
these facts, and will perhaps wish that historians of far higher
318 HISTORY OK ENGLAND.
pretensions had sometimes spared a few pages from military
evolution and political intrigues, for the purpose of letting us
know how the parlours and bedchambers of our ancestors looked.*
The position of London, relatively to the other towns of the
empire, was, in the time of Chai'les the Second, far higher than
at present, For at present the population of London is little
moi'e than six times the population of Manchester or of Liver-
pool, In the days of Charles the Second the population of
London was more than seventeen times the population of Bristol
or of Norwich. It may be doubted whether any other instance
can be mentioned of a great kingdom in which the fii'st city was
more than seventeen times as large as the second. There is
reason to believe that, in 1685, London had been, during about
half a century, the most populous capital in Europe. The
inhabitants, who are now at least nineteen hundred thousand,
were then probably little more than half a million. f London
had in the world only one commercial rival, now long ago out-
stripped, the mighty and opulent Amsterdam. English writers
boasted of the forest of masts and yardarms which covered the
river from the Bridge to the Tower, and of the stupendous sums
which were collected at the Custom House in Thames Street.
There is, indeed, no doubt that the trade of the metropolis then
bore a far greater proportion than at present to the whole trade
of the country; yet to our generation the honest vaunting of
our ancestors must appear almost ludicrous. The shipping
which they thought inci'edibly great appears not to have ex-
ceeded seventy thousand tons. This was, indeed, then moi'e
than a third of the whole tonnage of the kingdom, but is now
less than a fourth of the tonnage of Newcastle, and is nearly
lequalTed by the tonnage of the steam vessels of the Thames.
* See Wood's History of Bath, 1749; Evelyn's Diary, June 27, 1654; Pepys's Diary,
.June 12j 1668; Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosnm; Collinson's Somersetshire; Dr.
Pelrce's History* and Memoirs of the Bath, 1713, Book I, chap, viii, obs. 2, 1684. I
have consulted several old maps and pictures of Bath, particularly one curious map
which is surrounded by views of the principal buildings. It bears the date of 1717.
+ According to King 530,000 (1848). In 1851 the population of London exceeded
2.300,000. (1857.)
STATE OF KNOLANl) IN 1685. 819
The customs of Londou amounted, in 1685, to about three hun-
dred and th:r.y thousand pounds a year. In our time the net
duty paid annually, at the same place, exceeds ten millions.*
Whoever examines the maps of London which were pub- j3
lished towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second
will see that only the nucleus of the present capital then ex-
isted. The town did not, as now, fade by imperceptible degrees
into the country. No long avenues of villas, embowered in
lilacs and laburnums, extended from the great centre of wealth
and civilisation almost to the boundaries of Middlesex and far
into the heart of Kent and Surrey. In the east, no part of the
immense line of warehouses and artificial lakes wiiich now
stretches from the Tower to Blackwall had even been projected.
On the west, scarcely one of those stately piles of buildiug
which are inhabited by the noble and wealthy was in existence ;
and Chelsea, which is now peopled by more than forty thousand
human beings, was a quiet country village with about a thou-
sand inhabitants.! On the north, cattle fed, and sportsmen
wandered with dogs and guns, over the site of the borough of
Marylebone, and over far the greater part of the space now
covered by the boroughs of Finsbury and of tlie Tower Hamlets.
Islington was almost a solitude ; and poets loved to contrast its
silence and repose with the din and turmoil of the monster
London, t On the south the capital is now connected with its
suburb by several bridges, not inferior in magnificence and
solidity to the noblest works of the Ccesars. In 1685, a single
line of irregular ai-ches, overhung by piles of mean and crazy
houses, and garnished, after a fashion worthy of the naked bar-
barians of Dahomy, with scores of mouldering heads, impeded
the navigation of the river.
* Macpherson'9 History of Commerce ; Chalmers's Estimate ; Cliamlierlayiie's
State of England, 1684. The tonnage of the steamers belonging to the port of
London was, at the end of 1847, about CO,COJ tons. The customs of the port, from
1842 to 18-15. very nearly averaged 11,000,000/. (1848.) In 1854 the tonnage of the
Bteamers of the port of London amounted to 138,000 toua, without reckoning
vessels of less than fifty tons. (1857.)
t Lyson's Environs of London. The baptisms at Chelsea, between 1680 «a4
1690, were only 42 a year-
I Cowley, Discourse of Solitude.
320 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Of the metropolis, the City, properly so called, was the
most important division. At the time of the Restoration it
had been built, for the most part, of wood and plaster: tVie
few bricks that were used were ill baked ; the booths where
goods were exposed to sale projected far into the streets, and
were overhung by the upper stories. A few specimens of this
architecture may still be seen in those districts which were not
reached by the great fire. That fire had, in a few days, covered
a space of little less than a square mile with the ruins of eighty-
nine churches and of tliirteen thousand houses. But the City
had risen again with a celerity which had excited the admiration
of neighbouring countries. Unfortunately, the old lines of the
streets had been to a great extent preserved ; and those lines,
originally traced in an age when even princesses performed
their journeys on horseback, were often too narrow to allow,
wheeled carriages to pass each other with ease, and were there-
fore ill adapted for the residence of wealthy persons in an age
when a coach and six was a fashionable luxury. The style of
building was, however, far superior to that of the City which
had perished. The ordinaiy material was brick, of much better
quality than had formerly been used. On the sites of the
ancient parish churches had arisen a multitude of new domes,
towers, and spires which bore the mark of the fertile genius of
Wren. In eveiy place save one the traces of the great devas-
tation had been completely effaced. But the crowds of work-
men, the scaffolds, and the masses of hewn stone were still to
be seen where the noblest of Protestant temples was slowly
rising on the ruins of the Old Cathedral of Saint Paul.*
The whole character of the City has, since that time, under-
gone a complete change. At jiresent the bankers, the merchants,
and the chief shopkeepers repair thither on six mornings of every
week for the transaction of business ; but they reside in other
* The fullest and most trustworthy information about the state of th& build-
ings of London at this time is to by derived from the maps and drawings in tho
British Museum and in the Pepysian Library. The badness of tlie bricIcB in the
old buildings of London is particularly mentioned in the Travels of the Grand
Duke Cosmo. There is an account of the works at Saint Paul's in 'Ward's Lon-
don Spy. I am almost ashamed to quote such nauseous balderdash ; but I hare
been forced to descend even lower, if possible, in search of materials.
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 321
quarters of the metropolis, or at suburban country seats sur-
rounded by shrubberies and flower gardens. This revolution in
private habits has produced a political revolution of no small
importance. The City is no longer regarded by the wealthiest
traders with that attachment which every man naturally feels for
his home. It is no longer associated in their minds with domes-
tic affections and endearments. The fireside, the nursery, the
social table, the -quiet bed are not there. Lombard Street and
Threadneedle Street are merely places where men toil and ac-
cumulate. They go elsewhere to enjoy and ^to expend. On a
Sunday, or in an evening after the hours of business, some
courts and alleys, which a few hour.? before had been alive with
hurrying feet and anxious faces, areas silent as the glades of a
forest. The chiefs of the mercantile interest are no lonser cit-
izens. They avoid, they almost contemn, municipal honours and
duties. Those honours and duties are abandoned to men who,
though useful and highly respectable, seldom belong to the
princely commercial houses of which the names are renowned
throughout the world.
In the seventeenth century the City was the merchant's res-
idence. Those mansions of the great old burghers which still
exist have been turned into counting houses and warehouses :
but it is evident that they were originally not inferior in magnifi-
cence to the dwellings which were then inhabited by the nobil-
ity. They sometimes stand in retired and gloomy courts, and
are accessible only by inconvenient passages ; but their dimen-
sions are ample, and their aspect stately. The entrances are
decorated with richly carved pillars and canopies. The staircases
and landing places are not wanting in grandeur. The floors
are sometimes of wood tessellated after the fashion of France.
The palace of Sir Robert Clayton, in the Old Jewry, contained
a superb banqueting room wainscoted with cedar, and adorned
with battles of gods and giants in fresco.* Sir Dudley North
expended four thousand pounds, a sum which would then have
been important to a Duke, on the rich furniture of his re-
ception rooms in Basinghall Street, f In such abodes, under
" Evelyn's l)iary, Sept. 20. 1672. t Roger North's Lifft of Sir Dudley North.
.21
522 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the last Stuarts, the hQ3,ds of the great firms lived splendidly and
hospitably. To their dwelling place they were bound by the
strongest ties of interest and affection. There they had passed
their youth, had made their friendships, had courted their wives,
had seen their children grow up, had laid the remains of their
parents in the earth, and expected that their own remains would
be laid. That intense patriotism which is peculiar to the mem-
bers of societies congregated within a narrow space was, in such
circumstances, strongly developed. London was, to the Londoner,
what Athens was to the Athenian of the age of Pericles, what
Florence was to the Florentine of the fifteenth century. The
citizen was proud of the grandeur of his city, punctilious about
her claims to respect, ambitious of her offices, and zealous for
her franchises.
At the close of the reign of Charles the Second the pride of
the Londoners was smarting from a cruel mortification. The
old charter had been taken away ; and the magistracy had been
remodelled. All. the civic functionaries were Tories : and the
Whigs, though in numbers and in wealth, superior to their oppo-
nents, found themselves excluded from every local dignity.
Nevertheless, the external splendour of the municipal govern-
ment was not diminished, nay, was rather increased by this
change. For, under the administration of some Puritans who
had lately borne rule, the ancient fame of the City for good
cheer had declined : but under the new magistrates, who belong-
ed to a more festive party, and at whose boards guests of rank
and fashion from beyond Temple Bar were often seen, the
Guildhall and the halls of the great companies were enlivened
by many sumptuous banquets. During these repasts, odes com-
posed by the poet laureate of the corporation, in praise of the
King, the Duke, and the Mayor, were sung to music. The
drinking was deep and the shouting loud. An observant Tory,
who had often shared in these revels, has remarked that the prac
tice of huzzaing after drinking healths dates from this joyous
period.*
* North's Examen. This amusing writer has preserved a specimen of the sub-
lime raptures in which the Pir.dar of the City indulged :—
" The worshipful Sir John Moor !
After age that name adore 1 "
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 323
The magnificence displayed by the first civic magistrate was
almost regal. The gilded coach, indeed, which is now annually
admired by the crowd, was not yet a part of lys state. On great
occasions he appeared on horseback, attended by a long cavalcade
inferior in magnificence only to that which, before a coronation,
escorted the sovei-eign from the Towe'r to Westminster. The
Lord Mayor was never seen in public without his rich robe, his
hood of black velvet, his gold chain, his jewel, and a great
attendance of harbingers and guards.* Nor did the world find
anything ludicrous in the pomp which constantly surrounded
him. For it was not more than became the place which, as
wielding the strength and representing the dignity of the City
of London, he was entitled to occuj^y in the State. That City,
being then not only without equal in the country, but without
second, had, during five and forty years, exercised almost as
great an influence on the politics of England as Paris has, in
our own time, exercised on the politics of France. In Intelli-
gence London was greatly in advance of every other part of
the kingdom. A government, supported and trusted by London,
could in a day obtain such pecuniary means as it would have
taken months to collect from the rest of the island. Nor were
the military resources of the capital to be despised. The power
which the Lord Lieutenants exercised in other parts of the
kingdom was in London entrusted to a Commission of emment
citizens. Under the order of this Commission were twelve
regiments of foot and two regiments of horse. An army of
drapers' apprentices and journeymen tailors, with common
councilmen for captains and aldermen for colonels, might not
indeed have been able to stand its ground against regular troops ;
but there were then very few regular troops in the kingdom.
A town, therefore, which could send forth, at an hour's notice,
thousands of men, abounding in natural courage, provided with
tolerable weapons, and not altogether untinctured with martial
discipline, could not but be a valuable ally and a formidable
enemy. It was not forgotten that Hampden and Pynj had been
* Cbamberlayne's state of England, 1G84; Anglise Metropolis, 1690 ; Seymour'f
Loncjon, X734,
324 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
protected from lawless tyranny by the London trainbands ; that,
in the great crisis of the civil war, the London trainbands had
inarched to raise the siege of Gloucester ; or that, in the move-
ment against the military tyrants which followed the downfall
of Richard Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal
part. In truth, it is no exaggeration to say that, but for the
hostility of the City, Charles the First would never have been
vanquished, and that, without the help of the City, Charles the
Second could scarcely have been restored.
These considerations may serve to explain why, in spite of
that attraction which had, during a long course of years,
gradually drawn the aristocracy westward, a few men of liigh
rank had continued, till a very recent period, to dwell in the
vicinity of the Exchange and of the Guildhall. Shaftesbury
and Buckingham, while engaged in bitter and unscrupulous op-
position to the government, had thought that tliey could no-
wnere carry on their intrigues so conveniently or so securely as
under the protection of the City magistrates and the City militia.
Shaftesbury had therefore lived in Aldersgate Street, at a house
which may still be easily known by pilasters and wreaths, the
graceful work of Inigo. Buckingham had ordered his mansion
near Charing Cross, once the abode of the Archbishops of York,
to be pulled down ; and, while streets and alleys which are still
named after him were rising on that site, chose to reside in
Dowgate.*
These, however, were rare exceptions. Almost all the noble
families of England had long migrated beyond the walls. The
district where most of their town houses stood lies between the
city and the regions which are now considered as fashionable.
A few great men still retained their hereditary hotels in the
Strand, The stately dwellings on the south and west of Lin-
coln's Inn Fields, the Piazza of Coveut Garden, Southampton
Square, which is now called Bloomsbury Square, and King's
Square in Soho Fields, which is now called Soho Square, were
among the favourite spots. Foreign princes were carried to
* North's Examen, 116 ; "Wood, Ath. Ox, Shaftesbury • The Duke of B.'s
Litany.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 325
see Bloomsbury Square, as one of the wonders of England.*
Soho Square, which had just been built, was to our ancestors a
subject of pride with which their posterity will hardly sympa-
thise. Monmouth Square had been the name whil^ the fortunes
of the Duke of Monmouth flourished ; and on the southern side
towered his mansion. The front, though ungraceful, was lofty
and richly adorned. The walls of the principal apartments
were finely sculptured with fruit, foliage, and armorial bearings,
and were hung with embroidered satin. f Every trace of this
magnificence has long disappeared ; and no aristocratical man-
sion is to be found in that once aristocratical quarter. A little
way north from Holborn, and on the verge of the pastures and
corn-fields, rose two celebrated palaces, each with an ample
'garden. One of them, then called Southampton House, and
subsequently Bedford House, was removed about fifty years
ago to make room for a new city, which now covers with its
squares, streets, and churches, a vast area, renowned in the
seventeenth century for peaches and snipes. The other, IMon-
tague House, celebrated for its frescoes and furniture, was, a
few months after the death of Charles the Second, burned to the
ground, and was speedily succeeded by a more magnificent
Montague House, which, having been long the repository of
such various and precious treasures of art, science, and learning
as were scarcely ever before assembled under a single roof, has
now given place to an edifice more magnificent still. t
Nearer to the Court, on a space called St. James's Fields,
had just been built St. James's Square and Jermyn Street.
St. James's Church had recently been opened for the accommo-
dation of the inhabitants of this new quarter. § Golden Square,
which was in the next generation inhabited bv lords and min-
isters of state, had not yet been begun. Indeed the only
dwellings to be seen on the north of Piccadilly were threo or
four isolated and almost rural mansions, of which the most
* Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.
t Chamberlayiie's State of England, 1684 ; Pennant's London ; Smith's Life
of Nollekens.
t Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 10, 1683, Jan. 19, 1685-6.
J Stat. 1 Jac. II. c. 22 ; Evelyn's Diary, Dec. 7, 1684.
526 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
celebrated was the costly pile erected by Clarendon, and nick,
named Dunkirk House. It had been purchased after its found-
er's downfall by the Duke of Albemarle. The Clarendon
Hotel and Albemarle Street still preserve the memory of the
site.
He who then rambled to what is now the gayest and most
crowded part of Regent Street found himself in a solitude, and
was sometimes so fortunate as to have a shot at a woodcock.*
On the north the Oxford road ran between hedges. Three or
four hundred yards to the south were the garden walls of a few
great houses which were considered as quite out of town. On
the west was a meadow renowned for a sprii)g from which, long
afterwards. Conduit Street was named. On the east was a
field not to be passed without a shudder by any Londoner of
that age. There, as in a place far from the haunts of men, had
been dug, twenty years before, when the great plague was
raging, a pit into which the dead carts had nightly shot corpses
by scores. It was popularly believed that the earth was deeply
tainted with infection, and could not be disturbed without im-
minent risk to human life. No foundations were laid there till
two generations had passed without any return of the pesti-
lence, and till the ghastly spot had long been surrounded by
buildings. t
We should greatly err if we were to suppose that any of
the streets and squares then bore the same aspect as at present.
The great majority of the houses, indeed, have, since that time,
been wholly, or in great part, rebuilt. If the most fashionable
parts of the capital could be placed before us such as they then
were, we should be disgusted by their squalid appearance, and
poisoned by their noisome atmosphere.
In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close
to the dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters
♦ Old General Oglethorpe, who died in 1785, used to boast that he had shot
birds here in Anne's reign. See Pennant's London, and the Gentleman's Maga-
zine for July, 1785.
t The pest field will be seen in maps of London a« late as the end of George
the First's reign.
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 327
fought, cabbage stalks aud rotten apples accumulated in heaps
at the thresholds of the Countess of -Berkshire and of the
Bishop of Durham.*
The centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields was an open space where
the rabble congregated every evening, within a few yards of
Cardigan House aud Winchester House, to hear mountebanks
harangue, to see bears dance, and to set dogs at oxen. Rub-
bish was shot in every part of the area. Horses were exer-
cised there. The beggars were as noisy and importunate as in
the worst governed cities of the Continent. A Lincoln's Inn
mumper was a proverb. The whole fraternity knew the arms
and liveries of every charitably disposed grandee in the neigh-
bourhood, and as soon as his lordship's coach and six appeared,
came hopping and crawling in crowds to persecute him. These
disorders lasted, in spite of many accidents, and of some legal
proceedings, till, in the reign of George the Second, Sir Joseph
Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, was knocked down and nearly killed
in the middle of the Square. Then at length palisades were
set up, and a pleasant garden laid out.f
Saint James's Square was a receptacle for all the oifal and
cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster. At
one time'a cudgel player kept the ring there. At another time an
impudent squatter settled himself there, and built a shed for rub-
bish under the windows of the gilded saloons in which the first
magnates of the realm, Norfolk, Ormond, Kent, and Pembroke,
gave banquets and balls. It was not till these nuisances bad
lasted through a whole generation, and till much had been writ-
» See a very curious plan of Covent Garden made about 1C90, and engraved
for Smiths History of Westminster. See also Hogarth's Morning, painted while
some of the houses in the Piazza were still occupied by people of fashion.
t London Spy ; Tom Brown's coniical View of London and Westminster ;
Turner's Propositions for the employing of the Poor, 1678 ; Daily Coiirant j»nd
Daily Journal of June 7, 1733 ; Case of Michael v. Allestree, in 1676, 2 Levinz, p.
172. Michael had been run over by two horses which Allestree was breaking in
Lincoln's Inn Fields. The declaration set forth that the defendant " porta deux
chivals ungovernable en un coach, et improvise, incaute, et absque debita con-
sideratione ineptitudinis loci la eux drive pur eux faire tractable et apt pur
un coach, quels chivals, pur ceo que, per leur ferocite,ne poientestre rule, curro
Bur le plaintifC et le noie."
S28 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ten about them, that the inhabitants applied to Parliament foJ
permission to put up rails, and to plant trees.*
When such was the state of the region inhabited by the
most luxurious portion of society, we may easily believe that the
great body of the population suffered what would now be con-
sidered as insupportable grievances. The pavement was detest-
able : all foreigners cried shame upon it. The drainage was
so bad that in rainy weather the gutters soon became torrents.
Several facetious poets have commemorated the fury with which
these black rivulets roared down Snow Hill and Ludgate Hill,
bearing to Fleet Ditch a vast tribute of animal and vegetable
filth from the stalls of butchers and greengrocers. This flood
was profusely thrown to right and left by coaches and carts.
To keep as far from the carriage road as possible was therefore
the wish of every pedestrian. The mild and timid gave the
wall. The bold and athletic took it. If two roisterers met,
tlisy cocked their hats in each other's faces, aud pushed each
other about till the weaker was shoved towards the kennel. If
he was a mere bully he sneaked off, muttering that he should
find a time. If he was pugn-vcious, the encounter probably
ended in a duel behind Montague House, t
The houses were not numbered. There would indeed have
been little advantage in numbering them ; for of the coachmen,
chairmen, porters, and errand boys of London, a very small
proportion could read. It was necessary to use marks which
the most ignorant could understand. The shops were therefore
distinguished by painted or sculptured signs, which gave a gay
and grotesque aspect to the streets. The walk from Charing
Cross to Whitechapel lay through an endless succession of Sar-
acens' Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears, and Golden Lambs,
which disappeared when they were no longer required for the
direction of the common people.
* Stat. 12 Geo. I. c. 25 ; Commons' Journals, Feb. 25, March 2, 1725-6 ; London
Gardener, 1712 ; Evening Post, March, 23, 1731. I have not been able to find this
number of the Evening Post ; I therefore quote it on the faith of Mr. Malcolm,
who mentions it in his History of London.
t Lettres sur les Anglois, written early iu the reign of "William the Third ;
Swift's City Shower ; Gay's Trivia. Johnson used to relate a curious conversation
which he had with his mother about giving and taking the wall.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 329
"When the evening closed in, the difficulty and dangoi* of
walking about Loudon became serious indeed. The garret win-
dows were opened, and pails were emptied, with little regard to
those who were passing below. Falls, bruises and broken bones
were of constant occurrence. For, till the last year of the reign
of Charles the Second, most of the streets were left in profound
darkness. Thieves and robbers plied their trade with impunity :
yet they were hardly so terrible to peaceable citizens as another
class of ruffians. It was a favourite amusement of dissolute
young gentlemen to swagger by night about the town, breaking
windows, upsetting sedans, beating quiet men, and offering r«de
caresses to pretty women. Several dynasties of these tyrants
had, since the Restoration, domineered over the streets. The
Muns and Tityre Tus had given place to the Hectors, and the
Hectors had been recently succeeded by the Scourers. At a
later period arose the Nicker, the Hawcubite, and the yet more
dreaded name of Mohawk.* The machinery for keeping the
peace was utterly contemptible. There was an Act of Common
Council which provided that more than a thousand watchmen
should be constantly on the alert in the city, from sunset to_
sunrise, and that every inhabitant should take his turn of duty.
But this Act was negligently executed. Few of those who were
summoned left their homes ; and those few generally found it
more agreeable to tipple in alehouses than to pace the streets. f
It ought to be noticed that, in the last year of the reign of
Charles the Second, began a great change in the police of Lon-
don, a change which has perhaps added as much to the happiness
of the body of the people as revolutions of much greater fame.
* Oldham's Imitation of tlio 3d Satire of Juvenal, 1G82 ; Shadwell's Scourers,
1690. Many other authorities will readily occur to all who are acquainted with
the popular literatvire of that and the succeeding generation It may be suspected
that Som3 of the Tityre Tus, like good Cavaliers, broke Milton's windows shortly
after the Restoration I am confident that he was thinking of those pests of Lon-
don when he dictated the noble lines :—
"And in luxurious cities, when the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers.
And injury and outrage, and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Kclial, flown with insolence and wine."
t Seymour's London.
830 HISTOilT OF ENGLAND.
An ingenious projector, named Edward Heming, obtained letters
patent conveying to him, for a term of years, the exclusive right
of lighting up London. He undertook, for a moderate consid-
eration, to place a light before every tenth door, on moonlcsi
nights, from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and from six to twelve
of the clock. Those who now see the capital all the year
round, from dusk to dawn, blazing with a splendour beside which
the illuminations for La Hogue and Blenheim would have look-
ed pale, may perhaps smile to think of Heming's lanterns, which
glimmered feebly before one house in ten during a small part of
one night in three. But such was not the feeling of his contem-
poraries. His scheme was enthusiastically applauded, and
furiously attacked. The friends of improvement extolled him
as the greatest of all the benefactors of his city. What, they
asked, were the boasted inventions of Archimedes, when com-
pared with the achievement of the man who had turned the
nocturnal shades into noon-day ? In spite of these eloquent eulo-
gies the cause of darkness was not left undefended. There were
fools in that age who opposed the introduction of what w:is called
the new light as strenuously as fools in our age have opposed
the introduction of vaccination and railroads, as strenuously as
the fools of an age anterior to the dawn of history doubtless
opposed the introduction of the plough and of alphabetical
writing. Many years after the date of Heming's patent there
were extensive districts in which no lamp was seen.*
We may easily imagine what, in such times, must have been
the state of the quarters of London which were peopled by the
outcasts of society. Among those quarters one had attained a
Bcandalous preeminence. On the confines of the City and the
Temple had been founded, in the thirteenth century, a House of
Carmelite Friars, distinguished by their white hoods. The
precinct of this house hadj^ before the Reformation, been
sanctuary for criminals, and still retained the privilege of pro-
tecting debtors from arrest. Insolvents consequently were to
be found in every dwelling, from cellar to garret. Of these
* Angliae Metropolis, 1690, Sect. 17, entitled, " Of the new lights " ; Seymour's
lx>ndon.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 331
A large proportion were knaves and libertines, and were follow-
ed to their asylum by women more abandoned than themselves.
The civil power was unable to keep order in a district swarming
with such inhabitants ; and thus Whitefriars became the favour-
ite resort of all who wished to be emancipated from the restraints
of the law. Though the immunities legally belonging to the
place extended only to cases of debt, cheats, false witnesses, for-
gers, and highwaymen found refuge there. For amidst a rabble
so desperate no peace officer's life was in safety. At the cry of
" Rescue," bullies with swords and cud^-els, and termao'ant hairs
with spits and broomsticks, poured forth by hundreds ; and the
intruder was fortunate if he escaped back into Fleet Street,
hustled, stripped, and pumped upon. Even the warrant of the
Chief Justice of England could not be executed without the
help of a company of musketeers. Such relics of the barbarism
of the darkest ages were to be found within a short walk of the
chambers where Somers was studying history and law, of the
chapel where Tillotson was preaching, of the coffee house where
Dryden was passing judgment on poems and plays, and of the
hall whei'e the Royal Society was examining the astronomical
system of Isaac Newton.*
Each of the two cities which made up the capital of England
had its own centre of attraction. In the metropolis of com-
merce the point of convergence was the Exchange ; in the me-
tropolis of fashion the Palace. But the Palace did not retain
its influence so long as the Exchange. The Revolution com-
pletely altered the relations between the Court and the higher
classes of society. It was by degrees discovered that the King,
in his individual capacity, had very little to give ; that coronets
and garters, bishoprics and embassies, lordships of the Treasury
and tellerships of the Exchequer, nay, even charges in the royal
stud and bedchamber, were really bestowed, not by him, but by
his advisers. Every ambitious and covetous man perceived
that he would consult his own interest far better by acquiring
the dominion of a Cornish borough, and by rendering good ser*
• Stowe's Survey of London ; Shatlwell's Squire of Alsatia ; Ward's London
6py : Stat. 8 & 9 Qui. nl. cap. 27.
S32 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
vice to the ministry during a critical session, than by becoming
the companion, or even the minion, of his prince. It was there-
fore in the antechambers, not of George the First and of George
the Second, but of Walpole and of Pelham, that the daily
crowd of courtiers was to be found. It is also to be remarked
that the same Revolution, which made it impossible tliat our
Kings should use the patronage of the state merely for the pur-
pose of gratifying their personal predilections, gave us several
Kings unfitted by their education and habits to be gi'acious and
affable hosts. They had been born and bred on the Continent.
They never felt themselves at home in our island. If they
spoke our language, they spoke it inelegantly and with
effort. Our national character they never fully understood.
Our national manners they hardly attempted to acquire. The
most important part of their duty they performed better than,
any ruler who preceded them : for they governed strictly ac-
cording to law : but they could not be the first gentlemen of the
realm, the heads of polite society. If ever they unbent, it was
in a very small circle where hardly an English face was to ba
seen ; and they were never so happy as when they could escape
for a summer to their native land. They had indeed their days
of reception for our nobility and gentry ; but the reception was
a mere matter of form, and became at last as solemn a ceremony
as a funeral.
Not such was the court of Charles the Second. Whitehall,
when he dwelt there, was the focus of political intrigue and
of fashionable gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting
of the metropolis went on under his roof. Whoever could
make himself agreeable to the prince, or could secure the good
ofiices of the mistress, might hope to rise in the world without
rendering any service to the government, without being even
known by sight to any minister of state. This courtier got a
frigate, and that a company ; a third, the pardon of a rich
offender ; a fourth, a lease of crown land on easy terms. If
the King notified his pleasure that a briefless lawyer should be
made a judge, or that a libertine baronet should be made a
pa«r, the gravest counsellors, after a little mui'muring, sub-
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1G85. 333
mitted.* Interest, therefore, drew a constant press of suitors
to the gates of the palace ; and those gates always stood wide.
The King kept open house every day, and all day long, for the
good society of London, the extreme Whigs only excepted.
Hardly any gentleman had any difficulty in making his way to
the royal presence. The levee was exactly what the word
imports. Some men of quality came every morning to stand
round their master, to chat with him while his wig was combed
and his cravat tied, and to accompany him iu his early walk
through the Park. All persons who had been properly intro-
duced might, without any special invitation, go to see him dine,
sup, dance, and play at hazai-d, and might have the pleasure of
hearing him tell stories, which indeed he told remarkably well.,
about his flight from Worcester, and about the misery which he
had endured when he was a state prisoner in the hands of the
canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanders whom
His Majesty recognis d often came in for a courteous word.
This proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his
father or grandfather had practised. It was not easy for the
most austere republican of the school of Marvel to resist the
fascination of so much good humour and affability; and many
a veteran Cavalier, iu whose heart the remembrance of unre-
quited sacrifices and services had been festering during twenty
years, was compensated in one moment for wounds and seques-
trations by his sovereign's kind nod, and " God bless you, my
old friend!"
Whitehall naturally- became the chief staple of news.
Whenever there was a rumour that anything important had
happened or was about to happen, people hastened thither to
obtain Intel. igence from the fountain head. The galleries
presented the appearance of a modern club room at an anxious
time. They were full of people enquiring whether the Dutch
mail was in, what tidings the express from France had brought,
whether John Sobiesky had beaten the Turks, whether the
* See Sir Roger North's account of the way in which "Wright was made a
Judge, and Clarendon's account of the way in which Sir George Savil'^ was mads
A peer.
U34 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Doge of Genoa was really at Paris. These were matters about
W^hich it was safe to talk aloud. But there were subjects con-
cerning which information was asked and given in whispers.
Had Halifax orot the better of Rochester ? Was there to be a
Parliament ? "Was the Duke of York really going to Scotland ?
Had Monmouth really been summoned from the Hague ? Men
tried to read the couutenauce of every minister as he went
through the throng to and from the royal closet. All sorts of
auguries were drawn from the tone in which His Majesty spoke
to the Lord President, or from the laugh with which His
Majesty honoured a jest of the Lord Privy Seal ; and in a few
hours the hopes and fears inspired by such slight indications
had spread to all the coffee houses from Saint James's to the
Tower.*
The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory men-
tion. It might indeed at that time have been not improperly
called a most important political institution. No Parliament
had sat for years. The municipal council of the City had ceased
to speak the sense of the citizens. Public meetings, harangues,
resolutions, and the rest of the modern machinery of agitation
had not yet come into fashion. Nothing resembling the modern
newsp.aper existed. In such circumstances the coffee houses
were the chief organs through which the public opinion of the
me£ropolis vented itself.
The first of these establishments had been set up by a Turkey
merchant, who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste for
their favourite beverage. The convenience of being able to
make appointments in any part of the town, and of being able
to pass evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great
that the fashion spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle
class went daily to his coffee house to learn the news and to dis-
cuss it. Every coffee house had one or more orators to whose
eloquence the crowd listened with admiration, and who soon be-
* The sources from which I have drawn my information about the state of
the Court are too numei*ous to recapitulate. Among them are the Despatches
of Barillon, Van Citters, Ronquillo, and Adda, the Travels of the Grand T)uke
Cosmo, the works of Roger North, the Diaries of Pepys, Evelyn, and T<^nge,
and the Memoirs of Grammont and Reresby.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 385
ame, what the journalists of our time have been called, a fourth
Estate of the realm. The Court had long seen with uneasiness
the growth of this new joower in the state. An attempt had
been made, during Danby's administration, to close the coffee
houses. But men of all parties missed their usual places of
resort so much that there was an universal outcry. The govern-
ment did not venture, in opposition to a feeling so strong and
general, to enforce a regulation of which the legality might well
be questioned. Since that time ten years had elapsed, and during
those years the number and influence of the coffee houses had
been constantly increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee
house was that which especially distinguished London from all
other cities ; that the coffee house was the Londoner's home, and
(/'that those who wished to find a gentleman commonly asked,
not whether he lived in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane, but
whether he frequented the Grecian or the Rainbow. Nobody
was excluded from these places who laid down his penny at the
bar. Yet every rank and profession, and every shade of religious
and political opinion, had its own head quarters. There were
houses near Saint James's Park where fops congregated, their
heads and shoulders covered with black or flaxen wigs, not less
ample than those which are now worn by the Chancellor and by
the Speaker of the House of Commons. The wig came from
Paris and so did the rest of the fine gentleman's ornaments, his em-
broidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the tassel which upheld
his pantaloons. The conversation was in that dialect which,
long after it had ceased to be spoken in fashionable circles, con-
tinued, in the mouth of Lord Foppington, to excite the mirth of
theatres.* The atmosphere was like that of a perfumer's shop.
Tobacco in any other form than that of richly scented snuff
was held in abomination. II any clown, ignorant of the usages
of the house, called for a pipe, the sneers of the whole assembly
and the short answers of the waiters soon convinced him that he
* The chief peculiarity of this dialect was that, in a large class of words, the
Owas pronounced like A. Thus Lord was pronounced Lard. See Vanbrugh's
Relapse. Lord Sunderland was a great master of this court tune, as Roger
North calls it ; and Titus Gates affected it in the hope of passing for a fine gentle
man. Examen, 77, 254.
336 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
had better go somewhere else. Nor, indeed, would he have had
far to go. For, in general the coffee rooms reeked with tobacco
like a guardroom: and strangers sometimes expressed their
surprise that so many people should leave their own firesides to
sit in the midst of eternal fog and stench. Nowhere was the
smoking more constant than at AVill's. That celebrated house,
situated between Covent Garden and Bo .v Street, was sacred to
polite letters. There the talk was about poetical justice and
the unities of place and time. There was a faction for Perrault
and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and the ancients. One
group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not to have been in
rhyme. To another an envious poetaster demonstrated that
Venice Preserved ought to have been hooted from the stage.
Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be seen.
There were Earls in stars and garters, clergymen in cassocks
and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the Universities,
translators and index makers in ragged coats of frieze. The
great press was to get near the chair where John Dry den sate.
In winter that chair was always in the warmest nook by the fire ;
in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the Laureate,
and to hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy or of Bossu's
treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from
his snuff box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a vounof
enthusaist. There were coffee houses where the first medical
men might be consulted. Doctor John Radcliffe, who, in the
year 1685, rose to the largest practice in London, came daily, at
the hour when the Exchange was full, from his house in Bow
Street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to Garrawny's,
and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and apothecaries,
at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee houses where
no oath was heard, and where lankhaired men discussed election
and reprobation through their noses ; Jew coffee houses where
darkey ed money changers from Venice and Amsterdam greeted
each other ; and Popish coffee houses where, as good Protestants
believed, Jesuits planned, over their cups, another great fire, and
cast silver bullets to shoot the King.*
* Lettres sur les Anglois ; Tom Brown's Tour ; Ward's London Spy ; The Char-
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 337
These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the
character of the Londoner of that age. He was, indeed, a dif,
ferent being from the rustic Englishman. There was not then
the intercourse which now exists between the two classes.
Only very great men were in the habit of dividing the year be-
tween town and country. Few esquires came to the capital
thrice in their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of all citizens
in easy circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields and
woods during some weeks of every summer, A cockney, in a
rural village, was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a
Kraal of Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of a
Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he
was as easily distinguished from the resident population as a
Turk or a Lascar. His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner
in which he gazed at the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran
against the porters, and stood under the waterspouts, marked
him out as an excellent subject for the operations of swindlers
and banterers. Bullies jostled him into the kennel. Hackney
coachmen splashed him from head to foot. Thieves explored
with perfect security the huge pockets of his horseman's coat,
while he stood entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor's
show. Moneydroppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced
themselves to him, and appeared to him the most honest friendjy
gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women, the refuse
of Lewkner Lane .and Whetstone Park, passed themselves on
him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way
to Saint James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If he
went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit pur-
chaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of second-
hand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that would not go.
If he rambled into any fashionable coffee house, ne became a
mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery
acter of a Coffee House, 1673 ; Rules and Orders of the Coffee House, 1074 ; Cof-
fee Houses vindicated, 1G75 ; A Satyr against Coffee ; Norths Examen, 138 ; Life
of Guildford«152 ; Life of Sir Dudley North, 149 ; Life of Dr. Kadclifle, published
by CurU in 1715. The liveliest description of Will's is in the City and Country
Mouse. There is a remarkable passage about the influence of the coffee bousQ
orators in Halstead's Succinct Genealogies, printed in 1685.
338 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
of Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his
mansion, and there, in the homage of his tenants and the con-
versation of his boon companions, found consolation for the
vexations and humiliations wliich he had under<rone. There
he was once more a great man, and saw nothing above himself
except when at the assizes he took his seat on the bench near
the Judge, or when at the muster of the militia he saluted the
Lord Lieutenant.
The chief cause which made the fusion of the different ele-
ments of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which
our ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all m-
ventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted,
those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the
civilisation of our species. Every improvement of the means
of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectuallv as
well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of
the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove
national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the
branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth cen-
tury the inhabitants of London wei'e, for almost every practical
purpose, farther from Reading than they now are from Edin-
burgh, and farther from Edinburgh than they now are from
Vienna.
The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true,
quite unacquainted with that principle which has, in our own
time, produced an unprecedented revolution in human affairs,
which has enabled navies to advance in face of wind and tide,
and brigades of troops, attended by all their baggage and artil-
lery, to traverse kingdoms at a pace equal to that of the fleetest
race horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recently observed
the expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many
experiments he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam en-
gine, which he called a fire water work, and which he pro-
nounced to be an admirable and most forcible instrument of
propulsion.* But the Marquess was suspected to be a mad'
* Century of Inventions, 1663, No. 68
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 339
man, and known to be a Papist. Hi^ inventions, therefore
found no favourable reception. His fire water work might,
perhaps, furnish matter for conversation at a meeting of the
Royal Society, but was not applied to any practical purpose.
There were no railways, except a few made of timber, on which
coals were carried from the mouths of the Northumbrian pits
to the banks of the Tyae.* There was very little internal
communication by water. A few attempts had been made to
deepen and embank the natural streams, but with slender suc-
cess. Hardly a single navigable canal had been even projected.
The English of that day were in the habit of talking with
mingled a.imiration and<les[);iir of the immense trench by which
Lewis the Fourteenth had made a junction between the j^tl an-
tic and the Mediterranean. They little thought that their
country would, in the course of a few generations, be inter-
sected, at the cost of private adventurers, by artificial rivers
making up more than four times the length of the Thame?, the
Severn, and the Trent together.
It was by the highways that both travellers and goods gen-
erally passed from place to place ; and tl»<<se highways a})pear
to have been far worse than might have been expected from the
desree of wealth and civilisation which the natiou had even then
attained. On the best lines of communication^ the ruts were
deep, the descents precipitous, and the way ofte<» >uch as it was
hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from *he unenclosed
heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thorseby, the
antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the great North
road, between Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his
way between Doncaster and York. t Pepys and his wifo, trav-
elling in their own coach, lost their way between Newba^y and
Reading. In the course of the same tour they lost the'r way
near Salisbury, and were in danger of having to pass the night
on the plain, t It was only in fine weather that the whoR
breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Oftei
* North's Life of Guildford, 136.
t Thoresby's Diary, Oct. 21, 1680, Aug. 3, 1712.
t Pepys'a Diary, June 12 and 16, 1668.
340 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the mud lay deep on the right and the left ; and only a narrow
track of firm ground rose above the quagmire,* At such times
obstructions and quarrels were frequent, and the path was some-
times blocked up during a long time by carriers, neither of
whom would break the way. It happened, almost every day,
that coaches stuck fast, until a team of cattle could be procured
from some neighbouring farm, to tug them out of the slough.
But in bad seasons the traveller had to encounter inconven-
iences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of
travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded, in his
Diary, such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a
journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara. On
one occasion he learned that the floods were out between Ware
and London, that passengers had to swim for their lives, and
that a higgler had perished in the attempt to cross. In conse-
quence of these tidings he turned out of the high road, and was
conducted aci'oss some meadows, where it was necessary for him
to ride to the saddle skirts in water.f In the course of another
journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an inunda-
tion of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford
four days, on account of the state of the roads, and then ven-
tured to proceed only because fourteen members of the House
of Commons, who were going up in a body to Parliament with
guides and numerous attendants, took him into their company. $
On the roads of Derbyshire, travellers were in constant fear for
their necks, and were frequently compelled to alight and lead
their beasts.§ The great route through Wales to Holyhead
was in such a state that, in 1 685, a viceroy, going to Ireland,
was five hours in travelling fourteen miles, from Saint Asaph to
Conway. Between Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to
walk a great part of the way : and his lady was carried in a litter.
His coach was, with much difficulty, and by the help of many
hands, brought after him entire. In general, carriages were
*rbid. Feb. 28, IGfiO.
t Thoresby's Diary. May 17, 1695.
t Ibid. Dec. 27, 170R.
§ Tour in Derbyshire, by J. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, 1662 ; Cot-
ton's Angler, 1676.
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 341
taken to pieces at Conway, and borne, on the shoulders of stout
Welsh peasants, to the Menai Straits.* In some parts of Kent
and Sussex, none but the strongest horses could, in winter, get
through the bog, in which, at every step, they sank deep. The
markets were often inaccessible during several months. It is
said that the fruits of the earth were sometimes suifered to rot
in one place, while in another place, distant only a few miles,
the supply fell far sliort o'f the demand. The wheeled carriages
were, m this district, generally pulled by oxen.f When Prince
George of Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in
wet weather, he was six hours in going nine miles ; and it was
necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of
his coach, in order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed
his retinue several were upset and injured. A letter from one
of the party has been pi-eserved, in which the unfortunate
courtier complains that, during fourteen hours, he never once
alighted, except when his coach was overturned or stuck fast in
the mud. I
One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have
been the defective state of the law. Every parish was bound
to repair the highways which passed through it. The peasantry
were forced to give their gratuitous labour six days in the year.
If this was not sufficient, hired labour was employed, and the
expense was met by a parochial rate. That a route connecting
two great towns, which have a large and thriving trade with
each other, should be maintained at the cost of tlie rural pop-
ulation scattei'ed between them is obviously unjust ; and this
injustice was peculiarly glaring in the case of the great North
road, which traversed very poor and thinly inhabited districts,
and joined very rich and populous districts. Indeed it was not
in the power of the parishes of Huntingdonshire to mend a high-
way worn by the constant traffic between the West Riding of
Yorkshire and London. Soon after the Restoration this griev-
* Correspondence of Henry Earl of Clarendon, Dec. 30, 1G85, Jan. 1, 1686.
t Postlethwaite's Dictionary, Koads ; History of liawkhurst, in the Biblio-
theca Topographica Britannica.
t Annals of Queen Anne, 1703, Appendix, No. 3.
342 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ance attracted the notice of Parliament ; and an act, the first
of our many turnpike acts, was passed, imposing a small toll on
travellers and goods, for the purpose of keeping some parts of
this important line of communication in good repair.* This
innovation, however, excited many murmurs ; and the other
great avenues to the capital were long left under the old system.
A chancre was at lenoth effected, but not without much diffi.
culty. For unjust and absurd taxation to which men are ac-
customed is often borne far more willingly than the most reason-
able impost which is new. It was not till many toll bars had
been violently pulled down, till the troops had in many districts
been forced to act against the people, and till much blood had
been shed, that a good system was introduced.! By slow
degrees reason triumphed over prejudice ; and our island is now
crossed in every direction by near thirty thousand miles of turn-
pike road.
On the best highways heavy articles were, in the time of
Charles the Second, generally conveyed from place to place by
stase watrsons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd
of passengers, who could not afford to travel by coach or on
horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the
weight of their luggage, from going on foot. The expense of
transmitting heavy goods in this way was enormous. From
Loudon to Birmingham the charge was seven pounds a ton ;
from London to Exeter twelve pounds a ton.$ This was about
fifteen pence a ton for every mile, more by a third than was
afterwards charged on turnpike roads, and fifteen times what is
now demanded by railway companies. The cost of conveyance
amounted to a prohibitory tax on many useful articles. Coal
in particular was never seen except in the districts where it
was produced, or in the districts to which it could be carried by
sea, and was indeed always known in the south of England by
the name of sea coal.
• 15 Car. IL c. 1.
t The evils of the old system are strikingly set forth in many petitions which
Appear in the Commons' Journal of 1725._ How fierce an opposition was offered
to Ui« new system may be learned from the Gentleman's Magazine of 1749.
Pestlathwftite'a Diet., Roads.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 343
On 'byroads, and generally throughout the country north of
York and west of Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of
packhorses. These strong and patient beasts, the breed of
which is now extinct, were attended by a class of men who
seem to have borne much resemblance to the Spanish mule-
teers, A traveller of humble condition often found it conve-
nient to perform a journey mounted on a packsaddle between
two baskets, under the care of these haMy guides. The ex-
pense of this mode of conveyance was small. But the caravan
moved at a foot's pace ; and in winter the cold was often insup-
portable.*
The rich commonly travelled in their own carriages, with
at least four horses* Cotton, the facetious poet, attempted to
go from London to the Peak with a single pair, but found at
Saint Albans that the journey would be insupportably tedious,
and altered his plan.f A coach and six is in our time never
seen, except as part of some pageant. The frequent mention
therefore of such equipages in old books is likely to mislead
us. We attribute to magnificence what was really the effect
of a very disagreeable necessity. People, in the time of Charles
the Second, travelled with six horses, because with a smaller
number there was great danger of sticking fast in the mire.
Nor were even six horses always sufficient. Yanbrugh, in the
succeeding generation, described with great humour the way in
which a country gentleman, newly chosen a member of Parlia-
ment, went up to London. On that occasion all the exertion§
of six beasts, two of which had been taken from the plough,
could not save the family coach from being embedded in a
quagmire.
Public carriages had recently been much improved. During
the years which immediately followed the Restoration, a dili-
gence ran between London and Oxford in two days. The
passengers slept at Beaconsfield. At length, in the spring of
1669, a great and daring innovation was attempted. It was
* Loidis and Elmete , Marshall's Rural Economy of England, In 1739 Roderio
Random came from Scotland to Newcastle on a packhorse.
t Cotton's Epistle to J, Bradshaw.
344 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
announced that a vehicle, described as the F) jing Coach, would
perform the wiiole journey between sunrise and sunset. This
spirited undertaking was solemnly considered and sanctioned by
the Heads of the University, and appears to have excited the
same sort of interest which is excited in" our own time by the
opening of a new railway. The Vicechancellor, by a notice
affixed in aL public places, prescribed the hour and place of
departure. The success of the experiment was complete. At
six in the morning the carriage began to move from before the
ancient front of All Souls College ; and at seven in the evening
the adventurous gentlemen who had run the first risk were
safely deposited at their inn in London.* The emulation of
the sister University was moved ; and soon a diligence was set
up which in one day carried passengers from Cambridge to the
capital. At the close of the reign of Chai'les the Second, flying
carriages ran thrice a week from London to the chief towns.
But no stage coach, indeed no stage waggon, appears to have
proceeded further north than York, or further west than Exeter.
The ordinary day's journey of a flying coach was about fifty
miles in the summer ; but in winter, when the ways were bad
and the nights long, little more than thirty. The Chester
coach, the York coach, and the Exeter coach generally reached
London in four days during the fine season, but at Christmas
not till the sixth day. The passengers, six in number, were all
seated in the carriage. For accidents were so frequent that it
would have been most perilous to mount the roof. The ordinary
fare was about twopence halfpenny a mile in summer, and some-
what more in winter.t
This mode of travelling, which by Englishmen of the pres-
ent day would be regarded as insufferably slow, seemed to our
ancestors wonderfully and indeed alarmingly rapid. Lt. a work
published a few months before the death of Charles the Second,
the flying coaches are extolled as far superior to any similar
vehicles ever known in the world. Their velocity is the subject
• Anthony h Wood's Life of himself
t Chamberlayne'3 State of England, 1G84. See also the list of stage coachea
and waggons at the end of the book, entitled Anglias Metropolis, 1690,
STATIC OF ENGLAND IN 1 G85. . 345
of special commendation, and is triumphantly contrasted with
the sluggish pace of the continental posts. But with boasts like
these was mingled the sound of complaint and invective. The
interests of large classes had been unfavourably affected by the
establishment of the new diligences ; and, as usual, many per-
sons were, from mere stupidity and obstinacy, disposed to
clamour against the innovation, simply because it was an inno-
vation. It was vehemently argued that this mode of convey-
ance would be fatal to the breed of horses and to the noble art
of horsemanship ; that the Thames, which had long been an
important nursery of seamen, would cease to be the chief thorough-
fare from London up to "Windsor and down to Gravesend ; that
saddlers and spurriers would be ruined by hundreds j that
numerous inns, at which mounted travellers had been in the
habit of stopping, would be deserted, and would no longer pay
any rent ; that the new carriages were too hot in summer and
too cold in winter ; that the passengers were grievously annoyed
by invalids and crying children ; that the coach sometimes
reached the inn so late that it was impossible to get sujiper,
and sometimes started so early that it was impossible to get
breakfast. On these grounds it was gravely recommended
that no public coach should be permitted to have more than
four horses, to start oftener than once a week, or to go more
than thirty miles a day. It was hoped that, if this regulation
were adopted, all except the sick and the lame would return to
the old mode of travelling. Petitions embodying such opinions
as these were presented to the King in council from several
companies of the City of London, from several provincial towns
and from the justices of several counties. We smile at these
things. It is not impossible that our descendants, when they
read the history of the opposition offered by cupidity and preju-
dice to the improvements of the nineteenth century, may smile
in their turn.*
• John Cresset's Reasons for suppressing Stage Coaches, 1G72. These reasons
were afterwards inserted iu a tract, entitled " The Grand Concern of England
explained, 1673." Cresset's attack on stage coaches called forth some auBwers
which I have consulted.
346 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
In spite of the attractions of the flying coaches, it was still
usual for men who enjoyed health and vigour, and who were
not encumbered by much baggage, to perform long journeys on
horseback. If the traveller wished to move expeditiously he
rode post. Fresh saddle horses and guides were to be procured
at convenient distances along all the great lines of road. The
charge was threepence a mile for each horse, and fourpence a
stage for the guide. In this manner, when the ways were good,
it was possible to travel, for a considerable time, as rapidly as
by any conveyance known in England, till vehicles were pro-
pelled by steam. There were as yet no post chaises ; nor could
those who rode in their own coaches ordinarily procure a change
of horses. The King, however, and the great officers of state
were able to command relays. Thus Charles commonly went
in one day from Whitehall to New-market, a distance of about
fifty-five miles through a level country ; and this was thought
by his subjects a proof of great activity. Evelyn performed
the same journey in company with the Lord Treasurer Clifford.
The coach was drawn by six horses, which were changed at
Bishop Stortford and again at Chesterford. The travellers
reached Newmarket at night. Such a mode of conveyance
seems to have been considered as a rare luxury confined to
princes and minis'^ers.*
Whatever might be the way in which a journey was per-
formed, the travellers, unless they were numerous and well
armed, ran considerable risk of being stopped and plundered.
The mounted highwayman, a marauder known to our genera-
tion only from books, was to be found on every main road.
The waste tracts which lay on the great routes near London
were especially haunted by plunderers of this class. Hounslow
Heath, on the Great Western Road, and Finchley Common, on
the Great Northern Road, were perhaps the most celebrated of
these spots. The Cambridge scholars trembled when they ap-
proached Epping Forest, even in broad daylight. Seamen who
had just been paid off at Chatham were often compelled to
* Chamberlayne'8 State of England, 1634 ; North's Examen, 105 ; ETelyn'*
piary, Oct. 9,10, 1671.
■'' STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 347
deliver their purses on Gadsliill, celebrated near a hundred
years earlier by the greatest of poets as the scene of the depre- ^
dations of Falstaff. The public authorities seem to have been
often at a loss how to deal with the plunderers. At one time
it was announced in the Gazette, that several persons, who
were strongly suspected of being highwaymen, but against
whom there was not sufficient evidence, would be paraded at
Newsate in ridinir dresses; their horses would also be shown;
and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to inspect
this singular exhibition. On another occasion a pardon was
publicly offered to a robber if he would give up some rough
diamonds, of immense value, which he had taken when he
stopped the Harwich mail. A short time after appeared another
proclamation, warning the innkeepers that the eye of the gov-
ernment was upon them. Tiieir criminal connivance, it was
affirmed, enabled banditti to infest the roads with impunity.
That these suspicions were not without foundation, is proved
by the dying speeches of some penitent robbers of that age,
who appear to have received from the innkeepers services
much resembling those which Farquhar's Boniface rendered to
Gibbet.*
It was necessary to the success and even to the safety of
the highwayman that lie should be a bold and skilful rider,
and that his manners and appearance should be such as suited
the master of a fine horse. He therefore held an aristocratical
position in the community of thieves, ajjpeared at fashionable
coffee houses and gaming houses, and betted with men of quality
on the race ground.f Sometimes, indeed, he was a man of
good family and education. A romantic interest therefore at-
tached, and perhaps still attaches, to the names of freebooters
of this class. The vulgar eagerly drank in tales of their ferocity
and audacity, of their occasional acts of generosity and good
* See the London Gazette, May 14, 16T7, August 4, 1687, Dec. 5, 168T. The
last confession of Augustin King, who was the son of an eminent divine, and
had been educated at Cambridge but was hanged at Colchester in March, 1688, is
highly curious,
t Aimwell. Pray sir, han't I seen your face at Will's coffeehouse ?
Gibbet, Yes, sir, and at "White's too.— Beaux' Stratagem.
348 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. *
nature, of their amours, of their miraculous escapes, of their des-
perate struggles, and of their manly bearing at the bar and in the
cart. Thus it was related of William Nevisou, the great robber of
Yorkshire, that he levied a quarterly tribute on all the northern
drovers,and,in return, not only spared them himself, but protected
them against all other thieves ; that he demanded purses in the
most courteous manner ; that he gave largely to the poor what he
had taken from the rich ; that his life was once spared by the royal
clemency, but that he again tempted his fate, and at length died,
in 1685, on the gallows of York.* It was related how Claude
Duval, the French page of the' Duke of Richmond, took to the
road, became captain of a formidable gang, and had the honour
to be named first in a royal proclamation against notorious
offenders ; how at the head of his troop he stopped a lady's
coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds ; how
he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to ransom
the rest by dancing a corauto with him on the heath ; how his
vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women ; how
his dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men ;
how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome
by wine ; how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and
with tears interceded for his life ; how the King would have
granted a pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the
terror of highwaymen, who threatened to resign his office unless
the law were carried into full effect ; and how, after the execu-
tion, the corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons,
wax lights, black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge,
who had intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to dis-
turb the obsequies.f In these anecdotes there is doubtless a
large mixture of fable ; but they are not on that account
unworthy of being recorded ; for it is both an authentic and an
• Gent's Histoiy of York. Another marauder of the same description, named
Biss, was hanged at Salisbury in 1695. In a ballad which is in the Pepysian
Library, he is represented as defending himself thus before the Judge :
"What say you now, my honoured Lord,
AV hat liarm was there in this ?
Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred
B3' brave, freehearted Biss."
t Pope's Memoirs of Duval, published immediately after the execution, Oatos's
"EIkuv pacikiKf]^ Part I. ' ,
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 349
important fact that such tales, whether false or true, were heard
by oiir ancestors with eagerness and faith.
All the various dangers by which the traveller was beset
were greatly increased by darkness. He was therefore com-
monly desix-ous of having the shelter of a roof during the night ;
and such shelter it was not difficult to obtain. From a very
early period the inns of England had been renowned. Our
first great poet had described the excellent accommodation which
they afforded to the pilgrims of the fourteenth century. Nine
and twenty persons, with their horses, found room in the wide
chambers and stables of the Tabard in Southwark. The food
was of the best, and the wines such as drew the company on to
drink largely. Two hundred years later, under the reign of Eliza-
beth, William Harrison gave a livefy description of the plenty
and comfort of the great hostelries. The Continent of Europe, he
said, could show nothing like them. There were some in which
two or three hundred people, with their horses, could without
difficulty be lodged and fed. The bedding, the tapestry, above
all, the abundance of clean and fine linen was matter of wonder.
Valuable plate was often set on the tables. Nay, there were
signs which had cost thirty or forty pounds. In the seventeenth
century England abounded with excellent inns of every rank.
The traveller sometimes, in a small village, lighted on a public
house such as Walton has described, where the brick floor was
swept clean, where the walls were stuck round with ballads,
where the sheets smelt of lavender, and where a blazing fire, a
cup of good ale, and a dish of trouts fresh from the neighbour-
ing brook, were to be procured at small charge. At the larger
houses of entertainment were to be found beds hung with silk,
choice cookery, and claret equal to the best which Avas drunk
in London.* The innkeepers too, it was said, were not like
other innkeepers. On the Continent jthe landlord was the tyrant
of those who crossed the threshold. In England he was a ser-
vant. Never was an Englishman more at home than when he
* See tlie prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison's Historical Description
of the Island of Great Britain, and Pepys's account of his tour in the summer of
1668. The excellence of the English inns is noticed in the Travels of the Grand
Duke Cosmo.
S90 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
took his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, who might in
their own mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in
the habit of passing their evening in the parlour of some neigh-
bouring house of public entertainment. They seem to have
thought that comfort and freedom could in no other place be
enjoyed with equal perfection. This feeling continued during
many generations to be a national peculiarity. The liberty and
jollity of inns long furnished matter to our novelists and drama-
tists. Johnson declared that a tavern chair was the throne of
human felicity ; and Shenstone gently complained that no private
roof, however friendly, gave the wanderer so warm a welcome
as that which was to be found at an inn.
Many conveniences, which were unknown at Hampton Court
and Whitehall in the seventeenth century, are in all modern
hotels. Yet on the whole it is certain that the improvement of
our houses of public entertainment has by no means kept pace
with the improvement of our roads and of our conve3'ances.
Nor is this strange ; for it is evident that, all other circumstances
being supposed equal, the inns will be best where the means of
locomotion are worst. The quicker the rate of travelling, the
less important is it that there should be numerous agreeable
resting places for the traveller. A hundred and sixty years ago
a person who came up to the capital from a remote county gener-
ally required, by the way, twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging
for five or six nights. If he were a great man, he expected the
meals and lodging to be comfortable, and even luxurious. At
present we fly from York or Exeter to London by the light of
a single winter's day. At present, therefore, a traveller sel-
dom interrupts his journej'^ merely for the sake of rest and re-
freshment. The consequence is that hundreds of excellent inns
have fallen into utter decay. In a short time no good houses
of that description will be found, except at places where strangers
are likely to be detained by business or pleasure.
The mode in which correspondence was carried on between
distant places may excite the scorn of the present generation;
yet it was such as might have moved the admiration and envy
of the polished nations of antiquity, or of the contemporaries
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 35l
of Raleigh and Cecil. A rude and imperfect establishment of
posts for the conveyance of letters had been set up by Charles
tlie First, and had been swept away by the civil war. Under
the Commonwealth the design was resumed. At the Restoration
the proceeds of the Post Office, after all expenses had been
paid, were settled on the Duke of York. On most lines of road
the mails went out and came in only on the alternate days. In
Cornwall, in the fens of Lincolnshire, and among the hills and
lakes of Cumberland, letters were received only once a week.
During a royal progress a daily post was despatched from the
capital to the place where the court sojourned. There was also
daily communication between London and the Downs ; and the
same privilege was sometimes extended to Tunbridge Wells and
Bath at the seasons when those places were crowded by the
great. The bags were carried on horseback day and night at
'the r;Ue of about five miles an hour.*^
The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely
from the charsre for the transmission of letters. The Post
Office alone was entitled to furnish post horses ; and, from the
care with which this monopoly was guarded, we may infer that
it was found profitable, f If? indeed, a traveller had waited half
an hour without being supplied he might hire a horse wherever
he could.
To facilitate correspondence between one part of London
and another was not originally one of the objects of the Post
Office. But, in the reign of Charles the Second, an enterpris-
ing citizen of London, William Dockwray, set up, at great ex-
pense, a penny post, which delivered letters and parcels six or
eight times a day in the busy and crowded streets near the Ex-
change, and four times a day in the outskirts of the capital.
This improvement was, as usual, strenuously resisted. The
porters complained that their interests were attacked, and tore
down tlie placards in which the scheme was announced to the
public. The excitement caused by Godfrey's death, and by the
• Stat. 12 Oar. II. c. 35 ; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684 ; Angliae Me-
tropolis, 1690 ; London Gazette, June 22, 1685, August 15, 1687.
+ Lend. Gaz., Sept. 14, 1685.
352 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
discovery of Coleman's papers, was then at the height. A cry
was therefore raised that the penny post was a Popish contriv-
ance. The great Doctor Oiites, it was affirmed, had hinted a
suspicion that the Jesuits were at the bottom of the scheme,
and that the bags, if examined, would be found full of treason.*
The utility of the enterprise was. however, so great and obvious
that all opposition proved fruitless. As soon as it became clear
that the speculation would be lucrative, the Duke of York com-
plained of it as an infraction of his monopoly ; and the courts
of law decided in his favour.!
The revenue of the Post Office was from the first constantly
increasing. In the year of the Restoration a committee of the
House of Commons, after strict enquiry, had estimated the net
receipt at about twenty thousand pounds. At the close of the
reign of Charles the Second, the net receipt was little short of
fifty thousand pounds ; aijfl this was then thought a stupendous
sum. The gross receipt was about seventy thousand pounds.
The charge for conveying a snigle letter was twopence for
eighty miles, and threepence for a longer distance. The postage
increased in proportion to the weight of the packet. J At pre-
sent a single letter is carried to the extremity of Scotland or of
Ireland for a penny ; and the monopoly of post horses has long
ceased to exist. Yet the gross annual receipts of the depart-
ment amount to more than eighteen hundred thousand pounds,
and the net receipts to more than seven hundred thousand
pounds. It is, therefore, scarcely possible to doubt that the
number of letters now conveyed by mail is seventy times the
number winch was so conveyed at the time of the accession of
James the Second. §
No part of the load which the old mails carried out was
more important than the newsletters. In 1685 nothing like the
* Smitb's Current Intelligence, March 30, and April 3, 1680.
t Anglite Metropolis, 1690.
t Commons' Journals, Sept. 4. 1660, March^l, 1688-9; Chamberlayne. 1684 ; Dav-
enant on the Public Revenue, Discourse IV.
§ I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year 1856 the gross receipt of
the Post Office was more than 2,800,000L; and the net receipt was about l,200,000i.
The number of letters conveyed by post was 478,000,000. (1857).
STATE OF ENGLAND IX 1G85. 353
London daily paper of our time existed, or could exist. Neither
the necessary capital nor the necessary skill was to be found.
Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either
capital or skill. The press was not indeed at that moment
under a general censorship. The licensing act, which had been
passed soon after the Restoration, had expired in 1 G79. Any
person might therefore print, at his own risk, a history, a ser-
mon, or a ])oem, without the previous approbation of any officer ;
but the Judges were unanimously of opinion that this liberty
did not extend to Gazettes, and that, by the common law of
England, no man, not authorised by the crown, had a right to
publish political news.* While the Whig party was still for-
midable, the government thought it expedient occasionally to
connive at the violation of this rule. During the great battle
of the Exclusion Bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear,
the Protestant Intelligence, the Current Intelligence, the
Domestic Intelligence, the True News, the London Mercury, f
None of these was published oftener than twice a week. None
exceeded in size a single small leaf. The quantity of matter
which one of them contained in a year was not more than is
often found in two numbers of the Times. After the defeat of
the Whigs it was no longer necessary for the King to be spar-
ing in the use of that which all his Judges had pronounced to
be his undoubted prerogative. At the close of his reign no
newspaper was suffered to appear without his allowance : and
his allowance was given exclusively to the London Gazette. The
London Gazette came out only on Mondays and Thursdays.
The contents generally were a royal proclamation, two or three
Tory addresses, notices of two or three promotions, an account
of a skirmish between the imperial troops and the Janissaries
on the Danube, a description of a highwayman, an announce-
ment of a grand cockfight between two persons of honour, and
an advertisement offering a reward for a strayed dog. The
whole made up two pages of moderate size. Whatever was
* London Gazette, ISIay 5, and 17, 1680.
t There is a very curious, and, I should think, unique collection of thesft
papers in the British Museum.
354 HISTORY OF ENGLAND,
communicated respecting matters of the highest moment was
communicated in the most meagre and formal style. Some-
times, indeed, when the government was disposed to gratify the
public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a broadside
was put forth giving fuller details than could be found in the
Gazette : but neither the Gazette nor any supplementary broad
side printed by authority ever contained any intelligence which
it did not suit the purposes of the Court to publish. The most
important parliamentary debates, the most important slate trials
recorded in our history, were passed over in profound silence.*
In the capital the coffee houses supplied in some measure the
place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked, as the Athe-
nians of old flocked to the market place, to hear whether there
was any news. There men might learn how brutally a Whig
had been treated the day before in Westminster Hall, what hor-
rible accounts the letters from Edinburgh gave of the torturing
of Covenanters, how grossly the Navy Board had cheated
the crown in the victualling of t)ie fleet, and what grave charges
the Lord Privy Seal had brought against the Treasury in the
matter of the hearth money. But people who lived at a dis-
tance from the great theatre of political contention could be
kept regularly informed of what was passing there only by
means of newsletters. To prepare such letters became a calling
in London, as it now is among the natives of India. The news-
writer rambled from coffee room to coffee room, collecting re-
ports, squeezed himself into the Sessions House at the Old
Bailey if there was an interesting trial, nay perhaps obtained
admission to the gallery of Whitehall, and noticed how the
King and Duke looked. In this way he gathered materials for
weekly epistles destined to enlighten some county town or
some bench of rustic magistrates. Such were the sources from
which the inhabitants of the larg ost provincial cities, and the
great body of the gentry and clergy, learned almost all that
they knew of the history of their own time. We must suppose
* For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about the important parlia-
mentary proceedings of November, 1685, or about the trial and acquittal of the
Seven Bishops-
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 355
that at Cambridge there were as mauy persons curious to know
what was passing in the world as at almost any piace in the king-
dom, out of London. Yet at Cambridge, during a great part of
the reign of Charles the Second, the Doctors of Laws and the
Masters of Arts had no regular supply of news except through
the London Gazette. At length the services of one of the col-
lectors of intelligence in the capital were employed. That was
a memorable day on which the first newsletter from London
was laid on the table of the only coffee room in Cambridge.*
At the seat of a man of fortune in the country the newsletter
was impatiently expected. Within a week after it had arrived
it had been thumbed by twenty families. It furnished the
neighboring squires with matter for talk over their October,
and the neighboring rectors with topics for sharp sermons
against Whiggery or Popery. Many of these curious journals
might doubtless still be detected by a diligent search in the
archives of old families. Some are to be found in our public
libraries ; and one series, which is not the least valuable part
of the literary treasures collected by Sir James Mackintosh,
will be occasionally quoted in the course of this work.f
It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no
provincial newspapers. Indeed, except in the capital and at the
two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdoai.
The only press in England north of Trent appears to have been
at York.$
* Roger North's Life of Dr. John North. On the subject of newsletters, soe
the Examen, 133.
t I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitude to the family of my
dear and honoured f rien4 Sir James Mackintosh for confiding to me the materials
collected by him at a time when ha»meditated a work similar to that which I
have undertaken. I have never seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere
exists, within the same compass, so noble a collection of extracts from public and
private archives. The judgment with which Sir James, in great masses of the
rudest ore of history, selected what was valuable, and rejected what was worth-
less, can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him in the same
mine.
t Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing houses in 1724 will be
found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the eighteenth century. There had
then been a great increase within a few years in the number of presses ; and yet
there were thirty-four counties in which there was no printer, one of those
counties being Lancashire,
356 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
It was not only by means of the London Gazette that the
government undertook to furnish political instruction to the
people. That journal contained a scanty supply of news without
comment. Another journal, published under the patronage of
the court, consisted of comment without news. This paper,
called the Observator, was edited by an old Tory pamphleteer
named Roger Lestrange. Lestrange was by no means deficient
in readiness and shrewdness ; and his diction, thouirh coarse,
and disfigured by a mean and flippant jargon which then passed
for wit in the green room and the tavern, was not without keen-
ness and vigour. But his nature, at once ferocious and ignoble,
showed itself in every line that he penned. When the first Obser-
vators appeared there was some excuse for his acrimony. The
Whigs were then powerful ; Sand he had to contend against
numerous adversaries, whose unscrupulous violence might seem
to justify unsparing retaliations But in 1685 all the oppositiDU
had been crushed. A generous spirit would have disdained
to insult a party which could not reply, and to aggravate the
misery of prisoners, of exiles, of bereaved families : but from
the malice of Lestrange the grave was no hiding place, and the
house of mourning no sanctuary. In the last month of tlie
reign of Charles the Second. William Jenkvn, an asjed dissenting
pastor of great note, who had been cruelly persecuted for no
crime but that of worshipping God according to the fashion
generally followed throughout Protestant Europe, died of hard-
ships and privations at Newgate. The outbreak of popular
sympathy coald not be repressed. The corpse was followed to
the grave by a train of a hundred and fifty coaches. Even
courtiers looked sad. Even the unthinkins Kins: showed
some signs of concern. Lestrange alone set up ahowlof savage
exultation, laughed at the weak compassion of the Trimmers,
proclaimed that the blasphemous old impostor had met with a
most righteous punishment, and vowed to wage war, not only to
the death, but after death,with all the mock saints and martyrs.*
Such was the spirit of the paper which was at this time the
* Observator, Jan. 29, ana 31, 1685 ; Calamy's Life of Baxter ; Nonconformist
Memorial.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 357
oracle of the Tory party, and especially of the parochial
clergy.
Literature which could be carried by the post bag then
formed the greater part of the intellectual nutriment ruminated
by the country divines and country justices. The difficulty and
expense of conveyuig large packets from place to place was so
great, that an extensive work was longer in making its way
from Paternoster Row to Devonshire or Lancashire than it now
is in reaching Kentucky. How scantily a rural parsonage was
then furnished, even with books the most necessary to a theo-
logian, has already been remarked. The houses of the gentry
were not more plentifully supplied. Few knights of the shire
had libraries so good as may now perpetually be found in a serv-
ants' hall or in the back parlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire
passed among his neighbours for a great scholar, if Hudibras and
Baker's Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests and the Seven Champions of
Christendom, lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and
fowling pieces. No circulating library, no book societ}'-, then
existed even in the capital : but in the capital those students
who could not a£Eord to purchase largely had a resource. The
shops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard,
were crowded every day and all day long with readers ; and a
known customer was often permitted to carry a volume home. In
the country there was no such accommodation ; and every man
was under the necessity of buying whatever he wished to read.*
As to the lady of the manor and her daughters, their literary
stores generally consisted of a prayer book and receipt book.
But in truth they lost little by living in rural seclusion. For,
even in the highest ranks, and in those situations which afforded
the greatest facilities for mental improvement, the English
women of that generation were decidedly worse educated than
they have been at any other time since the revival of learning.
At an early period they had studied the masterpieces of ancient
* Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his whole library in
his hall window ; and Cotton was a man of letters. Even when Franklin first
visited London in 1724, circulating libraries were unknown there. The crowd at the
booksellers' shops iu Little Britain is mentioned by Roger North in his life of
his brother John.
358 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
•
genius. In the present day they seldom bestow much attention
on the dead languages ; but they are familiar with the tongue of
Pascal and Moliere, with the tongue of Dante and Tasso, with
the tongue of Goethe and Schiller ; nor is there any purer or
more graceful English than that which accomplished women
now speak and write. But, during the latter part of the sev-
enteenth century, the culture of the female mind seems to have
been almost entirely neglected. If a damsel had the least smat-
tering of literature she was regarded as a prodigy. Ladies higlily
born, highly bred, and naturally quick witted, were unable to
write a line in their mother tongue without solecisms and faults of
spelling such as a charity girl would now be ashamed to commit.*
The explanation may easily be found. Extravagant licen-
tiousness, the natural effect of extravagant austerity, was now
the mode ; and licentiousness had produced its ordinary effect,
the moral and intellectual degradation of women. To their
personal beauty, it was the fashion to pay rude and impudent
homage. But the admiration and desire which they inspired
were seldom mingled with respect, with affection, or with any
chivalrous sentiment. The qualities which fit them to be com-
panions, advisers, confidential friends, rather repelled than
attracted the libertines of Whitehall. In that court a maid of
honour, who dressed in such a manner as to do full justice to a
white bosom, who ogled significant!}', who danced voluptuously,
who excelled in pert repartee, who was not ashamed to romp
with Lords of the Bedchamber and Captains of the Guards, to
sing sly verses with sly expression, or to put on a page's dress
for a frolic, was more likely to be followed and admiaed, more
likely to be honoured with royal attentions, more likely to win
a rich and noble Imsband than* Jane Grey or Lucy Hutchinson
would have been. In such circumstances the standard of female
attainments was necessarily low ; and it was more dangerous to
* One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daufjhter of James, had excel-
lent natural abilities, had been educated by a Bishop, was fond of history and poetry
and was regarded by very eminent men as a superior woman. There is, in the li-
brary at the Hague, a superb English Bible which was delivered to her when she
was crowned in Westminster Abbey. In the titlepage are these words in her own
band, " This book was given the King and I, at our crownation. Marie B."
STATC OF KKGLAND IN 1685. 359
be above that staudard than to be beneath it. Extreme i<ino-
ranee and frivolity were thought less nnl)ecoming in a lady than
the slightest tincture of pedantry. Of the too celebrated women
whose faces we still admire on the walls of Hampton Court,
few indeed were in the habit of reading anything more valuable
than acrostics, lampoons, and translations of the Clelia and the
Grand Cyrus.
The literary acquirements, even of the accomplished gentle-
men of that generation, seem to have been somewhat less solid
and profound than at an earlier or a later period. Greek learn-
ing, at least, did not flourish among us in the days of Charles
the Second, as it had flourished before the civil war, or as it
again flourished long after the Revolution. There were un-
doubtedly scholars to whom the whole Greek literature, from
Homer to Photius, was familiar : but such scholars were to be
found almost exclusively among the clergy resident at the
Universities, and even at the Universities were few, and were
not fully appreciated. At Cambridge it was not thought by
any means necessary that a divine should be able to read the
Gospels in the original.* Nor was the standard at Oxford
higher. When, in the reign of William the Third, Christ
Church rose up as one man to defend the genuineness of
the Epistles of Phalaris, that great college, then considered as
the first seat of philology in the kingdom, could not muster
such a stock of Attic learning as is now possessed by several
youths at every great public school. It may easily be supposed
that a dead lansjuaije, neglected at the Universities, was not
much studied by men of the world. In a former age the poetry
and eloquence of Greece had been the delight of Raleigh and
Falkland. In a later age the poetry and eloquence of Greece
were the delight of Pitt and Fox, of Windham and Grenville.
But during the latter part of the seventeenth century there was
in England scarcely one eminent statesman who could read
with enjoyment a page of Sophocles or Plato.
Good Latin scholars were numerous. The language of
* Roger North tells us that his brother John, who w.ia Greek professor at
Cambridge, complained bitterly of the general neglect of the Greek tongue
among the academical clergy.
SCO HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Rome, indeed, had not altogether lost its imperial prerogatives,
and was still, in many parts of Europe, almost indispensahle to
a traveller or a negotiator. To speak it well was therefore a
much more common accomplishment than in our time; and
neither Oxford nor Cambridge wanted poets who, on a great
occasion, could lay at the foot of the throne happy imitations of
the verses in which Virgil and Ovid had celebrated the great-
ness of Augustus.
Yet even the Latin was giving way to a younger rival.
France united at that time almost every species of ascendency.
Her military glory was at the height. She had vanquished
mighty coalitions. She had dictated treaties. She had sub-
jugated great cities and provinces. She had forced the Castilian
pride to yield her the precedence. She had summoned Italian
princes to prostrate themselves at her footstool. Her authority
was supreme in all matters of good breeding, from a duel to a
minuet. She determined how a gentleman's coat must be cut,
how long his peruke must be, whether his heels must be high
or low, and whether the lace on his hat must be broad or nar-
row. In literature she gave law to the world. The fame of
her great writers filled Europe. No other country could
produce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic poet equal to
Moliere, a trifler so agreeable as La Fontaine, a rhetorician so
skilful as Bossuet. The literacy glory of Italy and of Spain
had set ; that of Germany had not yet dawned. The genius,
therefore, of the eminent men who adorned Paris shone forth
with a splendour which was set off to full advantage by con-
trast. France, indeed, had at that timQ an empire over mankind,
such as even the Roman Republic never attained. For, when
Rome was politically dominant, she was in arts and letters the
humble pupil of Greece. France had, over the surrounding
countries, at once the ascendency which Rome had over Greece,
and the ascendency which Greece had over Rome. French
was fast becoming the universal language, the language of
fashionable society, the language of diplomacy. At several
courts princes and nobles spoke it more accurately and politely
than their mother tongue. In our island there was less of this
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 361
servility than on the Continent. Neither our good nor our bad
qualities were those of imitators. Yet even here homage was
paid, awkwardly indeed and sullenly, to the literary supremacy
of our neighbours. The melodious Tuscan, so familiar to the
gallants and ladies of the court of Elizabeth, sank into contempt
A gentleman who quoted Horace or Terence was considered in
good company as a pomjious pedant. But to garnish his con-
versation with scraps of French was the best proof which he
could give of his parts and attainments.* New canons of
criticism, new models of style came into fashion. The quaint
ingenuity which had deformed the verses of Donne, and had
been a blemish on those of Cowley, disappeared from our
poetry. Our prose became less majestic, less artfully involved,
less variously musical than that of an earlier age, but more
lucid, more easy, and better fitted for controversy and narrative.
In these changes it is impossible not -to recognise the influence
of French precept and of French example. Great masters of
our language, in their most dignified compositions, affected to
use French words, when English words, quite as expressive
and sonorous, wore at hand : f and from France was imported
the tragedy in rhyme, an exotic which, in our soil, drooped, and
speedily died.
It would have been well if our writers had also copied the
decorum which their great French contemporaries, with few
exceptions, preserved ; for the profligacy of the English plays,
satires, songs, and novels of that age is a deep blot on our
national fame. The evil may easily be traced to its source.
The wits and the Puritans had never been on friendly terms.
There was no sympathy between the two classes. They looked
* Butler, in a satire of great asperitj^ says,
" For, though to smatter words of Greek
And Latin be the rhetorique
Of pedants counted, and vainglorious.
To smatter French is meritorious."
t The most offensive instance wliicli I remember is in a poem on the corona-
tion of Charles the Second by Dryden, who certainly could not plead poverty ae
an excuse for borrowing words from any foreign tongue : —
" Hither in summer evenings you repair
Co taste the fraicheur of the cooler air."
362 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
on the whole system of human life from different points and in
different lights. The earnest of each was the jest of the other.
The pleasures of each were the torments of the other. To the
stern precisian even the innocent sport of the fancy seemed a
crime. To light axid festive natures the solemnity of the zealous
brethren furnished copious matter of ridicule. From the Re-
formation to the civil war, almost every writer, gifted with a
fine sense of the ludicrous, had taken some opportunity of
assailing the straighthaired, snuffling, whining saints, who
christened their children out of the Book of Nehemiah, who
groaned in spirit at the sight of Jack in the Green, and who
thought it impious to taste plum porridge on Christmas day.
At length a time came when the laughers began to look grave
in their turn. The rigid, ungainly zealots, after having fur-
nished much good sport during two generations, rose up in
arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under
their feet the whole crowd of mockers. The wounds inflicted
by gay and petulant malice were retaliated with the gloomy
and implacable malice peculiar to bigots who mistake their own
rancoui' for virtue. The theatres were closed. The players
were flogged. The press was put under the guardianship of
austere licensers. The Muses were banished from their own
favourite haunts, Cambridge and Oxford. Cowley, Crashaw,
and Cleveland were ejected from their fellowships. The young
candidate for academical honours was no longer required to
write Ovidian epistles or Virgilian pastorals, but was strictly
interrogated by a synod of lowering Supralapsarians as to the
day and hour when he experienced the new birth. Such a
system was of course fruitful of hypocrites. Under sober
clothing and under visages composed to the expression of
austerity lay hid during several years the intense desire of
license and of revenge. At length that desire was gratified.
The Restoration emancipated thousands of minds from a yoke
which had become insupportable. The old fight recommenced,
but with an animosity altogether new. .It was now not. a
sportive combat, but a war to the death. The Roundhead had
no better quarter to expect from those whom he had persecuted
STATE OF EIWJLAND IN 1685. 363
than a cruel slavedriver can expect from insurgent slaves still
bearing the marks of his collars and his scourges.
The war between wit and Puritanism soon became a war
between wit and morality. The hostility excited by a grotesque
caricature of virtue did not spare virtue herself. Whatever
the cautiusf Roundhead had regarded with reverence was in-
suited. Whatever he had proscribed was favoured Because
he had been scrupulous about trifles, all scruples were treated
with derision. Because he had covered his failings with the
mask of devotion, men v/ere encouraged to obtrude with Cynic
impudence all their most scandalous vices on the public eye.
Because he had punished illicit love with barbarous severity,
virgin purity and conjugal fidelity were made a jest. To that
sanctimonious jargon which was his Shibboleth, was opposed
another jargon not less absurd and much more odious. As he
never opened his mouth except in scrijotural phrase, the new
breed of wits and fine gentlemen never opened their mouths
without uttering ribaldry of which a porter would now be
ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse them,
sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them.
It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, when
it revived with the revival of the old civil and ecclesiastical
polity, should have been profoundly immoral. A few eminent
men, who belonged to an earlier and better age, were exempt
from the general contagion. The verse of Waller still breathed
the sentiments which had animated a more chivalrous genera-
tion. Cowley, distinguished as a loyalist and as a man of
letters, raised his voice courageously against the immorality
which disgraced both letters and loyalty. A mightier poet,
tried at once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness,
meditated, undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all
around him, a song so sublime and so holy that it would not
have misbecome the lips of those ethereal Virtues whom he
saw, with that inner eye which no calamity could darken, fling-
ing down on the jasper pavement their crowns of amaranth and
gold. The vigourous and fertile genius of Butler, if it did not
altogether escape the prevailing infection, took the disease in a
364 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
mild form. But these were men whose minds had been trained
in a world which had passed away. They gave place in no
long time to a younger generation of wits ; and of that genera-
tion, from Dryden down to Durfey, the common characteristic
was hard-hearted, shameless, swa^uerinij licentiousness, at once
inelegant and inhuman. The influence of these writers was
doubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it Avould have been
had they been less dcpr d. The poison which they adminis-
tered was so strong thai it was, in no long time, rejected witlr
nausea. None of them understood the dancrerous art of asso-
dating images of unlawful pleasure with all that is endearing
and ennobling. None of them was aware that a certain decorum
is essential even to volujituousness, that drapery may be more
alluring than exposure, and that the imagination may be far
mora powerfully moved by delicate hints which impel it to
exert itself, than by gross descriptions which it takes in pas-
sively.
The spirit of the Antipuritan reaction pervades almost the
whole polite literature of the reign of Charles the Second. But
the very quintessence of that spirit will be found in the comic
drama. The playhouses, shut by the meddling fanatic in the day
of his power, were again crowded. To their old attractions new
and more powerful attractions had been added. Scenery, dresses,
and decorations, such as would now be thought mean or absurd,
but such as would have been esteemed incredibly magnificent by
those who, early in the seventeenth century, sate on the filthy
benches of the Hope, or under the thatched roof of the Rose,
dazzled the eyes of the multitude. The fascination of sex was
called in to aid the fascination of art : and the young spectator
saw, with emotions unknown to the contemporaries of Shakspeare
and Johnson, tender and sprightly heroines personated by lovely
women. From the day on which the theatres were reopened,
they became seminaries of vice ; and the evil propagated itself.
The profligacy of the represeni-itions soon drove away sober
people. The frivolous and dissolute who remained required
every year stronger and stronger stimulants. Thus the artists
corrupted the spectators, and the spectators the artists, till the
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 365
turpitude of the drama became such as must astonish all who
are not aware that extreme relaxation is the natural effect of
extreme restraint, and that au age of hypocrisy is, in the regular
course of things, followed by an age of impudence.
Nothing is more characteristic of the times than the care
with which the poets contrived to put all their loosest verses
into the mouths of women. The compositions in which the
greatest license was taken were the epilogues. They were
almost always recited by favourite actresses ; and nothing
charmed the depraved audience so much as to hear lines grossly
indecent repeated by a beautiful girl, who was supposed to have
not yet lost her innocence.*
Our theatre was indebted in that age for many plots and
cha^'^cters to Spain, to France, and to the old English masters :
but whatever our dramatists touched they tainted. In their
imitations the houses of Calderon's stately and highspirited
Castilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakspeare's Viola a
procnress, Moliere's Misanthrope a ravisher, Moliere's Agnes
an adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic but that
it became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul and
ignoble minds.
Such was the state of the drama ; and the drama was the
department of polite literature in which a poet had the best
chance of obtaining a subsistence by his pen. The sale of books
"Vas so small that a man of the greatest name could hardly ex-
pect more than a pittance for the copyright of the best perform-
ance. There cannot be a stronger instance than the fate of
Dryden's last production, the Fables. That volume was pub-
lished when he was universally admitted to be the chief of liv-
ing English poets. It contains about twelve thousand lines.
The versification is admirable, the narratives and descriptions
full of life. To this day Palamon and Arcite, Cymon and
Iphigenia, Theodore and Honoria, are the delight both of critics
and of schoolboys. The collection includes Alexander's Feast,
the noblest ode in our language. For the copyright Dryden
* Jeremy Collier haa c«n8ured this odious practice with his usual force and
keenness.
866 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
received two hundred and fifty pounds, less than in our days has
sometimes been paid for two articles in a review.* Nor does
the bargain seem to have been a hard one. For the book went
off slowly ; and the second edition was not required till the
author had been ten years in his grave. By writing for the
theatre it was possible to earn a much larger sum with much
less trouble. Southern made seven hundred pounds by one
play.f Otway was raised from beggary to temporary afiluence
by the success of his Don Carlos. $ Shadwell cleared a hundred
and thirty pounds by a single representation of the Squire of
Alsatia.§ Tlie consequence was that every man who had to
live by his wit wrote plays, whether he had any internal voca-
tion to write plays or not. It was thus with Dryden. As a
satirist he has rivalled Juvenal. As a didactic poet he perhaps
might, with care and meditation, have rivalled Lucretius. Of
lyric {Doets he is, if not the most sublime, the most brilliant and
spiritstirring. But nature, profuse to him of many rare gifts,
had withheld from him the dramatic faculty. Nevertheless all
the energies of his best years were wasted on dramatic composi-
tion. He had too much judgment not to be aware that in the
power of exhibiting character by means of dialogue he was
deficient. That deficiency he did his best to conceal, sometimes
by surprising and amusing incidents, sometimes by stately decla-
mation, sometimes by harmonious numbers, sometimes by
ribaldry but too well suited to the taste of a profane and licen-
tious pit. Yet he never obtained any theatrical success equal to
that which rewarded the exertions of some men far inferior to
him in general powers. He thought himself fortunate if he
cleared a hundred guineas by a play ; a scanty remuneration,
yet apparently larger than he could have earned in any other
way by the same quantity of labour. ||
The recompense which the wits of that age could obtain
from the public was so small, that they were under the necessity
* The contrast will be found in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dryden.
t See the Life of Southern, by Shiels.
t See Rochester's Trial of the Poets.
§ Some Account of the English Stage.
1 Life of Southern, by Shiels-
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 367
of eking out their incomes by levying contributions on the great.
Every rich and goodnatured lord was pestered by authors with a
mendicancy so importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may in
our time seem incredible. The patron to whom a work was
inscribed was expected to reward the writer with a purse of
gokl. The fee paid for the dedication of a book was often much
larger than the sum which any publisher would give for the
copyright. Books were therefore frequently printed merely
that they might be dedicated. This traiEc in praise produced
the effect which might have been expected. Adulation pushed
to the verge, sometimes of nonsense, and sometimes of impiety,
was not thought to disgrace a poet. Independence, veracity,
selfrespect, were things not required by the world from him.
In truth, he was in morals something between a pandar and »
beggar.
To the other vices which degraded the literary character
was added, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second,
the most savage intemperance of party spirit. The wits, as a
class, had been impelled by their old hatred of Puritanism to
take the side of the court, and had been found useful allies.
Dryden, in particular, had done good service to the government.
His Absalom and Achitophel, the greatest satire of modern times
had amazed the town, had made its wav with unprecedented
rapidity even into rural districts, and had, wherever it appeared
bitterly annoyed the Exclusionists, and raised the courage of
the Tories. But we must not, in the admiration which we
naturally feel for noble diction and versification, forget the
great distinctions of good and evil. The spirit by which Dry-
den and several of his compeers were at this time animated
against the Whigs deserves to be called fiendish. The servile
Judges and Sheriffs of those evil days could not shed blood as
fast as the poets cried out for it. Calls for more victims, hide-
ous jests on hanging, bitter taunts on those who, having stood
by the King in the hour of danger, now advised him to deal
mercifully and generously by his vanquished enemies, were
publicly recited on the stage, and, that nothing might be want-
Vig to the guilt and the shame, were recited by women, who,
Sc^ HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
liaving loug been taught to discard all modesty, were now
taught to discard -ill compassion.*
It is a remarkable fact that, while the lighter literature of
England was thus becoming a nuisance fvnd a national disgrace,
the Enijlibh cenius was eilectniij in sci<jnce a revolution which
will, to the end of time, be reckoned among the highest achieve-
ments of the human intellect. Bacon had sown the wood seed in a
sluggish soil and an ungenial season. He had not expected an
early crop, and in his last testament had solemnly bequeathed
his fame to the next age. During -a. whole generation his phi-
losophy bad, amidst tumults, wars, and proscriptions, been slowly
ripening in a few well constituted minds. While factions were
struggling for dominion over each other, a small body of sages
had turned away with benevolent disdain from the conflict, and
had devoted themselves to the nobler work of extending the
dominion of man over matter. As soon as tranquillity was
restored, these teachers easily found attentive audience. For
the discipline through which the nation had passed had brought
the public mind to a temper well fitted for the reception of the
Verulamian doctrine. The civil troubles had stimulated the
faculties of the educated classes, and had called forth a restless
activity and an insatiable curiosity, such as had not before been
known among us. Yet the effect of those troubles was that
schemes of political and religious reform were generally regarded
with suspicion and contempt. During twenty years the chief
employment of busy and ingenious men had been to frame con-
stitutions with first magistrates, without first magistrates, with
hereditary senates, with senates appointed by lot, with annual
senates, with perpetual senates. In these plans nothing was
omitted. All the detail, all the nomenclature, all the ceremonial of
the imaginary government was fully set forth, Polemarchs and
Phylarchs, Tribes and Galaxies, the Lord Archon and the Lord
Strategus. "Which ballot boxes were to be green and which red,
which balls were to be of gold and which of silver, which magis-
* If any reader thinks my expressions too severe, I would advise him to read
r'l-yden's Kpilogue to the Duke of Guise, and to observe that it was spoken by a
woman.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 369
trates were to wear hats and which black velvet caps with peaks,
liow the mace was to be carried and when the heralds were to
uncover, these, and a hundred more such trifles, were gravely consi-
dered and arranged by men of no common capacity and learning.*
But the time for these visions had gone by ; and, if any stead-
fast republican still continued to amuse himself with them, fear
of public derision and of a criminal information generally induced
him to keep his fancies to himself. It was now unpopular and
unsafe to mutter a word against the fundamental laws of the
monarchy : but daring and ingenious men might indemnify them-
selves by treating with disdain what had lately been considered
as the fundamental laws of nature. The torrent which had
been dammed up in one channel rushed violently into another.
The revolutionary spirit, ceasing to operate in politics, began to
exert itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in every
department of physics. The year 1660, the era of the restora-
tion of the old constitution, is also the era from which dates the
ascendency of the new philosophy. In that year the Royal
' Society, destined to be a chief agent in a long series of glorious
and salutary reforms, began to exist.f In a few months experi-
mental science became all the mode. The transfusion of blood,
the ponderation of air, the fixation of mercury, succeeded to
that place in the public mind which -had been lately occupied
by the controversies of the Rota. Dreams of perfect ferms of
government made way for dreams of wings with which men
were to fly from the Tower to the Abbey, and of doublekeeled
ships which were never to founder in the fiercest storm. All
classes were hurried along by the prevailing sentiment. Cava-
lier and Roundhead, Churchman and Puritan, were for once
allied. Divines, jurists, statesmen, nobles, princes, swelled the
triumph of the Baconian philosophy. Poets sang with emulous
fervour the approach of the golden age. Cowley, in lines
weighty with thought and resplendent with wit, urged the chosen
seed to take possession of the promised land flowing with milk
and honey, that land which their great d^iliverer and lawgiver
* See pai-ticularly Harrington's Oceana,
t See Sprat's History of the Royal Society.
370 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
had seen, as from the summit of Pisgah, hut had not heen per^
mitted to enter.* Dryden, with more zeal than knowledge, joined
voice to the general acclamation to enter, and foretold things
which neither he nor anybody else understood. The Royal
Society, he predicted, would soon lead us to the extreme verge of
the globe, and there delight us with a better view of the moon, f
Two able and aspiring prelates, "Ward, Bishop of Salisbury,
and Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, were conspicuous among the
leaders of the movement. Its history was eloquently written
by a younger divine, who was rising to high distinction in his
profession, Thomas Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester.
Both Chief Justice Hale and Lord Keeper Guildford stole some
hours from the business of their courts to write on hydrostatics.
Indeed it was under the immediate direction of Guildford that
the first barometers ever exposed to sale in London were con-
structed.$ Chemistry divided, for a time, with wine and love,
with the stage and the gaming table, with the intrigues of a cour-
tier and the intrigues of a demagogue, the attention of the fickle
Buckingham. Rupert has the credit of having invented mezzotin-
to ; from him is named that curious bubbleof glass which haslong
amused children and puzzled philosophers. Charles himself had
a laboratory at Whitehall, and was far more active and attentive
there than at the council board. It was almost necessary to the
character of a fine gentleman to have something to say about air
pumps and telescopes ; and even fine ladies, now and then,
thought it becoming to affect a taste for science, went in coaches
And six to visit the Gresham curiosities, and broke forth into
cries of delight at finding that a magnet really attracted a needle,
and that a microscope really made a fly look as large as a spar-
row. §
In this, as in every great stir of the human mind, there was
* Cowley's Ode to the Royal Society.
t ' Then we upon the globe's last yergc shall go,
And view the oceon leaning on the sky ;
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry.'
Annua Mirabilis, 164
$ North's Life of Guildford.
{ Pepye's Diary, May 30, 1667.
irXTK OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 371
doubtless something which miglit well move a smile. It is the
universal law that whatever pursuit, whatever doctrine, becomes
fashionable, shall lose a portion of that dignity which it had pos-
sessed while it was confined to a small but earnest minority, and
was loved for its own sake alone. It is true that the follies of
some persons who, without any real aptitude for science, pro-
fessed a passion for it, furnished matter of contemptuous mirth to
a few malignant satirists who belonged to the preceding gener-
ation, and were not disposed to unlearn the lore of their youth.*
But it is not less true that the great work of interpreting nature
was performed by the English of that age as it had never before
been performed in any age by any nation. The spirit of Fran-
cis Bacon was abroad, a spirit admirably compounded of audacity
and sobriety. There was a strong persuasion that the whole
world was full of secrets of high moment to the happiness of
man, and that man had, by his Maker, been entrusted with the
key which, rightly used, would give access to them. There was
at the same time a conviction that in physics it was impossible
to arrive at the knowledge of general laws except by the care-
ful observation of particular facts. Deeply impressed with these
great truths, the professors of the new philosophy applied them-
selves to their task, and, before a quarter of a century had
expired, they had given ample earnest of what has since been
achieved. Already a reform of agriculture had been com-
menced. 'Kew vegetables were cultivated. New implements of
husbandry were employed. New manures were applied to the
soil.f Evelyn had, under the formal sanction of the Royal
Society, given instruction to his countrymen in planting.
Temple, in his intervals of leisure, had tried many experiments
in horticulture, and had proved that many delicate fruits, the
natives of more favoured climates, might, with the helj) of art,
be grown on English ground. Medicine, which in France was
* Butler was, I think, the only man of real genius who, between the Restora,-
tion and the Revolution showed a bitter enmity to the new philosophy, as it was
then called. See the Satire on the Royal Society, and the Elephant in the Moon.
t The eagerness with wluch the agriculturists of that age tried experiments
and introduced improvements is well described by Aubrey. See the Natural
History of Wiltshire, 1685.
372 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
still in abject bondage, and afforded an inexhaustible subject of
just ridicule to Moliere, had in England become an experi-
mental and progressive science, and every day made some new
advance in defiance of Hippocrates and Galen. The attention
of speculative men had been, for the first time, directed to the
important subject of sanitary police. The great plague of 1665
induced them to consider with care the defective architecture,
draining, and ventilation of the capital. The great fire of 1666
afforded an opportunity for effecting extensive improvements.
The whole matter was diligently examined by the Royal Society ;
and to the suggestions of that body must be partly attributed
the changes which, though far short of what the public welfare
required, yet made a wide difference between the new and the
old London, and probably put a final close to the ravages of
pestilence in our country.* At the same time one of the found-
ers of the Society, Sir William Petty, created the science of
political arithmetic, the humble but indispensable handmaid of
political philosophy. No kingdom of nature was left unexplored.
To that period belong the chemical discoveries of Boyle, and
the earliest botanical researches of Sloane. It was then that
Ray made a new classification of birds and fishes, and that the
attention of Woodward was first drawn towards fossils and shells.
One after another phantoms which haunted the world through
ages of darkness fled before the light. Astrology and alchymy
became jests. Soon there was scarcely a county in which some
of the old Quorum did not smile contemptuously when an old
woman was brouirht before them for ridin<y on broomsticks or
giving cattle the murrain. But it was in those noblest and most
arduous departments of knowledge in which induction and
mathematical demonstration cooperate for the discovery of truth,
that the English genius won in that age the most memorable
triumphs. John Wallis placed the whole system of statics on a
new foundation. Edmund Plalley investigated the properties of
the atmosphere, the ebb and flow of the sea, the laws of mag-
netism, and the course of the comets ; nor did he shrink from
toil, peril and exile in the cause of science. While he, on the
* Sprat's History of the Royal Society,
STATE OF ENDLAND IN 1685. 373
rock of Saint Helena, mai)ped the constellations of the southern
hemisphere, our national observatory was rising at Greenwich :
and John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, was commenc-
ing that long series of observations which is never mentioned
without respect and gratitude in any part of the globe. But the
glory of these men, eminent as they were, is cast into the shade
by the transcendent lustre of one immortal name. In Isaac
Newton two kinds of intellectual power, which have little in
common, and which are not often found together in a very high
degree of vigour, but which nevertheless are equally necessary
in the most sublime departments of physics, were united as they
have never been united before or since. There may have been
minds as happily constituted as his for the cultivation of pure
mathematical science : there may have been minds as happily
constituted for the cultivation of science purely experimental ;
but in no other mind have the demonstrative faculty and the
inductive faculty coexisted in such supreme excellence and per
feet harmony. Perhaps in the days of Scotists and Thomists even
his intellect might have run to waste, as many .intellects ran
to waste which were inferior only to his. Happily the spirit of
the age on which his lot was cast, gave the right direction
to his mind ; and his mind reacted with tenfold force on the
spirit of the age. In the year 1685 his fame, though
splendid, was only dawning ; but his genius was in the meridian.
His great work, that work which effected a revolution in the
most important provinces of natural philosophy, had been com-
pleted, but was not yet published, and was- just about to be sub-
mitted to the consideration of the Royal Society.
It is not very easy to explain why the nation which was so
far before its neighbours in science should in art have been far
behind them. Yet such was the fact. It is true that in archi-
tecture, an art which is half a science, an art in which none but
a geometrician can excel, an art which has no standard of grace
but what is directly or indirectly dependent on utility, an art of
which the creations derive a part, at least, of their majesty from
mere bulk, our country could boast of one truly great man,
Christopher Wren • and the fire which laid London in ruins
374 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
had given him an ojjportunity, unprecedented in modern history,
of displaying his powers. The austere beauty of the Athenian
portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he was like
almost all his contemporaries, incapable of emulating, and per-
haps incapable of appreciating ; but no man born on our side of
the Alps, has imitated with so much success the magnificence of
the palacelike churches of Italy. Even the superb Lewis has
left to posterity no work which can bear a comparison with
Saint Paul's. But at the close of the reign of Charles the
Second there was not a single English painter or statuary whose
name is now remembered. This sterility is somewhat myste-
rious ; for painters and statuaries were by no means a despised
or an ill paid class. Their social position was at least as high as
at present. Their gains, when compared with the wealth of the
nation and with the remuneration of other descriptions of intel-
lectual labour, were even larger than at present. Indeed the
munificent patronage which was extended to artists drew them
to our shores in multitudes. Lely. who has preserved to us the
rich curls, the full lips, and the languishing eyes of the frail
beauties celebrated by Hamilton, was a Westphalian. He had
died in 1680, having long lived splendidly, having received the
honour of knighthood, and having accumulated a good estate out
of the fruits of his skill. His noble collection of drawings and
pictures was, after his decease, exhibited by the royal permis-
sion in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and was sold by
auction for the almost incredible sum of twenty-six thousand
pounds, a sum which bore a greater proportion to the fortunes
of the rich men of that day than a hundred thousand pounds
would bear to the fortunes of the rich men of our time.* Lely.
was succeeded by his countryman Godfrey Kneller, who was
made first a knight and then a baronet, and who, after keeping
up a sumptuous establishment, and after losing much money by
unlucky speculations, was still able to bequeath a large fortune
to his family. The two Vandeveldes, natives of Holland, had
been tempted by English liberality to settle here, and had pro-
• Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting ; Loudon Gazette, May 31, 1683 ; North's
life of Guildford.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. d75
duced for the King and his nobles some of the finest sea pieces
in the world. Another Dutchman, Simon Varelst, painted
glorious sunflowers and tulips for prices such as had never be-
fore been known. Verrio, a Neapolitan, covered ceilings and
staircases with Gorgons and IMuses, Njmphs and Satyrs, Vir-
tues and Vices, Gods quafliug nectar, and laurelled princes
riding in triumph. The income which he derived from his
performances enabled him to keep one of the most expensive
tables in England. For his pieces at "Windsor alone he received
seven thousand pounds, a sum then sufficient to make a gentle-
man of moderate wishes perfectly easy for life, a sum greatly
exceeding all that Dryden, during a literary life of forty years,
obtained from the booksellers.* Verrio's assistant and suc-
cessor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two most
celebrated sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Gibber,
whose pathetic emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adorn
Bedlam, was a Dane. Gibbons, to whose graceful fancy and
delicate touch many of our palaces, colleges, and churches owe
their finest decorations, was a Dutchman. Even the designs
for the coin were made by French artists. Indeed, it was not
till the reign of George the Second that our country could glory
in a great painter ; and George the Third was on the throne
before she had reason to be proud of any of her sculptors.
It is time that this description of the England which Charles
the Second governed should draw to a close. Yet one subject
of the highest moment still remains untouched. Nothing has
yet been said of the great body of the people, of those who held
the ploughs, who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of
Norwich, and squared the Portland stone for Saint Paul's.
Nor can very much be said. The most numerous class is pre-
cisely the class respecting which we have the most meagre
information. In those times philanthropists did not yet regard
it as a sacred duty, nor had demagogues yet found it a lucrative
trade, to talk and write about the distress of the labourer. His-
tory was too much occupied with courts and camps to spare a
» The great prices paid to Varelst and Verrio are mentioned in Walpole's
AnecvioteB of Padntingi
4V tt HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
line for the hut of the peasant or the garret of the mechanic,
The press now often sends forth in a day a greater quantity of
discussion and declamation about tlie condition of the workmg
man than was published during the twenty-eight years which
elapsed between the Restoration and the Revolution. But it
would be a great error to infer from the increase of complamt
that there has been any increase of misery.
The great criterion of the state of the common people is the
amount of their wages ; and as four-fifths of the common people
were, in the seventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is
especially important to ascertain what were then the wages of
agricultural industry. On this subject we have the means of
arriving at conclusions sufficiently exact for our purpose.
Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight,
informs us that a labourer was by no means in the lowest state
who received for a day's work fourpence with food, or eight-
pence without food. Four shillings a week therefore were,
according to Petty's calculation, fair agricultural wages.*
That this calculation wag Dot remote from the truth we havo
abundant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685 the
justices of Warwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted
to them hj aa Act of Elizabeth, fixed, at their quarter sessions ,
a scale of wages for the county, and notified that every employer
who gave more than the authorised sum, and every working
man who received more, would be liable to punishment. Tho
wages of the common agricultural labourer, from March to
September, were fixed at the precise amount mentioned by
Petty, namely four shillings a week without food. From Sep-
tember to March the wages were to ba only three and sixpence
a week.f
But in that age, as in ours, tho earnings of the peasant were
very different in different parts of the kingdom. The wages of
Warwickshire were probably about the average, and those of
the counties near the Scottish border below it : but there were
more favoured districts. In the same year, 1 685, a gentleman
of Devonshire, named Richard Dunning, published a small tract,
• Petty'* Political Arithmetic. f Stat 5 Eliz. c. 4 J Archseologia, vol. rf.
BTATl.: OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 377
Id which he described the condition of the poor of that count}'.
That he understood his subject well it is impossible to doubt ;
for a few months later his work was reprinted, and was, by the
magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly
recommended to the attention of all parochial ofRcers. Accord-
ing to him, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without
food, about five shillings a week.*
Still better was the condition of the labourer in the neish-
bourhood of Bury Saint Edmund's. The magistrates of Suffolk
met there hi the spring of 1682 to fix a rate of wages, and
resolved that, where the labourer was not boarded, he should
have five shillings a week in winter, and six in summer.f
In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford had fixed the wages of
the Essex labourer, who was not boarded, at six shillings in
winter and seven in summer. This seems to have been the
highest remuneration given in the kingdom for agricultural
labour between the Restoration and the Revolution ; and it
is to be observed that, in the year in which this order was made,
the necessaries of life were immoderately dear. AVheat was at
seventy shillings the quarter, which would even now be consid-
ered as almost a famine price.$
These facts are in 2:)erfect accordance with another fact
which seems to deserve consideration. It is evident that, in
a country where no man can be compelled to become a soldier,
the ranks of an army cannot be filled if the government offers
much less than the wages of common rustic labour. At present
the pay and beer money of a private in a regiment of the line
amount to seven shillings and sevenpence a week. This stipend,
coupled with the hope of a pension, does not attract the English
youth in sufficient numbers; and it is found necessary to supjjly
the deficiency by enlisting largely from among the poorer
population of Munster and Connaught. The pay of the private
foot soldier in 1685 was only four shillings and eightpence
a week, yet it is certain that the government in that year found
* Plain and easy Method showing how the office of Overseer of the Poor may
be manatred, by Richard Dunnine;; 1st edition, 1685; 2d edition, 1686.
t Cullum's History of Hawsted.
i Ruggles on the Poor.
378 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
no difficulty in obtaining many thousands of English recruits
at very short notice. The pay of the private foot soldier in the
army of the Commonwealth had been seven shillings a week,
that is to say, as much as a corporal received under Charles the
Second ; * and seven shillings a week had been found sufficient
to fill the ranks with men decidedly superior to the generality
of the people. On the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to
conclude that, in the reign of Charles the Second, the ordinary
wages of the peasant did not exceed four shillings a week ; but
that, in some pai-ts of the kingdom, five shillings, six shillings, and,
during the summer months, even seven shillings were paid. At
present a district where a labouring man earns only seven shillings
a week is thought to be in a state shocking to humanity. The
average is very much higher ; -and in pi'osperous counties, the
weekly wages of husbandmen amount to twelve, fourteen, and
even sixteen shillings. The remuneration of workmen employed
in manufactures has always been higher than than that of the
tillers of the soil. In the year 1680, a member of the House of
Commons remarked that the high wages paid in this countrr
make it impossible for our textures to maintain a cempetition
with the produce of the Indian looms. An English mechanic, he
said, instead of slaving like a native of Bengal for a piece of cop-
per, exacted a shilling a day.f Other evidence is extant, which
proves that a shilling a day was the pay to which the English
manufactuer then thought himself entitled, but that he was
ofteu forced to work for less. The common people of that age
were not in the habit of meeting for public discussion, of
haranguing, or of petitioning Parliament. No newspaper
pleaded their cause. It was in rude rhyme that their love
and hatred, their exultation had their distress, found utter-
ance. A great part of their history is to be learned only
from their ballads. One of the most remarkable of the popu-
lar lays chaunted about the streets of Norwich and Leeds in
the time of Charles the Second and still be read on the orig-
* See, in Thurloe's State Papers, the memorandum of the Pi'toh Deputies,
dated August 2-12, 1653.
t The orator was Mr. John Basset, member for Barngt>ple> S^e SbJith'*
Memoirs of Wool, chapter Ixviii.
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685. 379
ual broadside. It is the vehement and bitter cry of labour
against capital. It describes the good old times when every
artisan employed in the vtfoollen manufacture lived as well as
a farmer. But those times were past. Sixpence a day was
now all that could be earned by hard labour at the loom. If
the poor complained that they could not live on such a pit-
tance, they were told that they were free to take it or leave it.
For so miserable a recompense were the producers of wealth
compelled to toil, rising early and lying down late, while the
master clothier, eating, sleepmg, and idhng, became rich by their
exertions. A shilling a day, the poet declares, is what the
weaver would have if justice were done.* We may therefore
conclude that, in the generation which preceded the Revolution,
a workman employed in the great staple manufacture of England
thought himself fairly paid if he gained six shillings a week.
It may here be noticed that the practice of setting children
prematurely to work, a practice which the state, the legitimate
pi'otector of those who cannot protect themselves, has, in our
time, wisely and humanely interdicted, prevailed m the seven-
teenth century to an extent which, when compared with the ex-
tent of the manufacturing system, seems almost incredible. At
Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little creature
of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of
that time, and among them some who were considered as emi-
nently benevolent, mention, with exultation, the fact that, in
that single city, boys and girls of very tender age created wealth
* This ballad is in the British Museum. The precise year is not given ; but
the Imprimatur of Roger Lestrange fixes the date sufficiently for my purpose. I
will quote some of the lines. The master clothier is introduced speaJcing ai
follows :—
** In former ages we used to give,
S>/ that our workfolks like farmers did live ;
But the times are changed, we will make them know.
" We will make them to work hard for sixpence a day,
Though a shilling they deserve if they had their just pay ;
If at all they murmur and say 'tis too small.
We bid them choose whether they'll work at all.
And thus we ("o giin all our wealth and estate.
By many poor men that work early and late.
Tiien hey for the clothing trade ! It goes on brave ;
We scorn for to toyl and moyi, nor yet to slave.
Our workmen do work hard, but we live at case,
We £0 wh»a we wilt, and we come When we plsac«."
^80 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve
thousand pounds a year.* The more carefully we examine the
history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from
those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social
evils. The truth is ' hat the evils are, with scarcely an exception,
old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns and
the humanity which remedies them.
When we pass from the weavers of cloth to a different class
of artisans, our enquiries will still lead us to nearly the same
conclusions. During several generations, the Commissioners of
Greenwich Hospital have kept a register of the wages paid to dif-
ferent classes of workmen who have been employed in the repairs
of the building. From th.'s valuable record it appears that, in the
course of a hundred and twenty years, the daily earnings of the
bricklayer have risen from half a crown to four and tenpence,
those of the mason from half a crown to five and threepence,
those of the carpenter from half acrown to five and fivepence, and
those of the plumber from three shillings to five and sixpence.
It seems clear, therefore, that the wages of labour, estima-
ted in money, were, in 1685, not more than half of what they
now are ; and there were few articles important to the working
man of which the price was not, in 1685, more than half of what
it now is. Beer was undoubtedly much cheaper in that age than
at present. Meat was also cheaper, but was still so dear that
hundi'eds of thousands of families scarcely knew the taste of it. f
In the cost of wheat there has been very little change. The aver-
age price of the quarter, during the last twelve years o Charles
the Second, was fifty shillings. Bread, therefore, such as is now
given to the inmates of a workhouse, was then soldom seen, even
on the trencher of a yeoman or of a shopkeeper. The great ma-
lority of the nation lived almost entirely on ye, barley, and oats.
The produce of tropical countries, the produce of the mines,
* Cliamberlayne's State of England ; Petty's Political Arithmetic, cliapter
viii. ; Dmming's Plain and Easy Method ; Finnin's Proposition for the Employing
of the Poor. It ought to be observed that Firmin was an eminent philanthropist.
t King in his Natural and Political Conclusions roughly estimated the common
people of England at 880,000 families. Of these f ^miilies 440,000, according to him,
ate animal food twice a week. The remaining 440,000, ate it not at all, or at most
not oftener than once a week.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 381
the produce of machinery, was positively dearer than at present^
Among the commodities for which the labourer would have had
to pay higher in 1685 than his posterity now pay were sugar,
salt, coals, candles, soap, shoes, stockings, and generally all
articles of clothing and all articles of bedding. It may be
added, that the old coats and blankets would have been, not
only more costly, but less serviceable than the modern fabrics.
It must be lemembered that those labourers who were able
to maintain themselves and their families by means of wages
were not the most necessitous members of the community.
Beneath them lay a large class which could not subsist without
some aid from the parish. There can hardly be a more impor-
tant test of the condition of the common people than the ratio
jvhich this class bears to the whole society. At present, the
men, women, and children who receive relief appear from the
official returns to be, in bad years, one tenth of the inhabitants
of England, and, in good years, one thirteenth. Gregory King
estimated them in his time at about a fourth ; and this estimate,
which all our respect for his authority will scarcely prevent us
from calling extravagant, was pronounced by Davenant emi-
nently judicious.
We are not quite without the means of forming an estimate
for ourselves. The poor rate was undoubtedly the heaviest
tax borne by our ancestors in those (h,js. It was computed, in
the reisn of Charles the Second, at near vseven hundred thou-
sand pounds a year, much more than .e produce either of the
excise or of the customs, and little l')ss than half the entire
revenue of the crown. The poor rate went on increasing rapidly,
and appears to have risen in a short time to between eight and
nine hundred thousand a year, that is to say, to one sixth of
what it now is. The population was then less than a third of
what it now is. The minimum of wages, estimated in money,
was half of what it now is ; and we can therefore hardly suppose
that the average allowance made to a pauper can have been
more than half of what it now is. It seems to follow that the
proportion of the English people which received parochial relief
then must have been larger thtn the proportion which receives
^82 nisTOur of enc;:..\xd.
relief now. It is good to speak on such questions with dif
fidence : but it has certainly never yet been proved that pau-
perism was a less heavy burden or a less serious social evil
during the last quarter of the seventeenth century than it is in
our own time.*
In one respect it must be admitted that the progress of civ-
ilization has diminished the physical comforts of a portion of the^
poorest cla«s. It has already been mentioned that, before the
Revolution, many thousands of square miles, now enclosed and
cultivated, were marsh, forest, and heath. Of this wild land
much was, by law, common, and much of what was not common
by law was woilh so little that the proprietorc suffered it to be
common in fact. In such a tract, squatters and trespassers were
tolerated to an extent now unknown. The peasant who dwelf
there could, at little or no charge, procure occasionally som€
palatable addition to his hard fare, and provide himself witb»
fuel for the winter. He kept a flock of geese on what is novf
an orchard rich with apple blossoms. He snared wild fowl on the
fen which has long since been drained and divided into corn-fields
and turnip fields. He cut turf among the furze bushes on the
moor which is now a meadow bright with clover and renowne(?
for butter and cheese. The progress of agriculture and the in-
crease of population necessarily deprived him of these privileges.
But against this disadvantas^e a long list of advantacres is to be
set off. Of the blessings which civilisation and philosophy bring
with them a large proportion is common to all ranks, and would,
if withdrawn, be missed as painfully by the labourer as by the
peer. The market-place which the rustic can now reach with
* Fourteenth Report of the Poor Law Commifsioiiers, Appendix B. Ko. 2,
Appendix C. Ko. 1, 1848. Of the two estimates of the poor rate mentioned in the
text one was formed by Arthur Moore, tlie other, some years later, by Kichaid
Dunning. Moore's estimate will be found in Davenant's Essay on Ways and
Means ; Dunning's in Sir Frederic Eden's valuable work on the jjoor. King and
Davenant estimate the paupers and beggars in 1G96, at the incredible number of
l,3aO,000 out of a population of 5,500,000. In 1846 the number of persons who
received relief appears from the official returns to have been only 1,332,089 outot
a population ot about 17,000,000. It ought also to be observed that, in tJiose re-
turns, a pauper must very ofteu be reckoned more than once.
I would advise the reader to consult De Foe's pamphlet entitled "Giving
Alms no Charity," and the Greenwich tables which will be found iu Mr. M'ChV*
locb't Commercial Dictionary under the head Pricee.
STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685. 38S
his cart in an hour was, a hundred and sixty years ago, a day's
journey from him. The street which now affords to the artisan,
during the whole night, a secure, a convenient, and a brilliantly
lighted walk was, a hundred and sixty years ago, so dark after
sunset that he would not have been able to see his hand, so ill
paved that he would have run constant risk of breaking his neck,
and so ill watched that he would have been in imminent danger
of being knocked down and plundered of his small earnings.
Every bricklayer who falls from a scaffold, every sweeper of
a crossing who is run over by a carriage, may now have his
wounds dressed and his limbs set with a skill such as, a hundred
and sixty years ago, all the wealth of a great lord like Ormond,
or a merchant prince like Clayton, could not have purchased.
Some frightful diseases have been extirpated by science; and
some have been banished by police. The term of human life
has been lengthened over the whole kingdom, and especially in
the towns. The year 1G85 was not accounted sickly ; yet in
the year 1685 more than one in twenty-three of the inhabitants
of the capital died.* At present only one inhabitant of the cap-
ital in forty dies annually. The difference in salubrity between
the London of the nineteenth century and the London of the sev-
enteenth century is very far greater than the difference between
London in an ordinary year and London in a year of cholera.
Still more important is the benefit which all orders of
society, and especially the lower orders, have derived from the
mollifying influence of civilisation on the national character.
The groundwork of that character has indeed been the same
through many generations, in the sense in which the groundwork
of the character of an individual may be said to be the same
when he is a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when he is a
refined and accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that the
public mind of England has softened while it has ripened, and
that we have, in the course of ages, become, not only a wiser,
but also a kinder people. There is scarcely a page of the his-
tory or lighter literature of the seventeenth century which does
not contain some proof that our ancestors were less humane than
• The deaths were 23,222. Petty's Political Arithmetic.
3&4 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
their posterity. The discipline of workshops, of schools, of pri-
vate families, though not more efficient than at present, was
infinitely harsher. Masters, well born and bred, were in the
habit of beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way of
imparting knowledge but by beating their pupils. Husbands,
of decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives. The
implacability of hostile factions was such as we can scarcely con-
ceive. Whigs were disposed to murmur because Stafford was
suffered to die without seeing his bowels burned before his face.
Tories reviled and insulted Russell as his coach passed from the
Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields.* As little mercy
was shown by the populace to sufferers of a humbler rank.
If an offender was put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped
with life from the shower of brickbats and paving stones.f If
he was tied to the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, im-
ploring the hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him
howl.$ Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell
on court days for the purpose of seeing the wretched women
who beat hemp there whipped. § A man pressed to death for
refusing to plead, a woman burned for coining, excited less sym-
pathy than is now felt for a galled horse or an overdriven ox.
Fights compared with which a boxing match is a refined and
humane spectacle were among the favourite diversions of a large
part of the town. Multitudes assembled to see gladiators hack
each other to pieces with deadly weapons, and shouted with de-
light when one of the combatants lost a finger or an eye. The pris-
ons were hells on earth, seminaries of every crime and of every
disease. At the assizes the lean and yellow culprits brought
with them from their cells to the dock an atmosphere of stench
and pestilence which sometimes avenged them signally on bench,
bar, and jury. But on all this misery society looked with pro-
found indifference. Nowhere could be found that sensitive and
restless compassion which has, in our time, extended a powerful
protection to the factory child, to the Hindoo widow, to the
* Buniet, i. 560.
t Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit.
i Tom Brown describes such a scene in lines which I do not venture to quote.
§ Ward's London Spy.
STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1G85. 385
negro slave, which pries into the stores and watercasks of every
emigrant ship, which winces at every lash laid on the back of a
drunken soldier, which will not suffer the thief iu the hulks to
be ill fed or overworked, and which has repeatedly endeavoured
to save the life even of the murderer. It is true that compassion
ouglit, like all other feelings, to be under the government of
reason, and has, for want of such government, produced some
ridiculous and some deplorable effects. But the more we study
the annals of the past, the more shall we rejoice that we live in
a merciful age, in an age in which cruelty is abhorred, and iu
which pain, even when deserved, is inflicted reluctantly and
from a sense of duty. Every class doubtless has gained largely
by this great moral change : but the class which has gained most
is the poorest, the most dependent, and the most defenceless.
The general effect of the evidence which has been submitted
to the reader seems hardly to admit of doubt. Yet, in spite of
evidence, many wjll still image to themselves the England of the
Stuarts as a more pleasant country than the England in which
we live. It may at first sight seem strange that society, while
constantly moving forward with eager speed, should be con-
stantly looking backward with tender regret. But these two
propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be
resolved into the same principle. Both spring from our
impatience of the state in which we actually are. That impa-
tience, while it stimulates us to surpass preceding generations,
disposes us to overrate their happiness. It is, in some sense,
unreasonable and ungrateful in us to be constantly discontented
with a condition which is constantly improving. But, in truth,
there is constant imjjrovement precisely because there is constant
discontent. If we were perfectly satisfied with the present, we
should cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to
the future. And it is natural that, being dissatisfied with the
present, we should form a too favourable estimate of the past.
In truth we are under a deception similar to that which mis-
leads the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravac
all IS dry and bare : but far in advance, and far in the rear, is
the semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten for*
386 HISTORT OF ENGLAND.
ward and find nothing but sand where an hour before they had
seen a lake. They turn their eyes and see a lake where, an
nour before, they were toiling through sand. A similar illusion
seems to haunt nations through every stage of the long pro-
gress from poverty and barbarism to the highest degrees of
opulence and civilisation. But if we resolutely chase the mirage
backward, we shall find it recede before us into the regions of
fabulous antiquity. It is now the fashion to place the golden
age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of com-
forts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern foot-
man, when farmers and shopkeepers bre;:!:fasted on loaves the
very sight of which would raise a riot in r. modern workhouse,
when to have a clean shirt once a week was a privilege reserved
for the higher class of gentry, when men died faster in the
purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes
of our towns, and when men died faster in the lanes of our
towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana. We too shall,
in our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn be envied. It may
well be, in the twentieth century, that the peasant of Dorsetshire
may think himself miserably paid with twenty shillings a week-,
that the carpenter at jGreenwich may receive ten shillings a
day; that laboring men may be as little used to dine without
meat as they now are to eat rye bread ; that sanitary police and
medical discoveries may have added several more years to the
average length of human life; that numerous comforts and
luxuries which are now unknown, or confined to a few, may be
within the reach of every diligent and thrifty woi'king man.
And yet it may then be the mode to assert that the increase of
wealth and the progress of science have benefited the few at
the expense of the many, and to talk of the reign of Queen
Victoria as the time when England was truly merry England,
when all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy,
when the rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the
poor did not envy the splendor of the rich.
OH^BLES THE aECOND. 337
CHAPTER IV.
The deatli of King Charles the Second took the nation by
surprise. His frame was naturally strong, and did not appear to
have suffered from excess. He had always been mindful of h''s
health even in his pleasures ; and his habits were such as
promise a long life and a robust old age. Indolent as he was
on all occasions which required tension of the mind, he was
active and persevering in bodily exercise. He had, when
young, been renowned as a tennis player,* and was, even in the
decline of life, an indefatigable walker. His ordinary pace was
such that those who were admitted to the honour of his society
found it difficult to keep up with him. IIo rose early, and
generally passed three or four hours a day in the open air. He
might be seen, before the dew was off the grass in St. James's
Park, striding among the trees, playing witb his spaniels, and
flinging corn to his ducks ; and these exhibitions endeared him
to the common people, who always love to see the great
unbend. t
At length, towards the close of the year 1684, he was pre-
vented, by a slight attack of what was supposed to be gout,
from rambling as usual. He now spent his mornings in his
laboratory, where he amused himself with experiments on the
jproperties of mercury. His temper seemed to have suffered
from confinement. He had no apparent cause for disquiet.
His kingdom was tranquil : he was not in pressing want of
money : his power was greater than it had ever been : the
party which had long thwarted him had been beaten down ; but
• Pepye's Diary, Dec. 28, 16C3, Sept. 2, 1667.
t Burnet, i. 606 ; Spectator, No. 462 ; Lords' Journals, October 28, 16Z8 ;
Gibber's Apology,
S88 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the cheerfulness which had supported him against adverse
fortune had vanished in tMs season of prosperity. A trifle now
suflSced to depress those elastic spirits which had borne up
against defeat, exile, and penury. Ilis irritation frequently
showed itself by looks and words such as could hardly have
been expected from a man so eminently distinguished by good
humour and good breeding. It was not supposed however that
his constitution was seriously impaired.*
His palace liad seldom presented a gayer or a more Ecanda-
lous appearance than on the evening of Sunday the first of
February 1 GSo.f Some grave persons who liad gone thither,
after the fashion of that age, to pay their duty to their sove-
reign, and who had expected that, on such a day, his: court
would wear a decent aspect, were struck with astonishment and
horror. The great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of
the magnificence of the Tudors, was crowded witli revellers and
gamblers. Tlie king sate there chatting and toying with three
women, whose charms were the boast, and whose vices were
the disgrace, of three nations. Barbara Palmer, Duchess of
Cleveland, was there, no longer young, but still retaining some
traces of that superb and voluptuous loveliness which twenty
years before overcame the hearts of all men. There too was
the Duchess of Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features
were lighted up with the vivacity of France. Hortei-^ia Man-
cini, Duchess of Mazarin, and niece of the gTeat Cardinal,
completed the group. She had been early removed from her
native Italy to the court where her uncle was supreme. Ilis
power and her own attractions had drawn a crowd of illus-
trious suitors round her. Charles himself, during his exile, had
sought her hand in vain. No gift of nature or of fortune
seemed to be wanting to her. Her face was beautiful with the
rich beauty of the South, her understanding quick, her manners
graceful, her rank exalted, her possessions immense ; but her
ungovernable passions had turned all these blessings into
• Buniet.l. 605, e06 ; "Wei wood ; North's Life of Guildford, 251.
t I may take this opportunity of mentioning that whenever I give only one
date, I follow the old style, which was, in the seventeenth c«nturyf tha Btijrle of
England ; but I reckon the year from the first of January,
CHARLES THE SECOND. 389
curses. She had found the misery of an ill assorted marriage
intolerable, had fled from her husband, had abandoned lier vast
wealth, and, after having astonished Rome and Piedmont by
her adventures, had fixed her abode in England. Her housw
was the favourite resort of men of wit and pleasure, who, foi
^the sake of her smiles and her table, endured her frequent fits
of insolence and ill humour. Rochester and Godolphiu sonie-
tiirfes forgot the cares of state in her company. BarJiV.n and
Saint Evremond found in her drawing room consolation for
their' long banishment from Paris. The learning of Vossius,
the wit of Waller, were daily employed to flatter and amuse
her. But her diseased mind required stronger stimulants, and
sought them in gallantry, in basset, and in usquebaugh.*
While Charles flirted with his three sultanas, Hortensia's
French page, a handsome boy, whose vocal performances were
the delight of Whitehall, and were rewarded by numerous
presents of rich clothes, ponies, and guineas, warbled some
amorous verses.f A party of twenty courtiers was seated at
cards round a large table on which gold was heaped in moun-
tains, t Even then the King had complained that he did not
feel quite well. He had no appetite for his supper : his rest
that night was broken ; but on the following morning he rose,
as usual, early.
To that morning the contending factions in his council had,
during some day^, looked forward with anxiety. The struggle
between Halifax and Rochester seemed to be approaching a
decisive crisis. Halifax, not content with having already
driven his rival from the Board of Treasury, had undertaken to
prove him guilty of such dishonesty or neglect in the conduct
of the finances as ought to be jiunished by dismission from the
public service. It was even whispered that the Lord President
would probably be sent to the Tower. The King had promised
to enquire into the matter. The second of February had been
fixed for the investigation ; and several officers of the revenue
* Saint Everemond, /?a.ssi??i ; Saint Real, M«5moires de la Duchesse de Maza-
riu ; Rochester's Farewell ; Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 6, 1676, June 11, leSS.
390 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
had been ordered to attend with their books on that day.* But
d. great turn of fortune was at hand.
Scarcely had Charles risen from his bed when his attend-
ants perceived that his utterance was indistinct, and that his
thoughts seemed to be wandering. Several men of rank had,
as usual, assembled to see their sovereign shaved and dressed.
He made an effort to converse with them in his usual gay
style ; but his ghastly look surprised and alarmed them. Soon
his faco grew black ; his eyes turned in his head ; he uttered a
cry, staggered, and fell into the arms of one of his lords. A
physician who had charge of the royal retorts and crucibles
happened to be present. lie had no lancet ; but he opened a
vein with a penknife. The blood flowed freely ; but the King
was still insensible.
He was laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the
Duchess of Portsmouth huug over him with the familiarity of
a wife. But the alarm had been given. The Queen and the
Duchess of York were hastening to the room. The favour-
ite concubine was forced to retire to her own apartments. Those
apartments had been thrice pulled down and thrice rebuilt by
her lover to gratify her caprice. The very furniture of the
chimney was massy silver. Several fine paintings, which prop-
erly belonged to the Queen, had been transferred to the dwell-
ing of the mistress. The sideboards were piled with richly
wrought plate. In the niches stood cabinets, the masterpieces of
Japanese art. On the hangings, fresh from the looms of Paris,
were depicted, in tints which no English tapestry could rival,
birds of gorgeous plumage, landscapes, hunting matches, the
lordly terrace of Saint Germains, the statues and fountains of
Versailles.f In the midst of tliis splendour, purchased by
guilt and ehame, the unhappy woman gave herself up to an
agony of grief, which, to do her justice, was not wholly sel-
fish.
• Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley Nortli, 170 ; The tnie Patriot vindicated
»r a Justification of his Excellency the E of R ; Bura&t, i. 605. The Treaa*
nry Books prove that Burnet had good intelligence.
t Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24, 1681-2, Oct. 4, 1683.
CHARLES THE SECOND 391
And now the gates of Wliitehall, wliick ordinarily stood
open to all comers, were closed. But persons whose faces
were known were still permitted to enter. The antechambers
and galleries were soon filled to overflowing ; and even the sick
room was crowded with peers, i)rivj councillors, and foreign
ministers. All the medical men of note iu London were sum-
moned. So high did political animosities run that the presence
of some Whig physicians was regarded as an extraordinary
circumstance.* One Roman Catholic, whose skill was then
widely renowned, Doctor Thomas Short, was iu attendance.
Several of the prescriptions have been preserved. One of them
is signed by fourteen Doctors. The patient was bled largely.
Hot iron was applied to his head. A loathsome volatile salt,
extracted from human skulls, was forced into his mouth. He
recovered his senses ; but he was evidently in a situation of
extreme danger.
The Queen was for a time assiduous in her attendance. The
Duke of York scarcely left his brother's bedside. The Primate
and four other bishops were then in London. They remained
at Whitehall all day, and took it by turns to sit up at night in
the King's room. The news of his illness filled the capital with
sorrow and dismay. For his easy temper and affable manners
had won the affection of a large part of the nation ; and those
who most disliked him preferred his unprincipled levity to the
stern and earnest bigotry of his brother*
On the morning of Thursday the fifth of February, the
London Gazette announced that His Majesty was going on well,
and was thought by the physicians to be out of danger. The
bells of all the churches rang merrily ; and preparations for
bonfires were made in the streets. But iu the evening it was
known that a relapse had taken place, and that the medical
attendants had given up all hope. The public mind was great-
ly disturbed ; but there was no disjjosition to tumult. The
Duke, of York, who had already taken on himself to give
orders, ascertained that the City was perfectly quiet, and that
* Dugdale's Correspondence,
392 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
he might without difficulty be proclaimed as soon as his brother
should expire.
The King was in great pain, and complained that he felt as
if a fire was burning within him. Yfet he bove up against his
suiierinors with a fortitude which did not seem to belong to his
soft and luxurious nature. The sio'ht of his mlserv aifected his
wife so much that she fainted, and was carried senseless to her
chamber. The prelates who were in waiting had from the first
exhorted him to prepare for his end. They now thought it
their duty to address him in a still more urgent manner. Wil-
liam Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, an honest and pious,
though narrowminded, man, used great freedom. " It is time,"
he said, " to speak out ; for, Sir, you are about to appear before
a Judge who is no respecter of persons." The King answered
not a word.
Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, then tried his
powers of persuasion. He was a man of parts and learning, of
quick sensibility and stainless virtue. IHs elaborate works have
long been forgotten ; but his morning and evening hymns are
still repeated daily in thousands of dwellings. Though, like
most of his order, zealous for monarchy, he was no sycophant.
Before he became a Bishop, he had maintained the honour of his
gown by refusing, when the court was at Winchester, to let
Eleanor Gwynn lodge in the house which he occupied there as
a prebendary.* The King had sense enough to respect so
manly a spirit. Of all the prelates he liked Ken the best. It
was to no purpose, however, that the good Bishop now put forth
all his eloquence. His solemn and pathetic exhortation awed
and melted the bystanders to such a degree that some among
them believed him to be filled with the same spirit which, in the
old time, had, by the mouths of Nathan and Elias, called sinful
princes to repentance. Charles however was unmoved. He
made no objection indeed when the service for the visitation of
the sick was read. In reply to the pressing questions of the
divines, he said that he was sorry for what he had done amiss ;
* Hawkins's Life of Ken, 1713*
CHARLES THE SECOND. 393
and he suffered tlie iibsolufcion to be pronounced over him ao
cording to the forms of the Church of England : but, when he
was urged to declare that he died in the communion of that
Church, he seemed not to hear what was said ; and nothing could
induce him to take the Eucharist fi'om the hands of the Bishops.
A table with bread and wine was brought to his bedside, but in
vain. Sometimes he said that there was no hurry, and some-
times that he was too weak.
Many attributed this apathy to contempt for divine things,
and many to the stupor which often precedes death. But there
were in the palace a few persons who knew better. Charles
had never been a sincere member of the Established Church.
His mind had long oscillated between Hobbism and Popery.
When his health was good and his spirits high he was a scoffer.
In his few serious moments he was a Roman Catholic. The
Duke of York was aware of this, but was entirely occupied
with the care of his own interests. He had ordered the outports
to be closed. He had posted detachments of the Guards in dif-
ferent parts of the city. He had also procured the feeble signa-
ture of the dying King to an instrument by which some duties,
granted only till the demise of the Crown, were let to farm for
a term of three years. These things occupied the attention of
James to such a degree that, though, on ordinary occasions, he
was indiscreetly and unseasonably eager to bring over proselytes
to his Church, he never reflected that his brotlier was in danger
of dying without the last sacraments. This neglect was the
more extraordinary because the Duchess of York had, at the
request of the Queen, suggested, on the morning on which the
King was taken ill, the propriety of procuring spiritual assist-
ance. For such assistance Charles was at last indebted to an
agency very different from that of his pious wife and sister-in-
law. A life of frivolty and vice had not extinguished in the
Duchess of Portsmouth all sentiments of religion, or all that
kindness which is the glory of her sex. The French ambassador
Barillon, who had come to the palace to enquire after the King,
paid her a visit. He found her in an agony of sorrow. She
took him into a secret room, and poured out her whole heart to
394 niSTOBT OP England. -
him. " I have," she said, " a thing of great moment to teQ yon
If it were known, my head would be in danger. The Kin"- ia
really and truly a Catholic ; but he will die without being rec-
onciled to the Church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant
clergymen. I cannot enter it without giving scandal. Tho-
Duke is thinking only of himself. Speak to him. Remind him
that there is a soul at stake. He is master now. He can clear
the room. Go this instant, or it will be too late."
Barillon hastened to the bedchamber, took the Duke aside,
and delivered the message of the mistress. The conscience of
James smote liim. He started as if roused from sleep, and de-
clared that nothing should prevent him from discharging the
sacred duty which had been too long delayed. Several schemes
were discussed and rejected. At last the Duke commanded the
crowd to stand aloof, went to the bed, stooped down, and whis-
pered something which none of the spectators could hear, but
which they suj^posed to be some question about affairs of state.
Charles answered in an audible voice, " Yes, yes, with all my
heart." None of the bystanders, except the French Ambassador,
' guessed that the King was declaring his wish to be admitted into
the bosom of the Church of Rome.
" Shall I bring a priest ? " said the Duke, . " Do, brother,"
replied the sick man. " For God's sake do, and lose no time.
But no ; you will get into trouble." " If it costs me my life,"
said the Duke, " I will fetch a priest."
To find a priest, however, for such a purpose, at a moment's
notice, was not easy. For, as the law then stood, the person
who admitted a proselyte into the Roman Catholic Church was
guilty of a capital crime. The Count of Castel Melhor, a
Portuguese nobleman, who, driven by political troubles from
his native land, had been hospitably received at the English
court, undertook to procure a confessor. He had recourse to
his countrymen who belonged to the Queen's household ; but he
found that none of lier chaplains knew English or French
enough to shrive the King. The Duke and Barillon were about
to send to the Venetian Minister for a clergyman when they
heard that a Benedictine monk, named Joliii Huddlestou, happen-
CHARLES THE SECOND. 395
ed to be at Whitehall. Tliis man had, with great risk to him
self, saved the King's life after the battle of Worcester, tind
had, on that account, been, ever since the Restoration, a privi-
leged person. In the sharpest proclamations which had been
put forth against Popish priests, when false witnesses had
inflamed the nation to fury, Huddleston had been excepted by
name.* ITe readily consented to put his life a second time in
peril for his prince; but there was still a difficulty. The
honest monk was so illiterate that he did not know what he
ought to say on an occasion of such importance. He however
obtained some hints, through the intervention of Castel Melhor,
from a Portuguese ecclesiastic, and, thus instructed, was brought
up the back stairs by Chiffinch, a confidential servant, who, if
the satires of that age are to be credited, had often introduced
visitors of a very different description by the same entrance.
The Duke then, in the King's name, commanded all who were
present to quit .the room, except Lewis Duras, Earl of Fever-
sham, and John Granville, Earl of Bath. Both these Lords
professed the Protestant religion ; but James conceived that he
could count on their fidelity. Feversham, a Frenchman of noble
birth, and nephew of the great Turenne, held high rank in the
English army, and was Chamberlain to the Queen. Bath was
Groom of the Stole.
The Duke's orders were obeyed ; and even the physicians
withdrew. The back door was then opened ; and Father Hud-
dleston entered. A cloak had been thrown over his sacred
vestments ; and his shaven crown was concealed by a flowing
wig '' Sir," said the Duke, " this good man once saved your
/ife. He now comes to save your soul." Charles faintly an-
swered, " He is welcome." Huddleston went through his part
better than had been expected. He knelt by the bed, listened
to the confession, pronounced the absolution, and administered
extreme unction. He asked if the King wished to receive the
Lord's supper. " Surely," said Charles, " if I am not unworthy.'*
• See the London Gazette of Nov. 21, 167ft. Barillon and Burnet say that
Huddleston was excepted out of all the Acts of Parliament made against priests j
laut this is a mistake.
396 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
The host was brought in. Charles feebly strove to rise and
kneel before it. The priest made him lie still, and assured him
that God would accept the humiliation of the soul, and would
not require the humiliation of the body. The King found so
much difficulty in swallowing the bread that it was necessary
to open the door and procure a glass of water. This rite ended,
the monk held up a crucifix before the penitent, charged him to
fix his last thoughts on the sufferings of the Redeemer, and
withdrew. The whole ceremony had occupied about three
quarters of an hour ; and, during that time, the courtiers who
filled the outer room had communicated their suspicions to each
other by whispers and significant glances. The door was at
length thrown open, and the crowd again filled the chamber of
death.
It was now late in the evening. The King seemed much
relieved by what had passed. His natural children were brought
to his bedside, the Dukes of Grafton, Southampton, and North-
umberland, sons of the Duchess of Cleveland, the Duke of
Saint Albans, son of Eleanor Gwynn, and the Duke of Bich-
mond, son of the Duchess of Portsmouth. Charles blessed
them all, but spoke with peculiar tenderness to Richmond.
One face which should have been there was wanting. The
eldest and best loved child was an exile and a wanderer. Plis
name was not once mentioned by his father.
During the night Charles earnestly recommended the Duchess
of Portsmouth and her boy to the care of James ; " And do
not," he good-naturedly added, " let poor Nelly starve." The
Queen sent excuses for her absence by Halifax. She said that
she was too much disordered to resume her post by tlie couch,
and implored pardon for any offence which she might unwittingly
have given. " She ask my pardon, poor woman ! " cried Charles ;
*' I ask hers with all my heart."
The morning light began to peep through the windows of
"Whitehall i and Charles desired the attendants to pull aside the
curtains, that he might have one more look at the day. He
remarked that it was time to wind up a clock which stood neai
bis bed. These little circumstances were long remembered
CHARLES THE SECOND. 397
because they proved beyond dispute that, when he declared him-
self a Roman Catholic, he was in full possession of his faculties,
He apologised to those who had stood romid him all night for
the trouble which he had caused. He had been, he said, a most
unconscionable time dying ; but he hoped that they would excuse
it. This was the last glimpse of the exquisite urbanity, so often
found potent to charm away the resentment of a justly incensed
nation. Soon after dawn the speech of the dyijig man failed.
Before ten his senses were gone. Great numbers had repaired
to the churches at the hour of morning service. When thfc
prayer for the King was read, loud groans and sobs showed. how
deeply his people felt for him. At noon on Friday, the sixth
of February, he passed away without a struggle.*
» Clark's Life of James the Second, i. 746. Orig. Mem. ; Barillon's Despatch of
Feb. 1-18, 1685; Vaii Citters's Despatches of Feb. 3-13 and Feb. 6-16. Huddleston's
Narrative; Letters of Philip, seco.id Earl of Chestei-field, 277 ; Sir H. Ellis's
Original Letters, First Seiies, iii. 333 ; Second Series, iv. 74 ; Chaillot MS. ;
Burnet, i. 606 ; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4, 1684-5 ; Wei wood's Memories, 140 ; North's
Life of Guildford, 252 ; Examen, 648 ; Hawkins's Life of Ken ; Dryden's Thren-
odia Augustalis ; Sir H. Halford's Essay on Deaths of Eminent Persons. See
also a fragment of a letter written by tlie Earl of Ailesbury, which is printed in
the European Magazine for April, 1795. Ailesbury calls Burjiet an impostor. Yet
his own narrative and Burnet's will not, to any candid and sensible reader, ap-
pear to contradict each other. I have seen in the British Museum, and also in
the Librai-y of the Royal Institution, a curious broadside containing an account
of the de.ath of Charles. It will be found in the Somers Collections. The author
was evidently a zealous Roman Catholic, and must have had access to good
sources of infoiTnation. I strongly suspect that he had been in communication,
directly or indirectly, with James himself. No name is given at length : but
the initials are perfectly intelligible, except in one place. It is said that the D.
of Y. was reminded of the duty which he owed to his brother by P. M. A. C. F. I
must own myself quite unable to decipher the last five letters. It is some conso-
lation that Sir "Walter Scott was equally unsuccessful. (1848.) Since the first
edition of this work was published, several ingenious conjectiires touching these
mysterious letters have been communicated to me ; but I am convinced that the
true solution has not yet been suggested. (1850.') I still greatly doubt whether the
riddle has been solved. But the most plausible interpretation is one which, with
some variations, occuiTed. almost at the same time, to myself and to several
other persons ; I am inclined to read " Pere Mansuete A Cordelier Friar."
Mansuete, a Cordelier, was then James's confessor. To Mansuete therefore it
peculiarly belonged to remind James of a sacred duty which had been culpably
neglected. The writer of the broadside must have been unwilling to inform the
■world that a soul which many devout Roman Catholics had left to perish had
been snatched from destruction by the courageous charity of a woman of loose
character. It is therefore not unlikely that be would prefer a fiction, at once
probable and edifying, to a truth which could not fail to give scandal. (ia56.)
It should seem ttiat no transactions in history ought to be more accurately.
398 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
At that time the common people throughout Europe, and
nowhere more than in England, were in the habit of attribu-
ting the death of princes, especially when the prince was
popular and the death unexpected, to the foulest and darkest
kind of assassination. Thus Jam6s the -First had been
accused of poisoning Prince Henry. Thus Charles the First
had been accused of poisoning James the First. Thus when, in
the time of the Commonwealth, the Princess Elizabeth died at
Carisbrook, it was loudly asserted that Cromwell had stooped
to the senseless and dastardly wickedness of mixing noxious
drugs with the food of a young girl whom he had no con-
ceivable motive to injure.* A few years later, the rapid de-
composition of Cromwell's own corpse was ascribed by many
to a deadly potion administered in his medicine. The death
of Charles the Second could scarcely fail to occasion similar
known to us than those which took place round the deathbed of Charles the
Second. We have several relations written by persons who were actually in his
room. "We have several relations written by persons who, though not themselves
eyewitnesses, had the best opportunity of obtaining information from eye-
witnesses. Yet whoever attempts to digest this vast mass of materials into a
consistent narrative will find the task a difficult one. Indeed James and hia
wife, when they told the story to the nuns of Chaillot, could not agree as to
some circumstances. The Queen said that, after Charles had received the last
sacraments the Protestant Bishops renewed their exhortations. The King said
that nothing of the kind took place. " Surely," s.Tid the Queen, " you told mo so
yourself." "It is impossible that I have told you so," said the King ; "for
nothing of the sort happened."
It is much to be regretted that Sir Henry Ilalford should have taken bo little
trouble ascertain the facts on which he pronounced judgment. He does not seem to
have been aware of the existence of the narrative of James, Barillou, and Huddle-
ston.
As this is the first occasion on which I cite the correspondence of the Dutch
ministers at the English court, I ought here to mention that a series of their
despatches, from the accession of James the Second to his flight, forms one of
the most valuable parts of the Mackintosh collections. The subsequent dcs-
patches, down to the settlement of the government in February, 1689, 1 procured
from the Hague. The Dutch archives have been far too little explored. They
abound with information interesting in the highest degree to every Englishman.
They are admirably arranged ; and they are in the charge of gentlemen whose
courtesy, liberality and zeal for the interests of literature, cannot be too highly
praised. I wish to acknowledge, in the strongest manner, my own obligations to
Mr. De .Jonge and to Mr. Van Zwanne.
* Clarendon mentions this calumny with just scorn. "According to the
charity of the time towards Cromwell, very many would have it believed to l>e
by poison, of which there was no appearance, nor any proof ever after made. "-^
Book xiv.
JAMES THE SECOND. 399
rumours. The public ear had been repeatedly abused by
stories of Popish plots against his life. There was, therefore,
in many minds, a strong predisposition to suspicion ; and
there were some unlucky circumstances which, to minds so
predisposed, might seem to indicate that a crime had been
perpetrated. The fourteen Doctors who deliberated on the
Kinsf's case contradicted each other and themselves. Some
of them thought that his fit was epileptic, and that he should
be suffered to have his doze out. The majority pronounced^
him apoplectic, and tortured him during some hours like an
Indian at a stake. Then it was determined to call his com-
plaint a "fever, and to administer doses of bark. One physician,
however, prptested against this course, and assured the Queen
that his brethren would kill the King among them. Nothing
better than dissension and vacillation could be expected from
such a multitude of advisers. But many of the vulgar not
unnaturally concluded, from the perplexity of the great
masters of the healing art, that the malady had some ex-
traordinary origin. There is reason to believe that a horrible
suspicion did actually cross the mind of Short, who, though
skilfid in his profession, seems to have been a nervous and
fanciful man, and whose perceptions were probably confused
by dread of the odious imputations to which he, as a Roman
Catholic, was peculiarly exposed. We cannot, therefoi'e,
wonder that wild stories without number were repeated and
believed by the common people. His Majesty's tongue had
swelled to the size of a neat's tongue. A cake of deleterious
powder had been found in his brain. There were blue spots
on his breast. There were black spots on his shoulder. Some-
thing had been put in his snuff-box. Something had been
put into his broth. Something had been put into his favourite
dish of eggs and ambergrease. The Duchess of Portsmouth
had poisoned him in a cup of chocolate. The Queen had
poisoned him in a jar of dried pears. Such tales ought to be
preserved ; for they furnish us with a measure of the intelli-
gence and virtue of the generation which eagerly devoured
them. That po ruajoiir of the same kind Jias ev^r, i» tb§
400 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
present age, found credit among us, even when lives on which
great interest depended have been terminated by unforeseen
attacks of disease, is to be attributed partly to the progress of
medical and chemical science, but partly also, it may be hoped,
to the progress which the nation has made in good sense,
justice, and humanity.*
When all was over, James retired from the bedside to his
closet, where, during a quarter of an hour, he remained alone.
Meanwhile the Privy Councillors who were in the palace as-
sembled. The new King came forth, and took his place at
the head of the board. He commenced his administration,
according to usage, by a speech to the Council. He expressed
his regret for the loss which he had just sustained, and he
promised to imitate the dugular lenity which had distin-
guished the late reign. He was aware, he said, that he had
been accused of a fondness for arbitrary power. But that
was not the only falsehood which had been told of him. He
was resolved to maintain the established government both in
Church and State. The Church of England he knew to be
eminently loyal. It should therefore always be his care to
support and defend her. The laws of England, he also knew,
were sufficient to make him as great a King as he could wish
to be. He would not relinquish his own rights ; but he would
respect the rights of others. He had formerly risked his life
in defense of his country ; and he would still go as far as any
man in support of her just liberties.
This speech was not, like modern speeches on similar oc-
casions, carefully prepared by the advisers of the sovereign.
It was the extemporaneous expression of the new King's feel-
ings at a moment of great excitement. The members of the
Council broke forth into clamours of delight and gratitude.
* "Welwood, 139 : Burnet, i. 609 ; Sheffield's Character of Charles the Second ;
North's Life of Guildford, 252 ; Exanven, 648 ; Revolution Policies ; Higgonson
Burnet. What North says of the embarrassment and vacillation of the physi-
cians is confirmed by the despatches of Van Citters. I have been much perplex-
ed by the strange story about Short's suspicions. I was, at one time, inclined to
adopt North's solution. But, though I attach little weight to the authority of
Welwood and Burnet in such a case, I cannot reject the testimony of so well in-
formed and so unwilling a witness as Sheffield.
•■MTA BARHARA. GAUIFOWNIA
JAMBS' THB-^BC^OiTOV^*^—*—
The Lord President, Rochester, iu the name of his brethren,
expressed a hope that His Majesty's most welcome declaration
would be made public. The Solicitor General, Heneage Finch,
offered to act as clerk. He was a zealous churchman, and, as
luch, was naturally desirous that there should be some per-
manent record of the gracious promises which had just been
uttered. " Those promises," he said, " have made so deep an
impression on me that I can repeat them word for word."
He soon produced his report. James read it, approved of it,
and ordered it to be published. At a later period he said
that he had taken this step without due consideration, that
his unpremeditated expressions touching the Church of Eng-
land were too strong, and that Finch had, with a dexterity
which at the time escaped notice, made them still stronger.*
• The King had been exhausted by long watching and by
many violent emotions. He now retired to rest. The Privy
Councillors, having respectfully accompanied him to his bed-
chamber, returned to their seats, and issued orders for the
ceremony of proclamation. The Guards were under arms ;
the heralds appeared in their gorgeous coats ; and the pageant
proceeded without any obstruction. Casks of wine were
broken up in the streets, and all vAio passed were invited to
drink to the health of the new sovereign. But, though an
occasional shout was raised, the people were not in a joyous
mood. Tears were seen in many eyes ; and it was remarked
that there was scarcely a housemaid in London who had not
contrived to procure some fragment of black crape in honour
of King Charles.f
The funeral called forth much censure. It would, indeed,
hardly have been accounted worthy of a noble and opulent
subject. The Tories gently blamed the new King's parsimony :
the Whigs sneered at his want of natural affection; and the
fiery Covenanters of Scotland exultingly proclaimed that the
curse denounced of old against wicked princes had been
* London Gazette, Feb. 9, 1684-5 ; Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii. 3 ;
Barillon, Feb. 9-10 ; EvehTi's Diary, Feb. C.
1 See the authorities cited in the last note. See also the Examen, 647 ; Bup
net, i. 620 ; HiggoiVi on Burnet, ofi
402 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
signally fulfilled, and that the departed tyrant had been buried
with the burial of an ass.* Yet James commenced his ad-
ministration with a large measure of public good will. His
speech to the Council appeared in print, and the impression
svhich it produced was highly favourable to him. This, then,
fras the prince whom a faction had driven into exile and had
tried to rob of his birthright, on the ground that he was a
deadly enemy to the religion and laws of England. He had
triumphed : he was on the throne ; and his first act was to
declax'e that he would defend the Church, and would strictly
respect the rights of his people. The estimate which all
parties had formed of his character, added weight to every
word that fell from him. The Whigs called him haughty,
implacable, obstinate, regardless of public opinion. The
Tories, while they extolled his princely virtues, had often
Jamented his neglect of the arts which conciliate popula;rity.
Satire itself had never represented him as a man likely to
court public favour by professing what he did not feel, and
by promising what he had no intention of performing. On
the Sunday which followed his accession, his speech was
quoted in many pulpits. "We have now for our Church,"
cried one loyal preacher, " the woi'd of a King, and of a King
who was never worse than his word." Tliis pointed sentence
was fast circulated through town and country, and was soon
the watchword of the whole Tory party. f
The great offices of state had become vacant by the demise
of the crown ; and it was necessary for James to determine
how they should be filled. Few of the members of the late
cabinet had any reason to expect his favour. Sunderland,
who was Secretary of State, and Godolphin, who was First
Lord of the Treasury, had supported the Exclusion Bill.
Halifax, who held the Privy Seal, had opposed that bill with
unrivalled powers of argument and eloquence. But Halifax
was the mortal enemy of despotism and Of Popery. He saw
* London Gazette, Feb, 14, 1684-^; Evelyn's Diary of the same day ; Btirnet,
i. 610; The Hind let looBe,
1 Bura^t, i. 628 ; Jy^Btrftnge, Obeerrator, Feb, U, 1684
JAMES THE SECOND. 403
with dread! tlie progress of the French arms on the Continent,
and the influence of French gold in the counsels of England.
Had his advice been followed, the laws would have feeen
strictly observed : clemency would have been extended to the
vanquished Whigs : the Parliament would have been convoked
in due season : an attempt woidd have been made to recon-
cile our domestic factions ; and the principles of the Triple
Alliance would again have guided our foreign policy. He had
therefore incurred the bitter animosity of James. The Lord
Keeper Guildford could hardly be said to belong to either of
the parties into which the court was divided. He could by
no means be called a friend of liberty ; and yet he had so
great a reverence for the letter of the law that he was not a
serviceable tool of arbitrary power. He was accordingly des-
ignated by the vehement Tories as a Trimmer, and was to
James an object of aversion with which contempt was largely
mingled. Ormond, who was Lord Steward of the Household
and Viceroy of Ireland, then resided at Dublin. His claims
on the royal gratitude were superior to those of any other
subject. He had fought bravely for Charles the First: he
had shared the exile of Charles the Second ; and, since the
Restoration, he had, in spite of many provocations, kept his
loyalty unstained Though he had been disgraced during the
predominance of the Cabal, he had never gone into factious
opposition, and had, in the days of the Popish Plot and the
Exclusion Bill, been foremost among the supporters of the
throne. He was now old, and had been recently tried by the
most cruel of all calamities. He had followed to the grave
a son who should have been his own chief mourner, the
gallant Ossory. The eminent services, the venerable age, and
the domestic misfortunes of Ormond made him an object of
general interest to the nation. The Cavaliers regarded him
as, both by right of seniority and by right of merit, their
head; and the Whigs knew that, faithful as he had always
been to the cause of monarchy, he was no friend either to
Popery or to arbitrary power. But, high as he stood in the
public estimation, he had little favor to expect from his new
404 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
master. James, indeed, while still a subject, had urged his
brother to make a complete cliauge iu the Irish admiuistra
tion. Charles had assented ; and it had been arranged that,
in. r few months, there should be a new Lord Lieutenant.*
Rochester was the only member rf the cabinet who stood
high iu the favour of the King. The general expectation was
that he would be immediately placed at the head of affairs, and
that all the other great officers of the state would be changed.
This expectation proved to be well founded in part only.
Rochester was declared Lord Treasurer, and thus became
prime minister. Neither a Lord High Admiral nor a Board
of Admiralty was appointed. The new King, who loved the
details of naval business, and would have made a respectable
clerk in a dockyard at Chatham, determined to be his own
minister of marine. Under him the management of that im-
portant department was confided to Samuel Pepys, whose
library and diary have kept his name fresh to our time. No
servant of the late sovereign was publicly disgraced. Sunder-
land exerted so much art and address, employed so many
intercessors, and was in possession of so many secrets, that
he was suffered to retain his seals. Godolphin's obsequious-
ness, industry, experience and taciturnity, could ill be spared.
As he was no longer wanted at the Treasury, he was made
Chamberlain to the Queen. With these three Lords the
King took counsel on all important questions. As to Halifax,
Ormond,' and Guildford, he determined not yet to dismiss
them, but merely to humble and annoy them.
Halifax was told that he must give up the Privy seal and
accept the Presidency of the Council. He submitted with
extreme reluctance. For. thoufjh the President of the Council
had always taken precedence of the Lord Privy Seal, the
Lord Privy Seal was, in that age, a much more important
officer than the Lord President. Rochester had not forgotten
the jest which had been made a few months before on his
* The letters which passed between Rochester and Ormond on this subject
■sdll be found in the Clarendon Corresi»ondence.
JAMES THE SECOND. 405
own removal from the Treasury, and enjoyed in his turn
the pleasure of kicking his rival up stairs. The Privy Seal
was delivered to Rochester's elder brother, Henry Earl of
Clarendon.
To Barillon James expressed the strongest dislike of Halifax.
" I know him well, I never can trust him. He shall have no
share in the management of public business. As to the place
which I have given him, it will just serve to show how li.tle
influence he has." But to Halifax it was thought convenievt
to hold a very different language. " All the past is forgotten,"
said the King, " except the service which you did me in the
debate on the Exclusion Bill." This speech has often been
cited to prove that James was not so vindictive as he had been
called by his enemies. It seems .rather to prove that he by
no means deserved the praises which have been bestowed on
his sincerity by his friends.*
Ormond was politely informed that his services were no
longer needed in Ireland, and was invited to repair to White-
hall, and to perform the functions of Lord Steward. He
dutifully submitted, but did not affect to deny that the new
arrangement wounded his feelings deeply. On the eve of his
departure he gave a magnificent banquet at Kilmainham
Hospital, then just completed, to the officers of the garrison
of Dublin. After dinner he rose, filled a goblet to the brim
with wine, and, holding it up, asked whether he had spilt one
drop. " No, gentlemen ; whatever the courtiers may say, I
am not yet sunk into dotage. INIy hand does not fail me yet :
and my hand is not steadier than my heart. To the health
of King James ! " Such was the last farewell of Ormond to
Ireland. He left the administration in the hands of Lords
Justices, and repaired to London, where he was received with
unusual marks of public respect. Many persons of rank went
forth to meet him on the road. A long train of equipages
followed him into Saint James's Square, where his mansion
* The miiiistprial oliniu-ps are niinouiif-e'l i'-i the T oiulon Gazette, Feb. 10, 1C84- &
See Burnet, i. 621 ; Barillon, Feb. 0-19, ie-2C ; and j^;^
406 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Stood ', and the Square was thronged by a multitude which
greeted him with loud acclamations.*
The Great Seal was left in Guildford's custody ; but a
marked indignity was at the same time offered to him. It
was determined that another lawyer of more vigour and auda-
city should be called to assist in the administration. The
person selected was Sir George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the
Court of King's Bench. The depravity of this man has passed
into a proverb. Both the great English parties have attacked
his memory with emulous violence : for the Whigs considered
him as their most barbarous enemy ; and the Tories found it
convenient to throw on him the blame of all the crimes which
had sullied their triumph. A diligent and candid enquiry
will show that some frightful stories which have been told
concerning him are false or exaggerated. Yet the dispas-
sionate historian will be able to make very little deduction
from the vast mass of infamy with which the memory of the
wicked judge has been loaded.
He was a man of quick and vigorous parts, but constitu-
■ tionally prone to insolence and to the angry passions. When
just emerging from boyhood he had risen into practice at the
Old Bailey bar, a bar where advocates have always used a
license of tongue unknown in Westminster Hall. Here,
during many years his chief business was to examine and
crossexamine the most hardened miscreants of a great capital.
Daily conflicts with prostitutes and thieves called out and
exercised his powers so effectually that he became the most
consummate bully ever known in his profession. Tenderness
for others and respect for himself were feelings alike unknown
to him. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric
in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The pro-
fusion of maledictions and vituperative epithets which com-
posed his vocabulary could hardly have been rivalled in the
fishmarket or the beargarden. His countenance and his voice
must always have been unamiable. But these natural advan-
* Carte's Life of Ormond ; Secret Consults of the Romish Paxty in Ireland,
1690 ; Memoirs of Ireland, 1716.
JAMES TniC SECOND. 407
tages, for such lie seems to have thought them, — he had
improved to such a degree that there were few who, in his
paroxysms of rage, could see or hear him without emotion.
Impudence and ferocity sate upon his brow. The glare of hia
eyes had a fascination for the unhappy victim on whom they
were fixed. Yet his brow and his eye were less terrible than
the savage lines of his mouth. His yell of fury, as was said
by one who had often heard it, sounded like the thunder of
the judgment day. These qualifications he carried, while still
a young man, from the bar to the bench. He early became
Common Serjeant, and then Recorder of London. As a judge
at the City sessions he exhibited the same propensities which
afterwards, in a higher post, gained for him an unenviable
immortality. Already might be remarked in him the most
odious vice which is incident to human nature, a delight in
misery merely as misery. There was a fiendish exultation in
the way in which he pronounced sentence on offenders. Their
weeping and imploring seemed to titillate him voluptuously;
and he loved to scare them into fits by dilating with luxuriant
amplification on all the details of what they were to suffer.
Thus, when he had an opportunity of ordering an unlucky
adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, " Hangman," he
would exclaim, " I charge you to pay particular attention to
this lady ! Scourge her soundly, man ! Scourge her till the
blood runs down ! It is Christmas, a cold time for Madam to
strip iu ! See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly 1 " *
He was hardly less facetious when he passed judgment on
poor Lodowick Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied
himself a prophet. " Impudent rogue ! " roared Jeffreys,
" thou shalt have an easy, easy, easy punishment ! " One
part of this easy punishment was the pillory, in which the
wretched fanatic was almost killed with brickbats. f
By this time the heart of Jeffreys had been hardened to
* Christmas Sessions Paper of 1678.
t The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit, part v- chapter v. In this work Lod-
owick, after his fashion, revenges himself on the " bawling devil," as he calls
.TeffroyB, by a string of curses which Ernulplxus, or Jeffrej^s hin^gfi*, might b»v»
«pyie4. The triaj ww In Jftnujuy, J677t
408 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
that temper which tyrants require in their worst implements.
He had hitherto looked for professional advancement to the
corporation of London. He had therefore professed himself
a Roundhead, and had always appeared to be in a higher state
of exhilaration when he explained to Popish priests that they
were to be cut down alive, and wei-e to see their own bowels
burned, than when he passed ordinary sentences of death.
But, as soon as he had got all that the city could give, he
made haste to sell his forehead of brass and his tongue of
venom to the Court. ChifRnch, who was accustomed to act
as broker in infamous contracts of more than one kind, lent
his aid. He had conducted many amorous and many political
intrigues ; but he assuredly never rendered a more scandalous
service to his masters than when he introduced Jeffreys to
Whitehall. The renegade soon found a patron in the ob-
durate and revengeful James, but was always regarded with
scorn and disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as they
were, had no affijiity with insolence and cruelty. " That
man," said the King, " has no learning, no sense, no manners,
and more impudence than ten carted street-walkers." * Work
was to be done, however, which could be trusted to no man
who reverenced law or was sensible of shame ; and thus
Jeffreys, at an age at which a barrister thinks himself fortu-
nate if he is employed to conduct an important cause, was
made Chief Justice of the King^s Bench.
His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the
qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was
merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high
kind. But he had one of those happily constituted intellects
which, across labyrmths of sophistry, and through masses of
immaterial facts, go straight to the true point. Of his intel-
lect, however, he seldom had the full use. Even in civil
causes his malevolent and despotic temper perpetually diS'
ordered his judgment. To enter his court was to enter the
den of a wild beast, which none could tame, and which was
♦ This saying is to be found in many contemporary pamphlets. Titus Oates
was never tirbd oi' quoting it. See his EIimv BaailiKfj.
JAMKS 'THE SECOND. 409
as likely to be roused to rage by caresses as by attacks. He
frequently poured forth on plaintiffs and defendants,' barristers
and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen, torrents of frantic
abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses- His looks and tones
had inspired terror when he was merely a young advocate
strusfirlinir into practice. Now that he was at the head of
the most formidable tribunal in the realm, there were few
indeed who did not tremble before him. Even when he was
sober, his violence was sufficiently frightful. But in general
his reason was overclouded and his evil passions stimulated
by the fumes of intoxication. His evenings were ordinarily
given to revelry. People who saw him only over his bottle
would have supposed him to be a man gross indeed, sottish,
and addicted to low company and low merriment, but social
and ffoodhumoured. He was constantly surrounded on such
occasions by buffoons selected, for the most part, from among
the vilest pettifoggers who practised before him. These men
bantered and abused each other for his entertainment. He
joined in their ribald talk, sang catches with them, and,
when his head grew hot, hugged and kissed them in an ecstasy
of drunken fondness. But though wine at first seemed to
soften his heart, tho effect a few hours later was very different.
He often came to the judgment seat, having kept the court
waiting long, and yet having but half slept off his debauch,
his cheeks on fire, his eyes staring like those of a maniac.
When he was in this state, his boon companions of the pre-
ceding niglit, if they were wise, kept out of his way : for the
' recollection of the familiarity to which he had admitted them
inflamed his malignity ; and he was sure to take every oppor^
tunity of overwhelming them with execration and invective.
Not the least odious of his many odious peculiarities was the
pleasure which he took in publicly browbeating and mortify-
ing those whom, in his fits of maudlin tenderness, he had
encouraged to presume on his favour.
The services which the government had expected from him
were performed, not merely without flinching, but eagerly
)»nd triumphantly. His first exploit was the judicial murder
410 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
of Algernon Sidney. What followed was in perfect harmony
with this beginning. Respectable Tories lamented the dis-
grace which the barbarity and indecency of so great a func-
tionary brought upon the administration of justice. But the
excesses which filled such men with horror were titles to the
esteem of James. Jeffreys, therefore, very soon after the death
of Charles, obtained a seat in the cabinet and a peerage. This
last honour was a signal mark of royal approbation. For,
since the judicial system of the realm had been remodelled in
the thirteenth century, no Chief Justice had been a Lord of
Parliament.*
Guildford now found himself superseded in all his political
functions, and restricted to his busioess as a judge in equity-
At Council he was treated by Jeffreys with marked incivility.
The whole legal patronage was in the hands of the Chief
Justice ; and it was well known by the bar that the surest
wav to propitiate the Chief Justice was to treat the Lord
Keeper with disrespect.
James had not been many hours King when a dispute arose
between the two heads of the law. The customs had been
settled on Charles for life only, and could not therefore be
legally exacted by the new sovereign. Some weeks must
elapse before a House of Commons could be chosen. If, in
the meantime, the duties were suspended, the revenue would
suffer ; the regular course of trade would be interrupted ; the
consumer would derive no benefit ; and the only gainers would
be those fortunate speculators whose cargoes might hajipen to
arrive during the interval between the demise of the crown
and the meeting of the Parliament. The Treasury was be-
sieged by merchants whose warehouses were filled with goods
on which duty had been paid, and who were in grievous ap-
* The chief sources of Information concerning Jeffreys are the State Trials
and North's Life of Lord Guildford. Some touches of minor importance I owe
to contemporary pamphlets in verse and prose. Such are the Bloody Assizes,
the Life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys, the Panegj-ric on the late Lord
Jcllreys, the Letter to the Lord Chancellor, Jeffreys's Elegy. See also Evelyn'8
Diary, Dec. 5, 1683, Oct. 31, 1685. I scarcely need advise every reader to couBult
Lord Campbell's excellent Life of Jeffreys.
JAMES THE SECOND. 411
prehension of being undersold and ruined. Impartial men
must admit that this was one of those cases in which a
government may be justified in deviating from the strictly
constitutional course. But when it is necessary to deviate from
the strictly constitutional course, the deviation clearly ought
to be no greater than the necessity requires. Guildford felt
this, and gave advice which did him honour. He proposed
that the duties should be levied, but should be kept in the
Exchequer apart from other sums till the Parliament should
meet. In this way the King, while violating the letter of the
laws, would show that he wished to conform to their spirit.
Jeffreys gave very different counsel. He advised James to
put forth an edict declaring it to be His Majesty's will and
pleasure that the customs should continue to be paid. This
advice was well suited to the King's temper. The judicious
proposition of the Lord Keeper was rejected as worthy only
of a Whig, or of what was still worse, a Trimmer. A procla-
mation, such as the Chief Justice had suggested, appeared.
Some people had expected that a violent outbreak of public indig-
nation would be the consequence ; but they were deceived.
The spirit of opposition had not yet revived ; and the court
might safely venture to take steps which, five years before,
would have produced a rebellion. In the City of London,
lately so turbulent, scarcely a murmur was heard.*
The proclamation, which announced that the customs
Would still be levied, announced also that a Parliament would
shortly meet. It was not without many misgivings that
James had determined to call the Estates of his realm together.
The moment was, indeed, most auspicious for a general election.
Never since the accession of the House of Stuart had the con-
stituent bodies been so favourably disposed towards the Court.
But the new sovereign's mind was haunted by an apprehension
not to be mentioned even at this distance of time, without
shame and indignation. He was afraid that by summoning his
Parliament he might incur the displeasure of the King of
France.
* London Gazette, Feb. 12, 1684-6. North's Life of Guildford, 254,
412 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
To the King of France it mattered little which of the two
English factions triumphed at the elections : for all the
Paj-liaments wliich had met since the Restoration, whatever
might have been their temper as to domestic politics, had been
jealous of the growing power of "the House of Bourbon. On
this sul)ject thei'e was little difference between the Whigs and
th^ sturdy country gentlemen who; formed the main strength
of the Tory party. Lewis had th-d'efore spared neither bribes
nor menaces to .jorevent Charles from convoking the Houses;
and Jam*es., who. had: from the: first been in . the-feecret of his
brother's foreign politics, had, iini becoming King of Englfaid,
become also a hireling and vassal of France.
Rochester, Godolphin, and Sunderland, who now formed
the interior cabinet, were perfectly aware that their late
master had been in the habit of receiving money from the
court of Versailles. They were consulted by James as to the
expediency of convoking the legislature. They acknowledged
the: importance of -keeping Lewis in good humour: but it
seemed to them that the calling of a Parliament was not a
matter of choice, '.-. Patient as. the nation appeared to be,
there were limits to its patience. The principle, that the
money of the subject could not be, lawfully taken by the King
without the assent of the Commons, was firmly rooted in the
public mind; and though, on., an exti'aordinary emergency
even Whigs might be willing to pay, during a few weeks,
duties not imposed by statute, it was certain that even Tories
would become refractory if such irregular taxation should
continue longer than the speqial. circumstances which alone
justified it. The Houses then must meet ; and since it was
so, the sooner they wei-e summoned the better. Even the
short delay which would be occasioned by a reference to
Versailles might produce irreparable mischief. Discontent
and suspicion would spread fast through society. Halifax
would complain that the fundamental principles of the con-
stitution were violated. The Lord Keeper, like a cowardly
pedantic special pleader as he was, would take the same side.
What might have been done with a good grace would at last
JAMES THE SECOND. 4.1: j
be done with a bad grace. Tliose veiy ministers whom His
Majesty most wished to lower in the imblic estimation woul<l
gain popularity at his expense. The ill temper of the nation
mio-ht seriously affect the result of the elections. Tiiese
arguments were unanswerable. The Kinsj therefore notitisd
to the country his intention of holding a Parliament. But
he was painfully ansious to exculpate himself from the guilt
of having acted undutifully and disrespectfully towards
Prance. He led Barillon into a private room, and there
apologised for having dared to take so important a step with-
out the previous sanction of Lewis. "Assure your toaster/'
said James, " of my gratitude and attachment. I know that
without his protection I can do nothing. I know what
troubles my brother brought on himself by not adhering
steadily to France. I will take good care not to let the
Houses meddle with ioreign affairs. If I see ia'them any
disposition to make mischief, I will send them ^.bout their
business. Explain this to my good brother. I hope tha(
he will not take it amiss that I have acted without con
sultiug him. He has a right to be. consulted; and It is my
wish to consult him about everything. But in this case the
delay even of a week might have produced serious conse-
quences."
These ignominious excuses were, on the following morn-
ing, rej>eated by Rochester. Barillon received them civilly
Rochester, grown bolder, proceeded to ask for money " It
will be well laid out," he said : " j^our master cannot employ
his revenues better. Represent to him strongly how im-
portant it is that the King of England should be dependent,
not on his own people, but on the friendship of France
alone." *
Barillon hastened to communicate to Lewis the wishes of
the English government ; but Lewis had already anticipated
them. His first act, after he was apprised of the death of
• The chief authority for these transaetions ia Barillon 's despatch of Febra-
nry 0-19, lfiS5. It will be fonnd in the Appendix to Mr. Fox's History. See also
Preston's Letter to James, dated April 18-28, 1685, in Dalrymple,
414 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Chaiies, was to collect bills of exchange on England to tliG
amount of five hundred thousand livres, a sum equivalent to
about thirty-seven thousand five hundred pounds sterling.
Such bills were not then to be easily procured in Paris at a
day's notice. In . a few hours, however, the purchase was
effected, and a courier started for London.* As soon as
Barillon received the remittance, he flew to Whitehall, and
communicated the welcome news. James was not ashamed
to shed, or pretend to shed, tears of delight and gratitude.
*' Nobody but your King," he said, " does such kind, such
noble things. I never can be grateful enough. Assure him
that my attachment will last to the end of my days." Ro-
chester, Sunderland, and Godolphin came, one after another,
to embrace the ambassador, and to whisper to him that he
had given new life to their royal master.f
But though James and his three advisers were pleased
with the promptitude which Lewis had shown, they were by
no means satisfied with the amount of the donation. As
they were afraid, however, that they might give offence by
importunate mendicancy, they merely hinted their wishes.
They declared that they had no intention of haggling with
so generous a benefactor as the French King, and that they
were willing to trust entirely to his munificence. They, at
the same time, attempted to propitiate him by a large sacri-
fice of national honour. It was well known that one chief
end of his politics was to add the Belgian provinces to his
dominions. Erigland was bound by a treaty which had been
concluded with Spain when Danby was Lord Treasurer, to
resist any attempt which France might make on those prov-
inces. The three ministers informed Barillon that their
master considered that treaty as no longer obligatory. It
had been made, they said, by Charles : it might, perhaps,
hare been binding on him ; but his brother did not think
himself bound by it. The most Christian King tuigbti
• Lewis to Barillon, Feb. 16- 2C, 1685-
t Barillon, Feb. 16-26, 16S5.
JAMES THE SECOND. 415
i!ierefore, without any fear of opposition from England, pro-
ceed to annex Brabant and Hainault to his empire.*
It was at the same time resolved that an extraordinary
embassy should be sent to assure Lewis of the gratitude and
affection of James. For this mission was selected a man
who did not as yet occupy a very eminent position, but whose
renown, strangely made up of infamy and glory, filled at a
later period the whole civilized world.
Soon after the Restoration, in the gay and dissolute times
which have been celebrated by the lively pen of Hamilton,
James, young and ardent in the pursuit of pleasure, had been
attracted to Arabella Churchill, one of the maids of honour
who waited on his first wife. The young lady was plain:'
but the taste of James was not nice : and she became his
avowed mistress. She was the daughter of a poor Cavalier
knight who haunted Whitehall, and made himself ridiculous
by publishing a dull and affected folio, long forgotten, in
praise of monarchy and monarchs. The necessities of the
Churchills were pressing; their loyalty was ardent; and
their only feeling about Arabella's seduction seems to have
been joyful surprise that so homely a girl should have attained
Buch high preferment.
Her interest was indeed of great use to her relations : but
none of them was so fortunate as her eldest brother John, a
fine youth, who carried a pair of colours in the foot guards.
He rose fast in the court and in the army, and was early dis-
tinguished as a man of fashion and . of pleasure. His stature
was commanding, his face handsome, his address singularly
winning, yet of such dignity that the most impertinent fops
never ventured to take any liberty with him ; his temper,
even in the most vexatious and irritating circumstances,
always under perfect command. His education had been so
much neglected that he could not spell the most common
words of his own language : but his acute and vigorous
understanding amply supplied the place of book learning.
• Bullion, Feb. 18-28, I68&
416 HISTORY OP EWGLAWO.
He was not talkative : but when he was forced to speak in
public, his natural eloquence moved the envy of practised
rhetoricians.* His courage was singularly cool and imper-
turbable. During many years of anxiety and peril, he never,
in any emergency, lost even for a moment, the perfect use oi
his admirable judgment.
In his twenty-third year he was sent with his regiment to
join the French forces, then engaged in operations against
Holland. His serene intrepidity distinguished him among
thousands of brave soldiers. His professional skill com-
manded the resjject of veteran officers. He was publicly
thanked at the head of the army, and received many marks
of esteem and confidence from Turenne, who was then at the
height of military glory.
Unhappily the splendid qualities of John Churchill wero
mingled with alloy of the "most sordid kind. Some propen-
sities, which in youth are singularly ungraceful, began very
early to show themselves in him. He was thrifty in his very
vices, and levied ample contributions on ladies enriched by
the spoils of more liberal lovers. He was, during a short
time, the object of the violent but fickle fondness of the
Duchess of Cleveland. On one occasion he was cauffht with
her by the King, and was forced to leap out of the window.
She rewarded this hazardous feat of gallantry with a present
-^f five thousand pounds. With this sum the prudent young
hero instantly bought an annuity of five hundred a year,
well secured on landed property.f Already his private
drawer contained a hoard of broad pieces which, fifty years
* Swift who bated Marlborough, and who was little disposed to allow any
merit to those whom he hated, says, iu the famous letter to Crassus, " You are
no ill • orator in the Senate."
T Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i. 264. Chesterfield's Letters, Nov, 18, 7748.
Chesterfield is an unexceptional witness ; for the annuity was a charge on the
estate of his grandfather, Halifax. I believe that there is no foundation for»
disgraceful addition to the story which may be found in Pope :
" The gallant too, to whom she paid it dpwn.
Lived to refuse liis mistress half a crown." ..
Curll calls this a piece of travelling scaoidal.
JAMES THE SECOND. 417
later, when he was a Duke, a Prince of the Empire, and the
richest subject in Europe, remained untouched.*
After the close of the war he was attached to the house-
hold of the Duke of York, accompanied his patron to the
Low Countries and to Edinburgh, and was rewarded for his
services with a Scotch peerage and with the command of the
only regiment of dragoons which was then on the English
establishment.! His wife had a post in the family of James's
younger daughter, the Princess of Denmark.
Lord Churchill was now sent as ambassador extraordinary
to Versailles. He had it in charge to express the warm
gratitude of the English government for the money which
had been so generously bestowed. It had been originally
intended that he should at the same time ask Lewis for a
much larger sum ; but, on full consideration, it was appre-
hended that such indelicate greediness might disgust the bene-
factor whose spontaneous liberality had been so signallj
displayed. Churchill was therefore directed to confine himself
to thanks for what was past, and to say nothing about the
future. J
But James and his ministers, even while protesting that they
did not mean to be importunate, contrived to hint, very intelli-
gibly, what they wished and exoected. In the French ambassador
they had a dexterous, a zealous, and, perhaps, not a disinterested
intercessor. Lewis made some difficulties, probably with the
design of enhancing the value of his gifts. In a very few weeks,
however, Barillon received from Versailles fifteen hundred thou-
sand livres more. This sum, equivalent to about a hundred
and twelve thousand pounds sterling, he was instructed to dole
* Pope in Spence's Anecdotes.
t See the Historical Records of the first or Royal Dra5;oons. The appoint-
ment of Churchill to the command of this regiment was ridiculed as an instance
of ahsurd partiality. One lampoon of that lime, which T do not remember to
have seen in print, but of which a manuscript copy is in the British Museum,
contains these lines ■
" Let's CMt our iner't with snoons ;
The sense is as ^ood
As that Churchill should
Be put to command the drasoons."
t Barillon, Feb. 16-26, 1685.
2i
418 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. v
out cautiously. He was authorised to furnish the English gov-
ernmeut with thirty thousand pounds, for the purpose of
corrupting members of the New House of Commons. The rest he
was directed to keep in reserve for some extraordinary emer-
gency, such as a dissolution or an insurrection.*
The turpitude of these transactions is universally acknowl-
edged: but their real nature seems to be often misunderstood :
for though the foreign policy of tlie last two Kings of the
House of Stuart has never, since the correspondence of
Barillon was exposed to the public eye, found an apologist
among us, there is still a party which labours to excuse their
domestic policy. Yet it is certain that between their domestic
policy and their foreign policy there was a necessary and
indissoluble connection. If they had upheld, during a single
year, the honour of the country abroad, they would have been
compelled to change the whole system of their administration
at home. To praise them for refusing to govern in conformity
with the sense of Parliament, and yet to blame them for sub-
mitting to the dictation of Lewis, is inconsistent. For they
had only one choice, to be dependent on Lewis, or to be de-
pendent on Parliament.
James, to do him justice, would gladly have found out a
third way . but there was none. He became the slave of
France : but it would be incorrect to represent him as a con-
tented slave. He had spirit enough. to be at times angry with
himself for submitting to such thraldom, and impatient to
break loose from it ; and this disposition was studiously' en-
couraged by the agents of many foreign powers.
His accession had excited hopes and fears in every conti-
nental court : and the commencement of his administration was
watched by strangers with interest scarcely less deep than that
which was felt by his own subjects. One government alone
wished that the troubles which had, during three generations,
distracted England, might be eternal. All other governments,
whether republican or monarchical, whether Protestant or
* Barillon, April 6-26 ; Lewis to Barillon, April 14-24.
JAMES THE SECOND. 419
Roman Catholic, wished to see those troubles hapj^ily termi-
nated.
The nature of the long contest between the Stuarts and their
Parliaments was indeed very imperfectly apprehended by for-
eign statesmen : but no statesman could fail to perceive the ef-
fect whicli that contest liad produced on the balance of power in
Europe. In ordinary circumstances, the sympathies of the courts
of Vienna and Madrid would doubtless have been with a prince
struggling against subjects,' and especially with a Roman Catholic
prince struggling against heretical subjects : but all such sympa-
thies wer J now overpowered by a stronger feeling. The fear
and hatred inspired by the greatness, the injustice, and the arro-
gance of the French King were at the height. His neighbours
might well doubt whether it were more dangerous to be at wai
or at peace with him. For in peace he continued to plunder and
to outrage them ; and they had tried the chances of war agamst
him in vain. In this perplexity they looked with intense anxiety
towards England. Would she act on the principles of the Triple
Alliance or on the principles of the treaty of Dover ? On that
issue depended the fate of all her neighbouis. With her help
Lewis might yet be withstood : but no help could be expected
from her till she was at unity with herself. Before the strife
between the throne and the Parliament began, she had been a
power of the first rank : on the day on which that strife terminated
she became a power of the first rank again : but while the dis-
pute remained undecided, she was condemned to inaction and to
vassalage. She had been great under the Plantagenets and Tudors:
she was again gre it un ler the princes who reigned after the
Revolution : but, under the Kin^s of the House of Stuart, she
was a blank in the map of Europe. She had lost one class of
energies, and had not yet acquired another. That species of
force, which, in the fourteenth century had enabled her to hum-
ble France and Spain, had ceased to exist. That species of fo^-ce,
which, in the eighteenth century, humbled France and Spain
once more, had not yet been called into action. The government
was no longer a limited monarchy after the fashion of the middle
ages. It had not yet become a limited monarchy after the
420 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
modern tashion. With the vices of two different systems it had
the strength of neither. The elements of our polity, instead of
combining in harmony,*counteracted and neutralised each other.
All was transition, conflict, and disorder. The chief business of
the sovereign was to infringe the privileges of the legislature.
The chief business of the legislature was to encroach on the pre-
rogatives of the sovereign. The King readily accepted foreign
aid, which relieved him from the misery of being dependent
on a mutinous Pai'liament. The Parliament refused to the Kiuff
the means of supporting the national honor abroad, from an
apprehension, too well founded, that those means might be
employed in order to establish despotism at home. The effect
of these jealousies was that our country, with all her vast re-
sources, was of as little weight in Christendom as the duchy of
Savoy or the duchy of Lorraine, and certainly of far less weight
than the small province of Holland.
France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of
things.* All other powers were deeply interested in bringing
it to a close. The general wish of Europe was that James
would govern in conformity with law and with public opinion.
From the Escurial itself came letters, expressing an earnest
hope that the new King of En'^land would be on good terms
with his Parliament and his people. f From the Vatican
* I might transcribe half Barillon's correspondence in proof of this proposi-
tion ; but I will quote only one passage, in which the policy of the French gov-
ernment towards England is exhibiti'd concisely and with perfect clearness.
" On peut tenir pour un maxime indubitable que I'accord du Koy d'Angleterre
avec son parlement, en quelque manifere qu'il se fasse, n'est pas conforme aux
int6rets de V. M. Je me contente de penser cela sane m'en ouvrir k personne, et
ie cache avec soin mes seutimens k cet 6gard." — Barillon to Lewis, ^/ " . ' 1687.
•■ Mar. 10,
That this was the real secret of the whole policy of I^^wis towards our country was
perfectly understood at Vienna. The Emperor Leopold wrote thus to James,
—^ ' 1689 : " Galli id unum agebant, ut, perpetuas inter Serenitatem vestram
Apnl 9, o I 7 i- jT
et ejusdem populos fovendo simultates, reliquae Christianae Europe tanto securius
insultarent."
t " Que sea unido con su reyno, y en todo buena intelligencia con el parla-
mento."— Despatch from the King of Spain to Don Pedro Koiiquillo, March 16-26,
1685. This despatch is in the archives of Samancas, which contain a great mass
of papers relating to English affairs. Copies of the most interesting of those
papers are in the posisession of M. Guizot, and were by him lent to me. It is with
pecuUar pleasure tbat at this time, I acknowledge this mark of the friendship
of eo great man. (1848.)
JAMES THE SECOND. 421
itself came cautions against immoderate zeal for the Roman
Catholic faith. Beuedict Odescalchi, who filled the papal
chair under the name of Innocent the Eleventh, felt, in his
character of temporal sovereign, all those apprehensions with
which other princes watched the progress of the French
power. He had also grounds of uneasiness which were pecu-
liar to himself. It was a happy circumstance for the Pro-
testant religion that, at the moment when the last Roman
Catholic King of England mounted the throne, the Roman
Catholic Church was torn by dissension, and threatened with
a new schism. A quarrel similar to that which had raged in
the eleventh century between the Emperors and the Supreme
Pontiffs had arisen between Lewis and Innocent. Lewis,
zealous even .to bigotry for the doctrines of the Church of
Rome, but tenacious of his regal authority, accused the Pope
of encroaching on the secular rights of the French Crown,
and was in turn accused by the Pope of encroaching on the
spiritual power of the keys. The King, haughty as he was,
encountered a spirit even more determined than his own.
Innocent was, in all private relations, the meekest and gentlest
of men : but when he spoke officially from the chair of St.
Peter, he spoke in the tones of Gregory the Seventh and of
Sixtus the Fifth. The dispute became serious. Agents of
the King were excommunicated. Adherents of the Pope were
banished. The King made the champions of his authority
Bishops. The Pope refused them institution. They took
possession of the Episcopal palaces and revenues : but they
were incompetent to perform the Episcopal functions. Before
the struggle terminated, there were in France thirty prelates
who could not confirm or ordain.*
Had any prince then living, except Lewis, been engaged in
such a dispute with the Vatican, he would have had all Pro-
estant governments on his side. But the fear and resent-
ment which the ambition and insolence of the French King
* Few English readers will be desirous to go deep into the history of this quax-
rel. Summaries will be found in Cardinal Bausset's Life of iJossuet, and in Vol-
taire's Age of Lewis XIV.
422 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
had inspired were such that whoever had the courage manfully
to oppose him was sure of public sympathy. Even Lutherans
and Calvinists, who had always detested the Pope, could not
refrain from wishing him success against a tyrant who aimed
at universal monarchy. It was thus that, in the present century,
many who regarded Pius the Seventh as Antichrist were well
pleased to see Antichrist confront the gigantic power of Napo-
leon.
The resentment which Innocent felt towards France dis»
posed him to take a' mild and liberal view of the affairs of
England. The return of the English people to the fold of
which lie was the shepherd would undoubtedly have rejoiced
his soul. But he was too wise a man to believe that a nation
so bold and stubborn, could be brought back to tlie Church
of Rome by the violent and unconstitutional exercise of royal
authority. It was not difficult to foresee that, if James
attempted to promote the interests of his religion by illegal
and unpopular means, the attempt would fail ; the hatred
with which the heretical islanders regarded the true faith
would become fiercer and stronger than ever ; and an indis-
soluble association would be created in their minds between
Protestantism and civil freedom, between Popery and arbi-
trary power. In the meantime the King would be an object
of aversion and suspicion to his people. England would still
be, as she had been under James the First, under Charles the
First, and under Charles the Second, a power of the third
rank ; and France would domineer unchecked beyond the
Alps and the Rhine. On the other hand, it was probable
that James, by acting with prudence and moderation, by
strictly observing the laws and by exerting himself to win the
confidence of his Parliament, might be able to obtain, for
the professors of his religion, a large measure of relief. Penal
statutes would go first. Statutes imposing civil incapacities
would soon follow. In the meantime, the English King
and the English nation united might head the European
coalition, and might oppose an insuperable barrier to the
cupidity of Lewis.
JAMES THK SECOND. 423
Innoceut was confirmed in his judgment by the principal
Englishmen who resided at his- court. Of these the most
illustrious was Philip Howard, sprung from the noblest houses
of Britain, grandson, on one side, of an Earl of Arundel, on
the other, of a Duke of Lennox. Philip had long been a
member of the sacred college : he was commonly designated
as the Cardinal of England ; and he was the chief counsellor
of the Holy See in matters relating to his country. He had
been driven into exile by the outcry of Protestant bigots ; and
a member of his family, the unfortunate Stafford, had fallen
a victim to their rage. But neither the Cardinal's own wrongs,
nor those of his house, had so heated his mind as to make
him a rash adviser. Every letter, therefore, which went from
the Vatican to Whitehall, recommended patience, moderation,
and respect for the prejudices of the English people.*
In the mind of James there was a great conflict. We
should do him injustice if we supposed that a state of vassal-
age was agreeable to his temper. He loved authority and
business. He had a high sense of his own personal dignity.
Nay, he was not altogether destitute of a sentiment Avhich
bore some affinity to patriotism. It galled his soul to think
that the kingdom which he ruled was of far less account in
the world than many states which possessed smaller natural ad-
vantages ; and he listened eagerly to foreign ministers when
they urged him to assert the dignity of his rank, to place
himself at the head of a great confederacy, to become the
protector of injured nations, and to tame the pride of that
power which held the Continent in awe. Such exhortations
made his heart swell with emotions unknown to his care-
less and effeminate brother. But those emotions were soon
subdued by a stronger feeling. A vigorous foreign policy
necessarily implied a conciliatory domestic policy. It was
impossible at once to confront the might of France and to
trample on the liberties of England, The executive govern-
ment could undertake nothing great without the support of
* Burnet, i. 661, and Letter from Kome ; Dodd's Church History, part viii.
book i- ert. 1.
424 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
the Commons, and could obtain their support only by acting
in conformity with their opinion. Thus James found that
the two things which he most desired could not be enjoyed
together. His second wish was to be feared and respected
abroad. But his first wish was to be absolute master at home.
Between the incompatible objects on which his heart was set,
he, for a time, went irresolutely to and fro. The conflict ia
his own breast gave to his public acts a strange appearance
of indecision and insincerity. Those who, without the clue,
attempted to explore the maze of his politics were unable to
und:;rstand how the same man could be, in the same week, so
haughty and so mean. Even Lewis was perplexed by the
vagaries of an ally who passed, in a few hours, from homage
to defiance, and from defiance to homage. Yet, now that the
whole conduct of James is before us, this inconsistency seems
to admit of a simple explanation.
At the moment of his accession ' he was in doubt whether
the kingdom would peaceably submit to his authority. The
Exclusionists, lately so powerful, might rise in a)-ms against
him. He might be in great need of French money and
French troops. He was therefore, during some days, content
to be a sycophant and a mendicant. He humbly apologised
for daring to call his Parliament together without the consent
of the F^-ench jrovernment. He begged hard for a French
subsidy. He wept with joy over the French bills of exchange.
He sent to Versailles a special embassy charged with assur-
ances of his gratitude, attachment, and submission. But
scarcely had the embassy departed when his feelings under-
went a change. He had been everywhere proclaimed without
one riot, without one seditious outcry. From all corners of
the island he received intelligence that his subjects were tran-
cjuil and obedient. His spirit rose. The degrading relation
in which he stood to a foreign power seemed intolerable. He
became proud, punctilious, boastful, quarrelsome. He held
such high language about the dignity of his crown and the
balance of power that his whole court fully expected a com-
plete revolution in the foreign politics of the realm. Ha
JAMES THE SECOND. 425
commanded Churchill to send home a minute report of the
ceremonial of Versailles, in order that the honours with which
the English embassy was received there might be repaid, and
not more than repaid, to the representative of France at
AVhitehall. The news of this change was received with delighf.
at Madrid, Vienna, and the Hague.* Lewis was at firsl
merely diverted. "My good ally talks big," he said; "but
he is as fond of my pistoles as ever his brother was." Soon,
however, the altered demeanour of James, and the hopes witi
which that demeanour inspired both the branches of the
House of Austria, began to call for more serious notice. A
remarkable letter is still extant, in which the French King
intimated a strong suspicion that he had been duped, and that
the very money which he had sent to Westminster would be
employed against him.t
By this time England had recovered from the sadness and
anxiety caused by the death of the goodnatured Charles. The
Tories were loud in professions of attachment to their new
master. The hatred of the Whigs was kept down by fear.
That great mass which is not steadily AVhig or Tory, bu*" which
inclines alternately to Whiggism and to Toryism, was still on
the Tory side. The reaction which had followed the dissolution
of the Oxford parliament had not yet spent its force.
The King early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to
the proof. While he was a subject, he had been in the habit
of hearing mass with closed doors in a small oratory which had
been fitted up for his wife. He now ordered the doors to be
thrown open, in order that all who came to pay their duty to
him might see the ceremony. When the host was elevated
there was a strange confusion in the antechamber. The
Roman Catholics fell on their knees : the Protestants hlirried
out of the room. Soon a new pulpit was erected in the
palace ; and, during Lent, a series of sermons was preached
* Consultations of the Spanish Council of State on April 2-12 and April ie-26,
in the Archives of Simancas.
t Lewis to Barillon, f "^ f • 16g5 ; Burnet, i. 623.
June 1, ' '
426 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
there by Popish divines, to the great discomposure of zealous
churchmen.*
A more serious innovation followed. Passion week came ; and
the King determined to hear mass with the same pomp with
which his predecessors had been surrounded when they repaired
io the temples of the established religion. He announced his
intention to the three members of the interior cabinet, and re-
quested them to attend him. Sunderland, to whom all religions
were the same, readily consented. Godolphin, as Chamberlain
of the Queen, had already been in the ^ habit of giving her his
hand when she repaired to her oratory, and felt no scruple
about bowing himself officially in the house of Rimmon. But
Rochester was greatly disturbed. His influence in the country
arose chiefly from the opinion entertained by the clergy and by
the Tory gentry, that he was a zealous and uncompromising
friend of the Church. His orthodoxy had been considered as
fully atoning for faults which would otherwise have made him
the most unpopular man in the kingdom, for boundless arrogance,
for extreme violence of temper, and for manners almost brutal. f
He feared that, by complying with the royal wishes, he should
greatly lower himself in the estimation of his party. After
some altercation he obtained permission to pass the holidays out
of town. All the other great civil dignitaries were ordered to
be at their posts on Easter Sunday. The rites of the Church
of Rome were once more, after an interval of a hundred and
twenty-seven years, performed at Westminster with regal
splendour. The Guards were drawn out. The Knights of
the Garter wore their collars. The Duke of Somerset,
second in rank among the temporal nobles of the realm, carried
the sword of state. A long train of great lords accompanied
the King to his seat. But it was remarked that Ormond and
Feb 19
* Life of .James the Second, i. 5. Barillon, mJ^j^ 1685 ; Evelyn's Diary,
March 5, 1684-6.
t " To those that ask boons
He Bwears by God's oons,
And cliides them as if they came-there to steal spooiig."
Lamentable Lory, a ballad, 1684.
JAMES THE "SECOND. 427
Halifax remained iu the antechamber. A few years before
they had gallantly defended the cause of James against some
of those who now pressed past them. Ormond had borne no
share in the slaughter of Roman Catholics. Halifax had
courageously pronounced Stafford not guilty. As the time-
servers who had pretended to shudder at the thought of a Popish
king, and who had shed without pity the innocent blood of
a Popish peer, now elbowed each other to get near a Popish
altar, the accomplished Trimmer might, with some justice,
indulge his solitary pride in that unpopiilar nickname.*
Within a week after this ceremony James made a far
greater sacrifice of his own religious prejudices than he had
yet called on any of his Protestant subjects to make. He was
crowned on the twenty-third of April, the feast of the patron
saint of the realm. The Abbey and the Hall were splendidly
decorated. The presence of the Queen and of the peeresses
gave to the solemnity a charm which had been wanting to the
magnificent inaugui'ation of the late King. Yet those who
remembered that inauguration pronounced that there was a
great falling off. The ancient usage was that, before a coro-
nation, the sovereign, with all his heralds, judges, councillors,
lords, and great dignitaries, should ride in state from the
Tower of Westminster. Of these cavalcades the last and the
most glorious was that which passed through the capital
while the feelings excited by the Restoration were still in
full vigour. Arches of triumph overhung the road. All Corn-
hill, Cheapside, Saint Paul's Church Yard, Fleet Street, and
the Strand, were lined with scaffolding. The whole city had
thus been admitted to gaze on royalty in the most splendid
and solemn form that royalty could wear. James ordered an
estimate to be made of the cost of such a procession, and
found that it would amount to about half as much as he pro-
posed to expend in covering his wife with trinkets. He
accordingly determined to be profuse where he ought to have
been frugal, and niggardly where he might pardonably have
been profuse. More than a hundred thotisand po«««i9 we^e
• Barillou, April 20-30 1685.
428 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
laid out ill dressing the Queen, and the procession from the
Tower was omitted. The folly of this course is obvious. If
pageantry be of any use in politics, it is of use as a means of
striking th,e imagination of the multitude. It is surely the
height of absurdity to shut out the populace from a show of
which the main object is to make an impression on the pojiulace.
James would have shown a more judicious munificence and a
more judicious parsimony, if he had traversed London from
east to west with t\m accustomed pomp, and had ordered the
robes of his wife to be somewhat less thickly set wilh pearls
and diamonds. His example was, however, long followed by
his successors ; and sums, which, well employed, would have
afforded exquisite gratification to a large part of the nation,
were squandered on an exhibition to which only three or four
thousand privileged persons were admitted. At length the
old practice was partially revived. On the day of the coro-
nation of Queen Victoria there was a procession in which many
deficiencies might be noted, but which was seen with interest
and delight by half a million of her subjects, and which un-
doubtedly gave far greater pleasure, and called forth far great-
er enthusiasm, than the more costly display which was wit
nessed by a select circle within the Abbey. »
James had ordered Sancroft to abridge the ritual. The
reason publicly assigned was that the day was too short for
all that was to be done. But whoever examines the changes
which were made will see that the real object was to remove
some things highly offensive to the religious feelings of a
zealous Roman Catholic, The Communion Service was not
read. The ceremony of presenting the sovereign with a richly
bound copy of the English Bible, and of exhorting him to
prize above all earthly treasures a volume which he had been
taught to regard as adulterated with false doctrine, was omit-
ted. What remained, however, after all this curtailment,
might well have raised scruples in the mind of a man who
sincerely believed the Church of England to be a heretical
society, within the pale of which salvation was not to be
found. The King made an oblation on the altar. He appeared
JAMES THE SECOND. 429
to join in the petitions of the Litany which was chaunted by
the Bishops. He received from those false prophets the unc-
tion typical of a divine influence, and knelt with the semblance
of devotion, while they called down upon him that Holy Spirit
of which they were, in his estimation, the malignant and
obdurate foes. Such are the inconsistencies oi human nature
that this man, who, from a fanatical zeal for his religion,
threw away three kingdoms, yet chose to commit what was
little short of an act of apostasy, rather than forego the childish
pleasure of being invested with the gewgaws symbolical of
kingly power.*
Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, preached. He was one of
those writers who still affected the obsolete style of Arch-
bishop Williams and Bishop Andrews. The sermon was made
up of quaint conceits, such as seventy years earlier might have
been admired, but such as moved the scorn of a generation
accustomed to the purer eloquence of Sprat, of South, and
of Tillotson. King Solomon was King James. Adonijah
was Monmouth. Joab was a Rye House conspirator ; Shimei,
a Whie libeller ; Abiathar, an honest but misguided old
Cavalier. One phrase in the Book of Chronicles was con-
strued to mean that the King was above the Parliament ; and
another was cited to prove that he alone ought to command
the militia. Towards the close of the discourse the orator
very timidly alluded to the new and embarrassing position in
which the Church stood with reference to the sovereign, and
reminded his hearers that the Emperor Constantius Clilorus,
thouijh not himself a Christian, had held in honour those
Christians who remained true to their religion, and had
treated with scorn those who sought to earn his favour by
apostasy. The service in the Abbey was followed by a stately
banquet in the Hall, the banquet by brilliant fireworks, and
the fireworks by much bad poetry, f
* From Adda's despatch of J?Eji:. 1686, and from the expressions of the Pfero
Keb. 1,
d' Orleans (Histoire des Revolutions d' Aaigleterre, liv. xi.), it is clear that rigid
Catholics thought the King's conduct indefensible.
t London Gazette ; Gazette de France ; Life of James the Second, u. 10 ;
History of the Coronation of King James the Second and Queen Mary, by Francia
430 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
This may he fixed upon as tlie momeut at which the enthu-
siasm of the Tory party reached the zenith. Ever since the
accession of the new King, addresses had been pouring in
which expressed profpuud veneration for his person and office,
and bitter detestation of the vanquished Whigs. The magis-
trates of Middlesex thanked God for having confounded the
designs of those regicides and exclusionists who, not content
with having murdered one blessed monarch, were bent on
destroying the foundations of monarchy. The city of Glou-
cester execrated the bloodthirsty villains who had tried to
deprive His Majesty of "his just inheritance. The burgesses
of Wigan assured their sovereign that they would defend him
against all plotting Achitophels and rebellious Absaloms. The
grand jury of Suifolk expressed a hope that the Parliament
would proscribe all the exclusionists. Many corporations
pledged themselves never to return to the House of Commons
any person who had voted for takirig away the birthright of
James. Even the capital was profoundly obsequious. The
lawyers and the traders vied with each other in servility. Inns
of ('i)urt and Inns of Chancery sent up fervent professions of
attacliment and submission. All the great commercial societies,
the East India Company, the African Comi)any, the Turkey
Company, the Muscovy Company, the Hudson's Bay Company,
the Maryland Merfiba-iits, the Jamaica Merchants, the Mer-
chant Adv nhi e s d 1 1 'ed that they most cheerfully complied
with the royal iMV--t wliich rpquired them still to pay custom.
Bristol, the sr-cond <-itv of the island, (vlioed the voice of Lon-
don. ^ut nowh'^:-^. was tb- ^ -lirU. of loyalty stronger than in
the two T"fniversities. Ox Mid dpclared that she would never
swerve from those religious principles which bound her to obey
Saiidford, Lancaster Herald fol. 16«7 : Evelyn's Diary, May, 21, 1685 ; Despatch
of the Dutch Ami^assadois. April 10-20, 1685: Buniet, i. 62? : Eachard, iii. 734 ; A
sermon preiehed before their Majesies Kiii? .Tnines (he Second and Queen
kar>' at thpiv roronation in Westminster Abbey, April 2;<, I6R5, by Francis Lord
Bisbon of Flv, and Lord Almoner. I have seen an Italian acconnt of the Coro-
nation which wns nnblisbed at ■VTodem, and which is chiefly remarkable for the
skill wi'h which the writer sink the ffl/>t that the prayers and psalms were in
English, and that the Bisho;)9 were heretics.
JAMES THE SECOND. 431
the King without any restrictions or limitations. Cambridge
condemned, in severe terms, the violence and treachery of those
turbulent men who had maliciously endeavoured to turn the
stream of succession out of the ancient channel.*
Such addresses as these filled, during a considerable time,
every number of the London Gazette. But it was not only by
addressinjr that the Tories showed their zeal. The writs for
the new Parliament had gone forth, and the country was agi-
tated by the tumult of a general election. No election had
ever taken place under circumstances so favourable to the
Court. Hundreds of thousands whom the Popish plot had
scared into Whiggism had been scared back by the Rye House
plot into Toryism. In the counties the government could
depend on an overwhelming majority of the gentlemen of three
hundred a year and upwards, and on the clergy almost to a
man. Those boroughs which had once been the citadels ot
Whiggism had recently been deprived of their charters by legal
sentence, or had prevented the sentence by voluntary surren-
der. They had now been reconstituted in such a manner that
they were certain to return members devoted to the crown.
Where the townsmen could not be trusted, the freedom had
been bestowed on the neighbouring squires. In some of the
small western corporations, the constituent bodies were in great-
part composed of Captains and Lieutenants of the Guards. The
returning officers were almost everywhere in the interest of the
court. In every shire the Lord Lieutenant and his deputies
formed a powerful, active, and vigilant committee, for the pur-
pose of cajoling and intimidating the freeholders. The people
were solemnly warned from thousands of pulpits not to vote
for any Whig candidate, as they should answer it to Him who
had ordained the powers that be, and who had pronounced re-
bellion a sin not less deadly than witchcraft. All these advan-
tages the predominant party not only used to the utmost, but
abused in so shameless a manner that gra%'e and reflecting men,
who had been true to the monarchy in peril, and who bore no
* See the London Gazette (Juring tbe months of February, Marcb» and April,
432 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. >,
love to republicans and schismatics, stood aghast, and augured
from such beginnings the ajjproach of evil times. *
Yet the Whigs, though suffering the just punishmejit of
their errors, though defeated, disheartened, and disorganized,
did not yield without an effort. They were still numerous
among the traders and artisans of the towns, and among the
yeomanry and peasantry of tlie open country. In some dis'
tricts, in Dorsetshire for example, and in Somersetshire, they
were the great majority of the population. In the remodelled
boroughs they could do nothing : but, in every county where
they had a chance, they struggled desperately. In Bedford-
shire, which had lately been represented by the virtuous and
unfortunate Russell, they were victorious on the show of hands,
but were beaten at the poll.f In Essex they polled thirteen
hundred votes to eighteen hundred. $ At the election for
Northamptonshire the common people were so violent in their
hostility to the court candidate that a body of troops was drawn
out in the marketplace of the county town, and was ordered to
load with ball.§ The history of the contest for Buckingham-
shire is still more remarkable. The whig candidate, Thomas
Wharton, eldest sou of Philip Lord Wharton, was a man dis-
tinguished alike by dexterity and by audacity, and destined to
play a conspicuous, though not always a respectable, part in the
politics of several reigns. He had been one of those members
of the House of Commons who had carried up the Exclusion
Bill to the bar of the Lords. The court was therefore bent on
throwing him out by fair or foul means. The Lord Chief Jus-
tice Jeffreys himself came down into Buckinghamshire, for the
* It would be easy to till a volume with what "Whig historians and pamphlet-
eers have written on this subject. I will cite only one witness, a churchman
and a Tory. " Elections," says Evelyn, " were thought to be very indecently
canied on in most places. God give a better issue of it than some expect ! "
May 10, 1685. Again he says, " The truth is there were many of the new mem.
bers whose elections and returns were universally condemned." May 22.
t This fact I learned from a newsletter in the library of the Royal Institution,
Van Citters mentions the strength of the Whig party in Bedfordshire.
t Bramston's Memoirs.
§ Reflections on a Remonstrance and Protestation of all the good Protestants
of this Kingdom, 1689 ; Dialogue between Two Friends, 1689.
JAMES THE SECOND. 433
purpose of assisting a gentleman named Hacket, who stood on
the high Tory interest. A stratagem was devised which, it
was thought, could not fail of success. It was given out that
the polling would take place at Ailesbury ; and Wharton,
whose skill in all the arts of electioneering was unrivalled, made
his arrangements on that supposition. At a moment's warning
the Sheriff adjourned tiw poll to Newport Pagnell. Wharton
and his friends hurried thither, and found that Hacket, who
. was in the secret, had already secured every inn and lodging.
The Whig freeholders were compelled to tie their horses to
the hedges, and to sleep under the open sky in the meadows
which surround the little town. It was with the greatest
difficulty that refreshments could be procured at such short
notice for so large a number of men and beasts, though Wharton,
who was utterly regardless of money when his ambition and
party spirit were roused, disbursed fifteen hundred pounds in
one day, an immense outlay for those times. Injustice seems,
however, to have animated the courage of the stouthearted yeo-
men of Bucks, the sons of the constituents of John Hampden.
Not only was Wharton at the head of the poll ; but he was
able to 'spare his second votes to a man of moderate opinions,
and to throw out the Chief Justice's candidate.*
In Cheshire the contest lasted six days. The Whigs polled
about seventeen hundred votes, the Tories about two thousand.
The common people were vehement on the Whig side, raised the
cry of " Down with the Bishops," insulted the clergy in the
streets of Chester, knocked down one gentleman of the Tory
party, broke the windows and beat the constables. The nulitia
was called out to quell the riot, and was kept assembled, in
order to protect the festivities of the conquerors. When the
poll closed, a salute of five great guns from the castle proclaimed
the triumph of the Church and the Crown to the surrounding
country. The bells rang. The newly elected members went
in state to the City Cross, accompanied by a band of music,
and by a long train of knights and squires. The procession, as
* Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Marquess of Wharton, 1715.
28
434 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
It marched, sang " Joy to Great Cfesar," a loyal ode, which had
lately been written by Durfey, and which, though like all Dur-
fey's writings, utterly contemptible, was, at that time, almost as
popular as Lillibullero became a few years later.* Round the
Cross the trainbands were drawn up in order : a bonfire was
lisfhted : the Exclusion Bill was burned : and the health of
King James was drunk with loud acclamations. The following
day was Sunday. In the morning the militia lined the streets
leading to the Cathedral. The two knights of the shire were
escorted with great pomp to their choir by the magistracy of the
city, heard the Dean preach a sermon, probably on the duty of
passive obedience, and were afterwards feasted by the Mayor.f
In Northumberland the triumph of Sir John Fenwick, a
courtier whose name afterwards obtained a melancholy celeb-
rity, was attended by circumstances which excited interest
in London, and which were thought not unworthy of being
mentioned in the despatches of foreign ministers. Newcastle
was lighted up with great piles of coal. The steeples sent
forth a joyous peal. A copy of the Exclusion Bill, and a
black box, resembling that which, according to the popular
fable, contained the contract between Charles the Second and
Lucy Walters, were publicly committed to the flames, with
loud acclamations, t
The general result of the elections exceeded the most san-
guine expectations of the court. James found with delight
that it would be unnecessary for him to expend a farthing in
buying votes. He said that, with the exception of about forty
members, the House of Commons was just -such as he should
hims~elf have named. § And this House of Commons it was in
his power, as the law then stood, to keep to the end of his
reign.
Secure of parliamentary support, he might now indulge in
* See the Guardian, No. 67 ; an exquisite specimen of Addison's peculiar
planner. It would be difficult to find in the works of any other writer puch an in-
stance of benevolence delicately flavoured ■nith contempt.
t TheObservator, April 4, 1685.
t Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors, April XO-20 J685.
§ Burnet, i. 626.
JAMES THE SECOND. 435
the luxury of reveuge. His nature was not placable ; and,
while still a subject, he had suffered some injuries and indig-
nities which might move even a placable nature to fierce and
lasting resentment. One set of men in particular had, with
a baseness and cruelty beyon-d all example and all description,
attacked his honour and his life, the witnesses of the plot.
He may well be excused for hating them ; since, even at this
day, the mention of their names excites the disgust and horror
of all sects and parties.
Some of these wretches were already beyond the reach of
human justice. Bedloe had died in his wickedness, without
one sign of remorse or shame.* Dugdale had followed, driven
mad, men said, by the Furies of an evil conscience, and with
lou(i shrieks imploring those who stood round his bed to take
away Lord Stafford.f Carstairs, too, was gone. His end had
been all horror and despair ; and, with his last breath, he had
told his attendants to throw him into a ditch like a dog, for
that he was not fit to sleep in a Christian burial ground. J
But Gates and Dangerfield were still witliin the reach of the
stern prince whom they had wronged. James, a short time
before his accession, had instituted a civil suit against Gates
for defamatory words ; and a jury had given damages to the
enormous amount of a hundred thousand pounds. § The de-
fendant had been taken in execution, and was lying in prison
as a debtor, without hope of release. Two bills of indictment
against him for perjury had been found by the grand jury of
Middlesex, a few weeks before the death of Charles. Soon
after the close of the elections the trial came on.
AmonjT the upper and middle classes Gates had few friends
left. The most respectable Whigs were now convinced that,
even if his narrative had some foundation in fact, he had
erected on that foundation a vast superstructure of romance.
» A faithful aoeoimt of the Sickness. Death, and Burial of Captain Bediow,
1680 ; Narrative of Lord Chief Justice Korth.
t Smith's Intrigues of the Popish Plot, 16«5.
t Burnet, i. 430.
§ See tiie proceedings in the Collection of State Trials.
436 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
A considerable number of low fanatics, howe-ver, still regarded
him as a public benefactor. These people well knew that, if
he were convicted, his sentence would be one of extreme
severity, and were therefore indefatigable in their endeavours
to manage an escape. Though he was as yet in confinement
only for debt, he was put into irons by the authorities of the
King's Bench prison ; and even so he was with difficulty kept
in safe custody. The mastiff that guarded his door was
poisoned ; and, on the very night preceding the trial, a ladder
of ropes was introduced into the cell.
On the day in which Titus was brought to the bar, West-
minster Hall was crowded with spectators, among whom were
many Roman Catholics, eager to see the misery and humilia-
tion of their persecutor.* A few years earlier his short neck,
his legs uneven, the vulgar said, as those of a badger, his
forehead low as that of a baboon, his purple cheeks, and his
monstrous length of chin, had been familiar to all who fre-
quented the courts of law. He had then been the idol of the
nation. Wherever he had appeared, men had uncovered their
heads to him. The lives and estates of the magnates of the
realm had been at his mercy. Times had now changed ; and
many, who had formerly regarded him as the deliverer of his
country, shuddered at the sight of those hideous features ou
which villany seemed to be written by the hand of God.f
It was proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that this
toan had by false testimony deliberately murdered several
guiltless persons. He called in vain on the most eminent
members of the Parliaments which had rewarded and extolled
him to give evidence in his favour. Some of those whom he
had summoned absented themselves. None of them said any-
thing tending to his vindication. One of them, the Earl of
Huntingdon, bitterly reproached him with having deceived the-
Houses and drawn on them the guilt of shedding innocent
blood. The Judges browbeat and reviled the prisoner with an
* Evelyn's Diary, May 7, 1685.
t There remain many pictures of Gates. The most striking descriptions of
his person,are in North's Examen, 225, in Dryden's Absalom and Aehitophel,
ind in a broadside entitled, A Hue and Cry after T. O.
JAMES THE SECOND. , 437
intemperance which, even in the most atrocious cases, ill be-
comes the judicial character. He betrayed, however, no sign of
fear or of shame, and faced the storm of invective which burst
upon him from bar, bench, and witness box, with the insolence
of despair. He was convicted on both indictments. His of-
fence, though, in a moral light, murder of the most aggravated
kind, was, in the eye of 'he law, merely a misdemeanour. The
tribunal, however, was nesii'ous to make his punishment more
severe than that of felona or traitors, and not merely to put him
to death, but to put him to death by frightful torments. He was
sentenced to be stripped of his clerical habit, to be pilloried in
Palace Yard, to be led round Westminster Hall with a.'i inscrip-
tion declaring his infamy over his head, to be pilloried again in
front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from Aldgate to
Newgate, and, after an interval of two days, to be whipped
from Newgate to Tyburn. If, against all probability, he should
happen to survive this horrible infliction, he was to be kept
close prisoner daring life. Five times every year he was to be
brought forth from his dungeon and exposed on the pillory in
different parts of the capital.* This rigorous sentence was rig-
orously executed. On the day on which Oates was pilloried in
Palace Yard he was mercilessly pelted and ran some risk of
being pulled in pieces. f But iu the City his partisans mus-
tered in great force, raised a riot, and upset the pillory. $ They
were, however, unable to rescue their favourite. It was sup-
posed that he would try to escape the horrible doom which
awaited him by swallowing poison. All that he ate and drank
was therefore carefully inspected. On the following morning
he was brought forth to undergo his first flogging. At an early
hour an innumerable multitude filled all the streets from Aid-
gate to the Old Bailey. The hangman laid on the lash with
such unusual severity as showed that he had received special in-
structions. The blood ran down in rivulets. For a time the
criminal showed a strange constancy : but at last his stubborn
* The proceedings will be found at length in the Collection of State Trials.
May 29,
t Gazette de France j^^^. g 1685.
t Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors, May 19-29 1686.
438 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
fortitude gave way. His bellowings were frightful to hear.
He swooned several times ; but the scourge still continued to
descend. When he was unbound, it seemed that he had borne
as much as the human frame can bear without dissolution. James
was entreated to remit the second flogging. His answer was short
and clear: "He shall go through with it, if he has breath in
his body." An attempt was made to obtain the Queen's inter-
cession ; but she indignantly refused to say a word in favour of
such a wretch. After an interval ot only forty-eight hours,
Gates was again brought out of his dungeon. He was unable
to stand, and it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn on a
sledge. He seemed quite insensible ; and the Tories reported
that he had stupified himself with strong drink. A person who
counted the stripes on the second day said that they were seven-
teen hundred. The bad man escaped with life, but so narrowly that
his ignorant and bigoted admirers thought his recovery mu-acu-
lous, and appealed to it as a proof of his innocence. The doors
of the piivon closed upon him. During many months he re-
mained ironed in the darkest hole of Newgate. It was said that
, in his cell he gave himself up to melancholy, and sate whole
days uttering deep groans, his arms folded, and his hat pulled
over his eyes. It was not m England alone that these events
excited strong interest. Millions of Roman Catholics, who knew
nothing of our institutions or of our factions, had heard that a
persecution of singular barbarity had raged in our island against
the professors of the true faith, that many pious men had suf-
fered martyrdom, and that Titus Gates had been the chief mur-
derer. There was, therefore, great joy in distant countries when
it was known that the divine justice had overtaken him. Engrav-
ings of him, looking out from the pillory, and writhing at the
cart's tail, were circulated all over Europe; and epigrammatists,
m many languages, made merry with the doctoral title which he.
pretended to have received from the University of Salamanca,
and remarked that, since his forehead could not be made to
blush, it was but reasonable that his back should do so.*
• Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1685 ; Eacbard, iii. 741 ; Burnet, 1. 637; Obserrator,
al*y 27. 1686 ; Oates's Kikuv, 89 j E'ikuv ^poTO^-oiyov, 169X j Commons' Journals of
JAMES THE SECOND. 43&
Horrible as were the sufferings of Oates, they did not equal
his crimes. The old law of England, which had been suffered
to become obsolete, treated the false witness, who had caused
death by means of perjury, as a murderer.* This was wise
and righteous ; for such a witness is, in truth, the worst of
murderers. To the guilt of shedding innocent blood he has
added the guilt of violating the most solemn engagement into
which man can enter with his fellow men, and of making
institutions, to which it is desirable that the public should look
with respect and confidence, instruments of frightful wrong
and objects of general distrust. Tlie pain produced by
ordinary mui'der bears no proportion to the pain produced by
murder of which the courts of justice are made the agents.
The mere extinction of life is a very small part of what makes
an execution horrible. The prolonged mental agony of the
sufferer, the shame and misery of all connected with him, the
stain abiding even to the third and fourth generation, are things
far more dreadful than death itself. In general it may be
safely affirmed that the father of a large family would rather
be bereaved of all his children by accident or by disease than
lose one of them by the liands of the hangman. Murder by
false testimony is therefore the most aggravated species of
murder ; and Oates had been guilty of many such murders.
Nevertheless the punishment which was inflicted upon him
cannot be justified. In sentencing him to be stripped of his
ecclesiastical habit and imprisoned for life, the judges exceeded
May, June, and July, 1689 ; Tom Brown's advice to Dr. Oates. Some interesting
circumstances are mentioned in abroadside, printedfor A. Brooks, ChaiingCross,
1685. I have seen contemporary French and Italian pamphlets containing the
history of the trial and execution. A print of Titus in the pillory was published
at Milan, with the following curious inscription : " Questo e il naturale ritratto
di Tito Otez, o vero Oatz, Inglese, posto in berliua, uno de' principali professor!
della religion protestante, acerrimo persecutore de' Cattolici, e gran spergiuro."
1 have also seen a Dutch engraving of his punishment, with some Latin verses, of
\yhich the following are a specimen :
" At Doctor fictus non fictos pertnlit ictus,
A tortorc dates haud molli in corpore gratos,
Discerct ut vere ecelera ob commissa rubere."
The anagram of his name, " Testis Ovat," may be found on many prints pub-
lished in different countries,
* Blackstone's Commentaries, Chapter of Hoaieide.
440 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
their legal power. They were undoubtedly competent to inflict
whipping ; nor had the law assigned a limit to the number of
stripes. But the spirit of the law clearly was that no misde-
meanour should be punished more severely than the most atrocious
felonies. The worst felon could only be hanged. The judges,
as they believed, sentenced Gates to be scourged to , death.
That the law was defective is not a sufficient excuse : for
defective laws should be altered by the legislature, and not
strained by the tribunals ; and least of all should the law be
strained for the purpose of inflicting torture and destroying
life. That Gates was a bad man is not a sufficient excuse ; for
the guilty are almost always the first to suffer those hardships
which are afterwards used as precedents against the innocent.
Thus it was in the present case. Merciless flogging soon
became an ordinary punishment for political misdemeanours of
no very aggravated kind. Men were sentenced, for words
spoken against the government, to pains so excruciating that
they, with unfeigned earnestness, begged to be brought to trial
on capital charges, and sent to the gallows. Happily the prog-
ress of this great evil was speedily stopped by the Revolution,
and by that article of the Bill of Rights which condemns all
cruel and unusual punishments.
The villany of Dangerfield had not, like that of Gates, de-
stroyed many innocent victims ; for Dangerfield had not taken
up the trade of a witness till the plot had been blown upon and
till juries had become incredulous.* He was brought to trial,
not for perjury, but for the less heinous offense of libel. He
had, during the agitation caused ^by the Exclusion Bill, put
forth a narrative containing some false and odious imputations
on the late and on the present King. For this publication he
was now, after the lapse of five years, suddenly taken up,
* According to Roger North the judges decided that Dangerfield, having been
previously convicted of perjury, was incompetent to be a witness of the plot-
But this is one among many instances of Roger's inaccuracy. It appears, from
the report of the trial of Lord Castlemaine in June 1680, that, after muoh alter-
cation between counsel, and much consultation an^ong the judges of the different
courts in Westminster Hall, Dangerfield was sworn and suffered to tell his story ;
but the jury very properly gave no credit to his testimony.
JAMES THE SECOND. 441
bro-aght before the Privy Council, committed, tried, convicted^
and sentenced to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and
from Newgate to Tyburn. The wretched man behaved with
great effrontery during the trial ; but, when he heard his doom.,
he went into agonies of despair, gave himself up for dead, and
chose a text for his funeral sermon. His forebodings were
just. He was not, indeed, scourged quite so severely as Oates
had been ; but he had not Oates's iron strength of body and
mind. After the execution Dangerfield was put into a hackney
coach and was taken back to prison. As he passed the corner of
Hatton Garden, a Tory gentleman of Gray's Inn, named Fran-
cis, stopped the carriage, and cried out with brutal levity, " Well,
friend, have you had "your heat this morning ? " The bleed-
ing prisoner, maddened by this insult, answered with a curse.
Francis instantly struck him in the face with a cane which in-
jured the eye. Dangerfield was carried dying into Newgate.
This dastardly outrage roused 'the indignation of the bystanders.
They seized Francis, and were with difficulty restrained from
tearing him to pieces. The appearance of Dangerfield's body,
which had been frightfully lacerated by the whip, inclined many
to believe that lil; death was chiefly, if not wholly, caused by
the stripes which lie had received. The government and the
Chief Justice thought it convenient to lay the whole blame on
Francis, who, though he seems to have been at worst guilty only
of awgravated manslaujihter, was tried and executed for murder.
His dying speech is one of the most curious monuments of that
age. The savage spirit which had brought him to the gallows
remained with him to the last. Boasts of his loyalty and abuse
of the Whigs were mingled with the parting ejaculations in which
he commended his soul to the divine mercy. An idle rumour
had been circulated that his wife was in love with Dangerfield,
who was eminently handsome and renowned for gallantry. The
fatal blow, it was said, had been prompted by jealousy. The
dying husband, with an earnestness, half ridiculous half pathet-
ic, vindicated the lady's character. She was, he said, a virtuous
woman : she came of a loyal stock, and, if she had been inclined
442 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
to break her marriage vow, would at least have selected a Tory
and a churchman for her paramour. *
About the same time a culprit, who bore very little resem«
blance to Gates or Dangerfield, appeared on the floor of the
Court of King's Bench. No eminent chief of a party has ever
passed through many years of civil and religious dissension
with more innocence than Eichard Baxter. He belonged to
the mildest and most temperate section of the Puritan body.
He was a young man when the civil war broke out. He thought
that the right was on the side of the Houses ; and he had nc
scruple about acting as chaplain to a regiment in the parliamen-
tary army : but his clear and somewhat sceptical understanding,
and his strong sense of justice, preserved him from all excesses.
He exerted himself to check the fanatical violence of the sol-
diery. He condemned the proceedings of the High Court of
Justice. In the days of the Commonwealth he had the boldness
to express, on many occasions, and once even in Cromwell's
presence, love and reverence for the ancient institutions of the
country. While the royal family was in exile, Baxter's life was
chiefly passed at Kidderminster in the assiduous discharge of
parochial duties. He heartily concurred in the Eestoration, and
was sincerely desirous to bring about an union between Episco-
palians and Presbyterians. For, with a liberty rare in his
time, he considered questions of ecclesiastical polity as of small
account when compared with the great principles of Christianity,
and had never, even when prelacy was most odious to theruhng
powers, joined in the outcry against Bishops. The attempt to
reconcile the contending factions failed. Baxter cast in his lot
with his proscribed friends, refused the mitre of Hereford, quitted
* Dangerfleld's trial was not reported ; but I have seen a concise account of it
in a contemporary broadside. An abstract of the evidence against Francis, and
his dying speech, will be fou nd in the Collection of State Trials. See Eaehard,
iii. 741. Burnet's narrative contains more mistakes than lines. See also North's
Examen, 2oG, the sketch of Dangerfleld's life in the Bloody Assizes, the Observator
of July 29, 1685, and the poem entitled "Dangerfleld's Ghost to Jeffreys." In the
very rare volume entitled " SucciTict Genealogies, by Robert Halstead,' ' Lord
Pet«rbough says that Dangerfield, with whom he had had some intercourse, was
" a young man who appeared under a decent figure, a serious behaviour, and with
words that did not seem to proceed from a common understanding."
JAMES THE SECOND, 443
the parsonage of Kidderminster, and gave himself up almost
wholly to study. His theological writings, though too mod-
erate to be pleasing to the bigots of any paitv, had an im-
mense reputation. Zealous Churchmen called him a Round-
head ; and many Nonconformists accused him of Erastianism
and Arminianism. But the integrity of his heart, the puiity^of
his life, the vigour of his faculties, and the extent of his attain-
ments were acknowledged by the best and wisest men of
every persuasion. His political opinions, in spite of the oppres-
sion which he and his brethren had suffered, were moderate.
He was friendly to that small party which was hated by both
Whigs and Tories. He could not, he said, join in cursing the
Trimmers, when he remembered who it was that had blessed
the peacemakers.*
In a Commentary on the New Testament he had com-
plained, with some "bitterness, of the persecution which the
Dissenters suffered. That men who, for not using the Prayer
Book, had been driven from their homes, stripped of their
property, and locked up in dungeons, should dai-e to utter a
murmur, was then thought a high crime against the State
and the Church. Roger Lestrange, the champion of the govern-
ment and the oracle of the clergy, sounded the note ot war in
the Observator. An info nation was filed. Baxter begged
that he might be allowed s me time to prepare for his defence.
It was on the day on whicn Oates was pilloried in Palace Yard
that the illustrious chief of the Puritans, oppressed by age and
infirmities, came to AYestminster Hall to make this request.
Jeffreys burst into a storm of rage. " Not a minute," he cried,
" to save his life. I can deal with saints as well as with sin-
ners. There stands Oates on one side of the pillory ; and, if
Baxter stood on the other, the two greatest rogues in the king-
dom would stand together."
When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of ttiose who
loved and honoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood
* Baxter's prt ee to SirMathew Hale's Judgment of the Nature of True Ba-
li gion, l'684.
444 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Doctor "William Bates, one of the most eminent of the Noncon-
formist divines. Two Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen
and Wallop, appeared for the defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely
begun his address to the jury, when the Chief Justice broke
forth : " Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a mark on you.
You are the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue,
a schismatical knave a hypocritical villain. He hates the
Liturgy. He would have nothing but longwinded cant without
book ;" and then his Lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his
hands, and began to sing through his nose, in imitation of what
he supposed to be Baxter's style of praying " Lord, we ai-e thy
people, thy peculiar people, thy dear people." Pollexfen gently
remindetl the court that his late Majesty had thought Baxter
deserving of a bishopric. " And what ailed the old blockhead
then," cried Jeffreys, " that he did not take it ?" His fury now
rose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that
it would be no more than justice to whip such a villain through
the whole City.
Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader.
*' You ai'e in all these dirty causes, Mr. Wallop," said the Judge.
" Gentlemen of the long robe ought to be ashamed to assist
such factious knaves." The advocate made another attempt to
obtain a hearing, but to no purpose. " If you do not know
your duty," said Jeffreys, " I will teach it you."
Wallop sate down ; and Baxter himself attempted to put in a
word. But the Chief Justice drowned all expostulation in a
torrent of ribaldry and invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras.
" My Lord," said the old man, " I have been much blamed by
Dissenters for speaking respectfully of Bishops." " Baxter for
Bishops I" cried the Judge, " that's a merry conceit indeed.
I know what you mean by Bishops, rascals like yourself,
Kidderminster Bishops, factious snivelling Presbyterians !"
Again Baxter essayed to speak, and again Jeffreys bellowed
" Richard, Richard, dost thou think we will let thee poison the
court? Richard, thou art an old knave. Thou hast written
books enough to load a cart, and every book as full of sedition
as an egg is full of meat. By the grace of God, I'll look after
JAMES THE SECOND 445
thee. I see a great many of your brotherhood waiting to know
what will befall their mighty Don. And there," he continued,
fixing his savage eye on Bates, " there is a Doctor of the party
at your elbow. But, by the grace of God Almighty, I will
crush you all."
Baxter held his peace. But one of the junior counsel for
the defence made a last effort, and undertook to show that the
words of which complaint was made would not bear the construc-
tion put on them by the information. With this view he began
to reac^ the context. In a moment he was roared down. " You
sha'n't turn the court into a conventicle." The noise of
weeping was heard from some of those who surrounded Baxter.
" Snivelling calves ! " said the Judge.
Witnesses to character were in attendance, and among them
were several clergymen of the Established Church. But the
Chief Justice would hear nothing. " Does your Lordship
think," said Baxter, " that any jury will convict a man on
such a trial as this ? " "I warrant you, Mr. Baxter," said
Jeffreys : " don't trouble yourself about that." Jeffreys was
right. The Sheriffs were the tools of the government. The
jurymen, selected by the Sheriffs from among the fiercest zeal-
ots of the Tory party, conferred for a moment, and returned a
verdict of Guilty. " My Lord," said Baxter, as he left the
court, " there was once a Chief Justice who would have treated
me very differently." He alluded to his learned and virtuous
friend Sir Matthew Hale. " There is not an honest man in
England," answered Jeffreys, "but looks on thee as a
knave." *
The sentence was, for those times, a lenient one. What
passed in conference among the judges cannot be certainly
known. It was believed among the Nonconformists, and is
highly probable, that the Chief Justice was overruled by his
three brethren. He proposed, it is said, that Baxter should
* See the Oliservator of February 25, 1685, the information in the Collection of
State Trials, the account of what passed in court given by Calaniy, Life of Bax-
ter, chap, xiv., and the very curious extracts from the Baxter MSS. in the Life,
by Orme, published in 1830.
^46 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
be whipped through London at the cart's tail. The majority
thought that an eminent divine, who, a quar'ter of a century
before, had been offered a mitre, and who was now in his
seventieth year, would be sufficiently punished for a few sharp
words by fine and imprisonment.*
The manner in which Baxter ^vas treated by a judge, wlio
was a memlier of the cabinet and a favourite of the Sove-
reign, indicated, in a manner not to be mistaken, the feeling
with which the government at this time regarded the Pro-
testant Nonconformists. But already that feeling had been
indicated by still stronger and more terril)l8 signs. The Par-
liament of Scotland had met. James liad purposely hastened
the session of this body, and had postponed the session of
the English Houses, in the hope that the example set at
Edinburgh would produce a good effect at Westminster. For
the legislature of his northern kingdom was as obsequious as
those provincial Estates which Lewis the Fourteenth still suf-
fered to play at some of their ancient functions in Britanny and
Burgundy. None but an Episcopalian could sit in the Scottish
Parliament, or could even vote for a member, and in Scotland
an Episcopalian was always a Tory or a timeserver. From an
assembly thus constituted, little opposition to the royal wishes
was to be apprehended ; and even the assembly thus constitu
ted could pass no law which had not been previously approved
by a committee of courtiers.
All that the government asked was readily granted. Tn a
financial point of view, indeed, the liberality of the Scottish Es-
tates was of little consequence. They gave, however, what their
scanty means permitted. They annexed in perpetuity to the
crown tlie duties which had been granted to the late King, and
which in his time had been estimated at forty thousand pounds
sterling a year. They also settled on .James for life an addi-
tional annual income of two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds
Scots, equivalent to eighteen thousand pounds sterling. The
whole sum which they were able to bestow was about sixty
* Baxter MS. cited by Orme,
JAMES THE SECOND. 447
thousand a year, little more than what was poured into the
English Exchequer every fortnight.*
Having little money to give, the Estates supplied the
defect by loyal professions and barbarous statutes. The King,
in a letter which was read to them at the opening of their ses-
sion, called on them in vehement language to provide new pe-
nal laws against the refractory Presbyterians, and expressed his
regret that business made it impossible for him to propose such
laws in person from the throne. His commands were obeyed.
A statute framed by his ministers was promptly passed, a stat-
ute which stands forth even among the statutes of that unhappy
country at that unhappy period, preeminent in atrocity. It was
enacted, in few but emphatic words, that whoever should preach
in a conventicle under a roof, or should attend, either as preacher
or as hearer, a conventicle in the open air, should be punished
with death and confiscation of property.!
This law, passed at the King's instance by an assembly devoted
to his will, deserves especial notice. For he has been frequent-
ly represented by ignorant writers as a prince rash, indeed,
and injudicious in his choice of means, but intent on one of the
noblest ends which a ruler can pursue, the establishment of
entire religious liberty. Nor can it be denied that some portions
of his life, when detached from the rest and superficially con-
sidered, seem to warrant this favourable view of his character.
While a subject he had been, during many years, a persecuted
man ; and persecution had produced its usual effect on him. His
mind, dull and narrow as it was, had profited under that sharp
discipline. While he was excluded from the Court, from the
Admiralty, and from the Council, and was in danger of being
also excluded from the throne, only because he could not help
believing in tran substantiation and in the authority of the see of
Rome, he made such rapid progress in the doctrines of toleration
that he left Milton and Locke behind. What, he often said, could
be more unjust, than to visit speculations with penalties which
• Act Pari. Car. H. March 29, 1661; Jac. VII. April 28, 1685, and May 13, 1685.
t Act Pari. Jac. VII. May 8, 1685 ; Observator, June 20, 1685 ; Lestrange evi-
dently wished to see the precedent followed in England.
44S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
ought to be reserved for acts ? What more impolitic than to
reject the services of good soldiers, seamen, lawyers, diplo-
matists, financiers, because they hold unsound opinions about
the number of the sacraments or the pluripresence of saints ?
He learned by rote those commonplaces which all sects repeat
so fluently when they are enduring oppression, and forget so
easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsed
his lesson so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this
subject gave him credit for much more sense and much readier
elocution than he really possessed. His professions imposed
on some charitable persons, and perhaps imposed on him-
self. But his zeal for the rights of conscience ended with
the predominance of the Whig party. When fortune changed,
when he was no longer afraid that others would persecute him,
when he had it in his power to persecute others, his real pro-
pensities began to show themselves. He hated the Puritan sects
with a manifold hatred, theological and political, hereditary and
personal. He regarded them as the foes of Heaven, as the foes
of all legitimate authority in Church and State, as his great-
grandmother's foes and his grandfather's, his father's and his
mother's, his brother's and his own. Pie, who had complain-
ed so loudly of the laws against Papists, now declared him-
self unable to conceive how men could have the impudence to
propose the repeal of the laws against Puritans.* He, whose
favourite theme had been the injustice of requiring civil func-
tionaries to take religious tests, established jn Scotland, when he
resided there as Viceroy, the most rigorous religious test that
has ever been known in the empire. f He, who had expressed
just indignation when the priests of his own faith were hanged
and quartered, amused himself with hearing Covenanters shriek
and seeing them writhe while their knees were beaten flat in
the boots.l In this mood he became King-; and he immediately
* His own words reported by himself. Life of James the Second, i. 666. Orig.
Mem.
t Act Pari. Car. IL August 3t. 1681.
t Burnet, i. 583 ; 'Wodrow, III. v. 2. Unfortunately the Acta of the Scottish
Privy Council during almost the whole administration of the Buke of York ax9
JAMES THE SECOND. 449
demanded and obtained from the obsequioas Estates of Scotland
as the surest pledge of their loyalty, the most sanguinary law
that has ever in our island been enacted against Protestant
Nonconformists.
With this law the whole spirit of his administration was in
perfect harmony. The fiery persecution, which had raged
when he ruled Scotland as vicegerent, waxed hotter than ever
from the day on which he became sovereign.^ Those shires m
which the Covenanters were most numerous were given up to
the license of the army. With the army was mingled a militia,
composed of the most violent and profligate of those who called
themselves Episcopalians. Preeminent among the bands which
oppressed and wasted these unhappy districts were the dra-
goons commanded by John Graham of Claverhouse. The
story ran that these wicked men used in their revels to play at
the torments of hell, and to call each other by the names of
devils and damned souls.* The chief of this Tophet, a soldier
of distinguished courage and professional skill, but rapacious
and profane, of violent temper and of obdurate heart, has left
a name which, wherever the Scottish race is settled on the
face of the globe, is mentioned with a peculiar energy of hatred.
To recapitulate all the crimes, by which this man, and men like
him, goaded the peasantry of the Western Lowlands into mad-
ness, would be an endless task. A few instances must
suffice ; and all those instances shall be taken from the his-
tory of a single fortnight, that very fortnight in which the
Scottish Parliament, at the urgent request of James, enacted a
new law of unprecedented severity against Dissenters.
^ John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his
singular piety, commonly called the Christian carrier. Many
years later, when Scotland enjoyed rest, prosperity, and reli-
gious freedom, old men who remembered the evil days described
wanting. (1848.) "fhis assertion has been met by a direct contradiction. But the
fact ia exactly as I >javd stated it. There is in he A eta of the Scottish Privy Coun-
cil a hiatus extendiiig from August 1678 to August 1682. The Duiie of York began
to reside in Scotlancl in December 1679. Ho left Scotland, never to return iu May
1682. (1857.
• Wodrow, III. U. «,
29
450 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
him as one versed in divine things, blameless in life, and so
peaceable that the tyrants could find no offence in him except
that he absented himself from the public worship of the Epis- •
copalians. On the first of May he was cutting turf, when he
was seized by Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examired, con-
victed of nonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said
that, even among the soldiers, it was not easy to find an execu-
tioner. For the wife of the poor man was present ; she led one
little child by the hand : it was easy to see that she was about
to give birth to another ; and even those wild and hardhearted
men, who nicknamed one another Beelzebub and Apollyon,
shrank from the great wickedness of butchering her husband
before her face. The prisoner, meanwhile, raised above him-
self by the near prospect of eternity, prayed loud and fervently
as one inspired, till Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It
was reported by credible witnesses that the widow cried out in
her agony, " Well, sir, well ; the day of reckoning will come ; "
and that the murderer replied, " To man I can answer for what
I have done ; and as for God, I will take him into mine own
hand." Yet it was rumoured that even on his seared conscience
and adamantine heart the dying ejaculations of his victim made
an impression which was never effaced.*
On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John
Bryce, wei-e tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting
of fifteen soldiers. The indictmept is still extant. The prison-
ers were charged, not with any act of rebellion, but with hold-
ing the same pernicious doctrines which had impelled others to
rebel, and with wanting only opportunity to act upon those
aoctrines. The proceeding was summary. In a few hours
the two culprits were convicted, hanged, and flung together
into a hole under the gallows. t
* "Wod> ow. III. ix. C. The editor of the Oxford edition of Burnet attempts to ex-
cuse this act l)y alleging that Claverhouse was then employed to intercept all com-
muiiicatiou between Argyleand Monmouth, and by supposing that John Brown
may have been detected in conveying intelligence between the rebel camps. Un-
fortunately for this hypothesis John Brown was shot on the first of May, when
both Argyie and Monmouth were in Holland, and when there was no insurreo-
tion in any part of our islaud,
t Wodrow, III. ix. 6.
JAMES THE SECOND. 451
The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than
one great crime. Some rigid Calvinists bad from the doctrine
of reprobation drawn the consequence that to pray for any
person who had been predestined to perdition was an act of
mutiny against the eternal decrees of the Supreme Being.
Three poor labouring men, deeply imbued with this unamiable
divinity, were stopped by an officer in the neighbourhood of
Glasgow. They were asked whether they would pray for King
James the Seventh. They refused to do so except under the con-
dition that he was one of the elect. A file of musketeers was
drawn out. The prisoners knelt down ; they were blindfolded ;
and within an hour after they had been arrested, their blood
was lapped up by the dogs.*
While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible
was perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenan-
ters, overcome by sickness, had found shelter in the house of a
respectable widow, and had died there. The corpse was dis-
covered by the Laird of Wester hall, a petty tyrant who had, in
the days of the Covenant, professed inordinate zeal for the
Presbyterian Church, who had, since the Restoration, purchased
the favour of the government by apostasy, and who felt towards
the party which he had deserted the implacable hatred of an
* Wodrow, III. ix. 6. It has been confidently asserted, by persons wholiave not
taken the trouble to 1 ook at the authority to which I liave referred, that I have gross-
ly calumniated these unfortunate men ; that I do not understand the Calvinistic
theology ; and that it is impossible that members of the Church of Scotland can
have refused to pray for any man on the ground that he viras not one of the elect.
I can only refer to the narrative which Wodrow has inserted in his history,
and which he justly calls plain and natural. That narrative is signed by two
eyewitnesses, and Wodrow, before he published it, submitted it to a third eye-
witness, who pronounced it strictly accurate. From that narrative I will ex-
tract the only words which bear on the point in question : " When all the three
were taken, the officers consulted among themselves, and, withdrawing to the
west side of the town, questioned the prisoners, particularly if they would pray
for King James VII. They answered, they would pray for all witliin the election
of grace. Balfour said Do you question the King's election ? They answered,
sometimes they questioned their own. Upon which he swore dreadfully, and
said they should die presently, because they would not pray for Christ's vicegerent,
and so without one word more, commanded Thomas Cook to go to his prayers,
for he should die.
In this narrative Wodrow saw nothing improbable ; and I shall not easily be
convinced that any writer now living understands the feelings and opiuious of
tJie Ck)veiianters better than Wodrow did. (1857.)
452 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
apostate. This man pulled down the house of the poor woman,
carried away her furniture, and, leaving her and her younger
children to wander in the fields, dragged her son Andrew, who
was still a lad, before Claverhouse, who happened to be march-
ing through that part of the country. Claverhouse was just
then strangely lenient. Some thought that he had not been
quite himself since tlie death of the Christian carrier, ten days
before. But Westerhall was eager to signalise his loyalty, and
extorted a sullen consent. The guns were loaded, and the
youth was told to pull his bonnet over his face. He refused,
and stood confronting his murderers with the Bible in his hand.
" I can look you in the face," he said ; " I have done nothing
of which I need be ashamed. But how will you look in that
day when you shall be judged by what is written in this book ? "
He fell dead, and was buried in the moor.*
On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlin and Mar-
garet Wilson, the former an aged widow, the latter a maiden
of eiofhteen, suffered death for their religion in Wijjtonshire.
They were offered their lives if they would consent to abjure
the cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and to attend tlie Epis-
copal worship. They refused ; and they were s,entenced to be
drowned. They were carried to a spot which the Sol way over-
flows twice a day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the sand
between high and low water mark. The elder sufferer was placed
near to the advancing flood, in the hope that her last agonies might
terrify the younger into submission. The sight was dreadful. But
the courage of the survivor was sustained by an enthusiasm as
lofty as any that is recorded in martyrology. She saw the sea
draw nearer and nearer, but gave no sign of alarm. She
prayed and sang verses of psalms tiH the waves choked her
voice. After she had tasted the bitterness of death, she was,
by a cruel mercy unbound and restored to life. When she
came to herself, pitying friends and neighbours implored her to
yield. " Dear Margaret, only say, God save the King ! " The
poor girl, true to her stern theology, gasped out, " May God
save him, if it be God's will ! " Her friends crowded round
» Wodrow, III. ix. 6 Cloud of Wituessea.
JAMES TIIF, .SECOND. 453
the presiding officer. " She has said it ; indeed, sir, she has
said it." " Will she take the abjuration ? " he demanded.
" Never! " she exclaimed. "I am Christ's : let me go ! " And
the waters closed over her for the last time.*
Thus was Scotland governed by that prince whom ignoranf
men have represented as a frtend of religious liberty, whose
misfortune it was to be too wise and too sood for the awe in which
he lived. Nay, even those laws which authorised him to govern
thus were in his judgment reprehensibly lenient. While his
officers were committing the murders which have just been
related, he was urging the Scottish Parliament to pass a new
Act compared with which all former Acts might be called
merciful.
In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by
ancient and noble laws which even the Tories would not
patiently have seen him infringe. Here he could not hurry
Dissenters before military tribunals, or enjoy at Council the
luxury of seeing them swoon in the boots. Here he could not
drown young girls for refusing to take the abjuration, or shoot
poor countrymen for doubting whether he was one of the elect.
Yet even in England he coiltinued to persecute the Puritans
as far as his power extended, till events which will hereafter be
related induced him to form the design of uniting Puritans and
Papists in a coalition for the humiliation and spoliation of the
established Church.
One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this
early period of his reign, regarded with some tenderness, the
Society of Friends. His partiality for that singular fraternity
cannot be attributed to religious sympathy ; for, of all who
acknowledge the divine mission of Jesus, the Roman Catholic
and the Quaker differ most widely. It may seem paradoxical
to say that this very circumstance constituted a tie between the
* Wodrow, III. ix. 6. The epitaph of Margaret Wilson, in the churchyard at
Wigton, is printed in the Appendix to the Cloud of Witnesses ;
" Murdered for owning Christ supreme
Head of his Church, and no more crime,
But her not owning Prelacy,
And not nhjurin^ Presbytery,
Within the sea, tied to a stake,
She suffered for Christ Jesus' sake."
454 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Roman Catholic and the Quaker ; yet such was really the case.
For they deviated in opposite directions so far from what the
great body of the nation regarded as right, that even liberal
men generally considered them both as lying beyond the pale
of the largest toleration. Thus the two extreme sects, precisely
because they were extreme s^cts, had a common interest dis-
tinct from the interest of the intermediate sects. The Quakers
were also guiltless of all offence against James and his House.
They had not been in existence as a community till the war
between his father and the Long Parliament was drawing to-
wards a close. They had been cruelly persecuted by some of
the revolutionary governments. They had, since the Restora-
tion, in spite of much ill usage, submitted themselves meekly to
the royal authority. For they had, though reasoning on prem-
ises which the Anglican divines regarded as heterodox, arrived,
like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion, that no excess of
tyranny on the part of a prince can justify active resistance on
the part of a subject. No libel on the government had ever
been traced to a Quaker.* In no conspiracy against the govern-
ment had a Quaker been implicated. The society had not
joined in the clamour for the Exelusion Bill, and had solemnly
condemned the Rye House plot as a hellish design and a work
of the devil.f Indeed, the friends then took very little part in
civil contentions ; for they were not, as now, congregated in
large towns, but were generally engaged in agriculture, a pur-
suit from which they have been gradually driven by the vexa-
tions consequent on their strange scruple about paying tithe.
They were, therefore, far removed from the scene of political
strife. They also, even in domestic privacy, avoided on prin-
ciple all political conversation. For such conversation was, in
their opinion, unfavourable to their spirituality of mind, and
tended to disturb the austere composure of their deportment.
The yearly meetings of that age repeatedly admonished tha
brethren not to hold discourse touching affairs of state. J Even
*See the letter to King Charles H. prefixed to Barclays Apology,
t Sewel'8 History of the Quakers, book x.
J Miuutes of Yearly Meetings, 1689, 1600,
JAMES THE SECOND. 455
within the memory of persons now living those grave elders
who retained the habits of an earlier generation systematically
discouraged such worldly talk.* It was natural that James
should make a wide distinction between these harmless people
and those fierce and reckless sects which considered resistance
to tyranny as a Christian duty which had, in Germany, France,
and Holland, made war on legitimate princes, and which had,
during four generations, borne peculiar enmity to the House of
Stuart.
It happened, moreover, that it was possible to grant large
relief to the Roman Catholic and to the Quaker without mitb
gating the sufferings of the Puritan sects. A law was in forc«
which imposed severe penalties on every person who refused to
take the oath of supremacy when required to do so. This law
did not affect Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists ; for
they were all ready to call God to witness that they renounced
all spiritual connection with foreign prelates and potentates.
But the Roman Catholic would not swear that the Pope had no
jurisdiction in England, and the Quaker would not swear to
anything. On the other hand, neither the Roman Catholic no>
the Quaker was touched by the Five Mile Act, which, of all the
laws in the Statute Book, was perhaps the most annoying to the
Puritan Nonconformists. f
The Quakers had a powerful and zealous advocate at court.
Though, as a class, they mixed little with the world, and
shunned politics as a pursuit dangerous to their spiritual in-
terests, one of them, widely distinguished from the rest by
station and fortune, lived in the highest circles, and had con-
stant access to the royal ear. This was the celebrated William
Penn. His father had held great naval commands, had been a
* Clarkson on Quakerism ; Peculiar Customs, chapter v.
t After this passage was written, I found in the British Museunv, a manuscript
(Harl. MS. 7506) entitled, "An Account of the Seizures, Sequestrations, great
Spoil and Havock made upon the Estates of the several Protestant Dissenters
called Quakers, upon Prosecution of old Statutes made against Papist and Popish
Recusants." The manuscript is marked as havin^belonged to James, and appears
to have been' given by his confidential servant, Colonel Graham, to Lord Oxford-
This circumstance appears to me to confirm the view which I have taken of the
King's conduct towards the Quakers.
456 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Commissioner of the Admiralty, hatl sate in Parliament, had
received the honour of knighthood, and had been encouraged
to expect a peerage. The son had been liberally educated,
and had been designed for the profession of arras, but had,
while still young, injured his prospects and disgusted his friends
by joining what was then generally considered as a gang of
crazy heretics. He had been sent sometimes to the Tower, and
sometimes to Newgate. He had been tried at the Old Bailey
for preaching in defiance of the law. After a time, however,
he had been reconciled to his family, and had succeeded in
obtaining such powerful protection tliat, while all the gaols of
England were filled with his brethren, he was permitted, during
many years, to profess his opinions without molestation.
Towards the close of the late reign he had obtained, in satisfac-
tion of an old debt due to him from the crown, the grant of an
immense region in North America. In this tract, then peopled
only by Indian hunters, he had invited his persecuted friends
to settle. His colony was still in its infancy when James
mounted the throne.
Between James and Penn there had long been a familiar ac-
quaintance. The Quaker now became a courtier, and almost
a favourite. He was every day summoned from the gallery
into the closet, and sometimes had long audiences while peers
were kept waiting in the antechambers. It was noised abroad
that he had more real power to help and hurt than many nobles
who filled high offices. He was soon surrounded by flatterers
and suppliants. His house at Kensington was sometimes
thronged, at his hour of rising, by more than two hundred
suitors.* He paid dear, however, for this seeming prosperity.
Even his own sect looked coldly on him, and requited his
services with obloquy. He was loudly accused of being a Papist,
* Penn's visits to Whitehall, and levees at Kensington", are described with great
vivacity, though in very bad Latin, by Gerard Croese. " Sumebat," he says,
"rex ssepe secretum. non horarium, vero horarum plnrium, in quo de vaviis
rebus cum Penno serio sermonem conferebat, et interim differebat audire prjecip-
uorum nobilium ordinom, qui h«c interim spatio in proeoetone, in proximo, regem
conventum prsesto erant." Of the crowd of suitors at Penn's house,- Croese says.
" Visi quandoque de hoc genere hominum non minus bis centum."— HistoriaQua-
keriana, lib. ii. 1695.
JAMES THE SECOND. 457
nay, a Jesuit. Some affirmed that he had been educated at St.
Omers, and others that he had been ordained at Rome. These
calumnies, indeed, could find credit only with the undiscerning
multitude ; but with these calumnies were mingled accusations
much better fovuided.
m
To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task which
requires some courage ; for he is rather a mythical than a
historical person. Rival nations and hostile sects have agreed
in canonising him. England is pFoud of his name. A great
commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards him with a rever-
ence similar to that which the Athenians felt for Theseus, and
the Romans for Quirinus. The respectable society of which he
was a member honours him as an apostle. By pious men of
other persuasions he is generally regarded as a bright pattern
of Christian virtue. Meanwhile admirers of a very different
sort have sounded his praises. The French philosophers of the
eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded as his super-
stitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for priests, and
of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially extended to all
races and to all creeds. His name has thus become, throughout
all civilised countries, a synonyme for probity and philanthropy.
Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited, Penn was
without doubt a man of* eminent virtues. He had a strong
sense of religious duty and a fervent desire to promote the hap-
piness of mankirtd. On one or two points of high importance,
he had notions more correct than were, in his day, common
even among men of enlarged minds : and as the proprietor and
legislator of a province which, being almost uninhabited when
it came into his possession, afforded a clear field for moral ex-
periments, he had the rare good fortune of being able to carry
his theories into practice without any compromise, and yet'with-
out any shock to existing institutions. He will always be men-
tioned with honour as a founder of a colony, who did not, in his
dealings with a savage people, abuse the strength derived from
civilisation, and as a lawgiver who, in an age of persecution,
made religious liberty the corner stone of a polity. But his
writings and his life furnish abundant proofs that he was not a
458 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
man of strong sense. He had no skill in reading the character?
of others. His confidence in persons less virtuous than himself
led him into great errors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for
one great principle sometimes impelled him to violate other
great principles which he ought to have held sacred. Nor was
his rectitude altogether proof against the temptations to which
it was exposed in that splendid and polite, but deeply corrupted
society, with which he now mingled. The whole court was in
a ferment with intrigues of gallantry and intrigues of ambition.
The traffic in honours, places, and pardons was incessant. It
was natural that a man who was daily seen at the palace, and
who was known to have free access to majesty, should be fre-
quently importuned to use his influence for purposes which a
rigid morality must condemn. The integrity of Penn had stood
firm against obloquy and persecution. But now, attacked by
royal smiles, by female blandishments, by the insinuating elo-
quence and delicate flattery of veteran diplomatists and courtiers,
his resolution began to give way. Titles and jihrases against
which he had often borne his testimony dropped occasionally
from his lips and his pen. It would be well if he had been
guilty of nothing worse than such compliances with the fashions
of the world. Unhappily it cannot be concealed that he bore
a chief part in some transactions condemned, not merely by the
rigid code of the society to which he belonged, but by the gen-
eral sense of all honest- men. He afterwards solemnly protest-
ed that his hands were pure from illicit gain, and that he had
never received any gratuity from those whom he had obliged,
though he might easily, while his influence at court lasted, have
made a hundred and twenty thousand pounds.* To this asser-
tion full credit is due. But bribes may be offered to vanity as
well £fs to cupidity ; and it is impossible to deny that Penn was
cajoled into bearing a part in some unjustifiable transactions of
which others enjoyed the profits.
The first use which he made of his credit was highly com-
mendable. He strongly represented the sufferings of his
* " Twenty thousand into my pocket ; and a hundred thousand into my
province." — Penn's Letter to Popple."
JAMES THE SECOND, 459
brethren to the new King, who saw with pleasure that it was
possible to grant indulgence to these quiet sectaries and to the
Roman Catholics, without showing similar favour to other
classes which were then under persecution. A list was framed
of prisoners against whom proceedings had been instituted for
not taking the oaths, or for not going to church, and of whose
loyalty certificates had been produced to the government. These
persons were discharged, and orders were given that no similar
proceeding should be instituted till the royal pleasure should be
further signified. In this way about fifteen hundred Quakers,
and a still greater number of Roman Catholics, regained their
liberty.*
And now the time had arrived when the English Parliament
was to meet. The members of the House of Commons who
had repaired to the capital were so numerous that there was
much doubt whether their chamber, as it was then fitted up,
would afford sufficient accommodation for them. They em-
ployed the days which immediately preceded the opening of the
session in talking over public affairs with each other and with
the agents of the government. A great meeting of the loyal
party was held at the Fountain Tavern in the Strand; and
Roger Lestrange, who had recently been knighted by the King,
and returned to Parliament by the city of Winchester, took a
leading part in their consultations. f
It soon appeared that a large portion of the Commons had
views which did not altogether airree with those of the Court.
The Tory country gentlemen were, with scarcely one exception,
desirous to maintain the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus Act ;
and some among them talked of voting the revenue only for a
term of years. But they were perfectly ready to enact severe
laws against the Whigs, and would gladly have seen all the sup-
* These orders, signed by Sunderland, will be found in Sewel's History. They
bear date April 18,1685. They are written in a style singularly obscure and intri-
cate ; but I think that I have exhibited the meaning correctly. I have not been
able to find any proof that any person, not a Roman Catholic or a Quaker, re-
gained his freedom under these orders. See Neal's History of the Puritans, vol.
ii. chap. ii. ; Gerard Croese, lib. ii. Croese estimates the number of Quakers liber-
ated at fourteen hundred and sixty.
May 28,
+ Barillon, j-^^^ 1685. Observatof , May 27, 1685 ; Sir J. Reresby's Memoirs.
460 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
I>orters of the Exclusion Bill made incapable of holding office.
The King, on the other hand, desired to obtain from the Par-
liament a revenue for life, the admission of Roman Catholics to
office, and the repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act. On these
three objects his heart was set ; and he was by no means dis-
posed to accept as a substitute for them a penal law against
Exclusionists. Such a law, indeed, would have been positively
unpleasing to him ; for one class of Exclusionists stood liigh in
his favourj that class of which Sunderland was the representa-
tive, that class which had joined the Whigs in the days of the
plot, merely because the Whigs were predominant, and which
had changed with the change of fortune. James justly regarded
these renesrades as- the most serviceable tools that he could
employ. It was not from the stouthearted Cavaliers, who had
been true to him in his adversity, that he could expect abject
and unscrupulous obedience in his prosperity. The men who,
impelled, not by zeal for liberty or for religion, but merely by
selfish cupidity and selfish fear, had assisted to oppress him
when he was weak, were the very men who, impelled by the
same cupidity and the same fear, would assist him to oppress
his people now that he was strong.* Though vindictive, he
was not indiscriminately vindictive. Not a single instance can
be mentioned in which he showed a generous compassion to
those who had opposed him honestly and on public grounds.
But he frequently spared and promoted those whom some vile
motive had induced to injure him. For tliat meanness which
marked them out as fit implements of tyranny was so precious
in his estimation that he regarded it with some indulgence even
when it was exhibited at his own expense.
The King's wishes were communicated through several
channels to the Tory members of the Lower House. The ma-
jority was easily persuaded to forego all thoughts of a penal
law against the Exclusionists, and to consent that His Majesty
should have the revenue for life. But about the Test Act and
* Lewis wrote to Barilloii about this class of Exclusionists as follows : " L'iu-
terSt qu'ils auront k effacer cette t&.che par des services considerables les portera,
selon toutes les apparences, k le servir plus utilement que ne pourraient faire
ceux qui ont toujours ete les plus attaches i'sa personne." May 15-26 1685.
JAMES THE SECOND. 461
the Habeas Corpus Act the emissaries of the Court could ob-
tain no satisfactory assurances.*
Ou the nineteenth of May the session was opened. The
oenches of the Commons presented a singular spectacle. That
great party, which, in the last three Parliaments, had been pre-
dominant, had now dwindled to a pitiable minority, and was
indeed little more than a fifteenth part of the House. Of the
five hundred and thirteen knights and burgesses only a hun-
dred and thirty-five had ever sate in that place before. It
is evident that a body of men so raw and inexperienced must
have been, in some important qualities, far below the average
of our representative assemblies. f
The management of the House was confided by James to
two peei's of the kingdom of Scotland. Ona of them, Charles
Middleton, Earl of Middleton, after holding high office at P^din-
burgh, had, shortly before the death of the late King, been
sworn of the English Privy Council, and appointed one of the
Secretaries of State. With him was joined Richard Graham,
Viscount Preston, who had long held the post of Envoy at
Versailles.
The first business of the Commons was to elect a Speaker.
Who should be the man, was a question which had been much
debated in the cabinet. Guildford had recommended Sir
Thomas Meres, who, like himself, ranked among the Trimmers.
Jeffreys, who missed no opportunity of crossing the Lord
Keeper, had pressed the claims of Sir John Trevor. Trevor
had been bred half a pettifogger and half a gambler, had brought
to political life sentiments and principles worthy of both his
callings, had become a parasite of the Chief Justice, and could,
on occasion, imitate, not unsuccessfully, the vituperative style of
his patron. The minion of Jeffreys was, as might have been
expected, preferred by James, was proposed by Middleton, and
was chosen without opposition. $
Thus far all went smoothly. But an adversary of no common
* Barillon, May 4-14, 1685; Sir John Reresby's Memoirs
t Buniet, i. 626 ; Evelyn's Diary, May, 22, 1685.
t Roger North's Life of Guildford, 218 ; Bramston's Memoirs.
• HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
prowess was watcliing his time. This was Edward Seymour
of Ben-y Pomeroy Custle, member for the city of Exeter, Sey-
mour's birth put him on a level with the noblest subjects in
Europe. He was the right heir male of the body of that. Duke
of Somerset who had been brother iu law of King Henry
the Eighth, and Protector of the realm of England. In the
limitation of the dukedom of Somerset, the elder son of the
Protector had been postponed to the younger son. From the
younger son the Dukes of Somerset were descended. From
the elder son was descended the family whicli dwelt at Berry
Pomeroy. Seymour's fortune was large, and his influence in the
West of England extensive. Nor was the importance derived
from descent and wealth the only importance which belonged
to him. He was one of the most skilful debaters and men of
business in the kingdom. He had sate many years in the House
of Commons, had studied all its rules and usages, and thorough-
ly understood its peculiar temper. He had been elected speaker
in the late reign under circumstances which made thett distinc-
tion peculiarly honourable. During several generations none
but lawyers had been called to the chair ; and he was the first
country gentleman whose abilities and acquirements had enabled
him to break that long prescription. He had subsequently held
high political office, and had sate in the Cabinet. But his
haughty and unaccommodating temper had given so much dis-
gust that he had been forced to retire. He was a Tory and a
Churchman : he had strenuously opposed the Exclusion Bill :
he had been persecuted by the Whigs in the day of their pros-
perity ; and he could therefore safely venture to hold language
for which any person suspected of republicanism would have
been sent to the Tower, He had long been at the head of a
strong parliamentary connection, which was called the Western
Alliance, and which included many gentlemen of Devonshire,
Somersetshire, and Cornwall.*
In every House of Commons, a member who unites eloquence,
knowledge, and habits of business, to opulence and illustrious
descent, must be highly considered. But in a House of Com-
♦ North's Life of Guildford, 228 ; News from Westminster.
JAMES THE SECOND. 463
mons from which many of the most eminent orators and par-
liamentary tacticians of the age were excluded, and which was
crowded with people who had never heard a debate, the influ-
ence of such a man was peculiarly formidable. Weight of
moral character was indeed wanting to Edward Seymour. He
was licentious, profane, corrupt, too proud to behave with com-
mon politeness, yet not too proud to pocket illicit gain. But he
was so useful an ally, and so mischievous an enemy, that he was
frequently courted even by those who most detested him.*
He was now in bad humour with the government. His in-
terest had been weakened in some places by the remodelling ot
the western boroughs : his pride had been wounded by the ele-
vation of Trevor to the chair ; and he took an early opportunity
of revenging himself.
On the twenty-second of May the Commons were summoned
to the bar of the Lords ; and the King, seated on his throne,
made a speech to both Houses. He declared himself resolved
to maintain the established government in Church and State.
But he weakened the effect of this declaration by addressing an
extraordinary admonition to the Commons. He was apprehen-
sive, he said, that they might be inclined to dole out money to
him from time to time, in the hope that they should thus force
him to call them frequently together. But he must warn them
that he was not to be so dealt with, and that, if they wished
him to meet them often they must use him well. As it was
evident that without money the government could not be carried
on, these expressions plainly implied that, if they did not give
him as much money as he wished, he would take it. Strange
to say, this harangue was received with loud cheers by the Tory
gentlemen at the bar. Such acclamations were then usual. It
has now been, during many years the grave and decorous usage
of Parliaments to hear, in respectful silence, all expressions,
acceptable or unacceptable, which are uttered from the thf one.f
It was then the custom that, after the King had concisely
* Burnet, i. 382 ; Letter from Lord Conway to Sir George Kawdon, Dec. 28, 167T*
in the Rawdon Papers,
t London Gazette, May 25, 1685 ; Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1685.
464 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
explained his reasons for calling Parliament together, the mfn»
ister who held the Great Seal should, at more length, explain to
the Houses the state of i^ublic affairs. Guildford, in imitation
of his predecessors, Clarendon, Bridgeman, Shafteslmry, and
Nottingham, had prepared an elaborate oration, but found, to
his great mortification, that his services were not wanted.*
As soon as the Commons had returned to their own chamber,
it was proposed that they should resolve themselves into a
Committee, for the purpose of settling a revenue on the King.
Then Seymour stood up. How he stood, looking like what lie
was, the chief of a dissolute and high spirited gentry, with the
artificial ringlets clustering in fashionable profusion round kis
shoulders, and a mingled expression of voluptuousness and disdmu
in his eye and on his lip, the likenesses of him which still remain
enable us to imagine. It was not, the haughty Cavalier said, his
wish that the Parliament should withhold from the crown the
means of carrying on the government. But was there indeed a
Parliament ? Were there not on the benches many men who had,
as all the world knew, no right to sit there, many men whose
elections were tainted by corruption,many men forced by intimida-
tion on reluctant voters, and many men returned by corporations
which had no legal existence? Had not constituent bodies
been remodelled, in defiance of royal charters and of immemorial
prescription? Had not returning oflUcers been everywhere the
unscrupulous agents of the Court? Seeing that the very
principle of representation had been thus systenratically at«
tacked, he knew not how to call the throng of gentlemen which
he saw around him by tfie honourable name of a House of
Commons. Yet never was there a time when it more concerned
the public weal that the character of Parliament should stand high.
Great dangers impended over the ecclesiastical and civil constitu-
tion of the realm. It was matter of vulgar notoriety, it was
matter which required no proof, that the Test Act, the rampart
of religion, and tlie Habeas Corpus Act, the rampart of li^Verty,
were marked out for destruction. " Before we proceed t«. leg*
islute on questions so momentous, let us at least asc&rtAin
• North's Life o£ GuUdford. 25&
JAMES THE SECOND. 465
whether we really are a legislature. Let our first proceeding
be to enquire into the manner in which the elections have
been conducted. And let us look to it that the enquirj^ be
impartial. For, if the nation shall find that no redress is to be
obtained by peaceful methods, we may perhaps er^ long suffer
the justice which we refuse to do." He concluded by moving
that, before any supply was granted, the House would take into
consideration petitions against returns, and that no member
whose right to sit was disputed should be allowed to vote.
Not a cheer was heard. Not a member ventured to second
the motion. Indeed, Seymour had said much that no other man
could have said with impunity. The proposition fell to the
ground and was not even entered on the journals. But a mighty
effect had been produced. Barillon informed his master that
many who had not dared to applaud tliat remarkable speech had
cordially approved of it, that it was the universal subject of
conversation throughout London, and that the impression made
on the public mind seemed likely to be durable.*
The Commons went into committee without delay, an^ voted
to the King, for life, the whole revenue enjoyed by his brother.f
The zealous churchmen who formed the majority of the
House seem to have been of opinion that the promptitude with
which they had met the wish of James, touching the revenue,
entitled them to expect some concession on his part. They
said that much had been done to gratify him, and that they
must now do something to gratify the nation. The House
therefore, resolved itself into a Grand Committee of Religion,
in order to consider the best means of providrng for the security
of the ecclesiastical establishment. In that Committee two
resolutions were unanimously adopted. The first expressed
fervent attachment to the Church of England. The second
called on the King to put in execution the penalslaws against all
persons who were not members of that Church. $
May 23 May 25
• Burnet, 1, 639 ; Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1G85 ; BarUlon, j^^^ ^ and j^j^^
1685. The silence of the journals perplexed Mr. Fox : but it is explained by the
circumstance that Seymour's motion was not seconded.
t Journals, May 22. Stat. Jac. IT. i. 1.
t Jonraaia, May ?6, 27. Sir J. Reresby's Memoirs
466 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
The Whigs would doubtless have wished to see the Protestant
dissenters tolerated, and the Roman Catholics alone persecuted.
But the Whigs were a small and a disheartened minority. They
therefore kept themselves as much as possible out of sight,
dropped thek- party name, abstained from obtruding their peculiar
opinions on a hostile audience, and steadily supported every
proposition tending to disturb the harmony which as yet subsist-
ed between the Parliament and the Court.
When the proceedings of the Committee of Eeligion were
known at "Wliitehall, the King's anger was great. Nor can
we justly blame hira for resenting the conduct of the Tories.
If they were disposed to require the rigorous execution of the
penal code, they clearly ought to have supported the Exclusion
Bill. For to place a Papist on the throne, and then to insist on
his persecuting to the death the teachers of that faith in which
alone, on his princij^les, salvation could be found, was monstrous.
In mitigating by a lenient administration the severity of the
bloody laws of Elizabeth, the King violated no constitutional
principle. He only exerted a power which lias always belono-ed
to the crown. Nay, he only did what was afterwards done by
a succession of sovereigns zealous for Protestantism, by William,
by Anne, and by the princes of the House of Brunswick. Had
he suffered Roman Catholic priests, whose lives he could save
without infringing any law, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered
for discharging what he considered as their first duty, he would
have drawn on himself the hatred and contempt even of those
to whose prejudices he had made so shameful a concession ; and,
had he contented himself with granting to the members of his
own Church a practical toleration by a large exercise of his un-
questioned prerogative of mercy, posterity would have unani-
mously applauded him.
The Commons probably felt on reflection that they had acted
absurdly. They were also disturbed by learning that the King,
to whom they looked up with superstitious reverence, was greatly
provoked. They made haste, therefore, to atone for their of-
fence. In the House, they unanimously reversed the decision
whicbf in the Cormuittee, they had unanimously adopted, and
JAMES THE SECOND. 467
passed a resolution importing that they relied with entire confi-
dence on His Majesty's gracious promise to protect that religion
which was dearer to them than life itself.*
Three days later the King informed the House that his
brother had left some debts, and that the stores of the navy and
ordnance were nearly exhausted. It was proniptly resolved that
new taxes should be imposed. The person on whom devolved
the task of devising ways and means was Sir Dudley North,
younger brother of the Lord Keeper. Dudley North was one
of the ablest men of his time. He had early in life been sent
to the Levant, and had there been long engaged in mercantile
pursuits. Most men would, in such a situation, have allowed
their faculties to rust. For at Smyrna and Constantinople there
were few books and few intelligent companions. But the
young factor had one of those vigorous understandings which are
independent of external aids. In his solitude he meditated
deeply on the philosophy of trade, and thought out by degrees
a complete and admirable theory, substantially the same with that
which, a century later, was expounded by Adam Smith. After
an exile of many years, Dudley North returned to England with
a large fortune, and commenced business as a Turkey merchant
in the City of London. His profound knowledge, both specu-
lative and practical, of commercial matters, and the perspicuity
and liveliness with which he explained his views, speedily in-
troduced him to the notice of statesmen. The government
found in him at once an enlightened adviser and an unscrupulous
slave. For with his rare mental endowments were joined lax
principles and an unfeeling heart. When the Tory reaction was
in full progress, he had consented to be made Sheriff for the
express purpose of assisting the vengeance of the court. His
juries had never failed to find verdicts of Guilty ; and, on a day
of judicial butchery, carts, loaded with the legs nd arms of
quartered Whigs, were, to the great discomposure of his lady,
driven to his fine house in Basinghall Street for orders. His
services had been rewarded with the honour of knighthood, with
* Commons' Journals, May 27, 1685.
468 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
an Alderman's gown, and with the office of Commissioner of
the Customs. He had been brought into Parliament for Ban-
bury, and though a new member, was the person on whom the
Lord Treasurer chiefly relied for the conduct of financial busi-
ness in the Lower House.*
Tbouffh the Commons were unanimous in their resolution to
grant a further supply to the crown, they were by no means agreed
as to the sources from which that supply should be drawn. It wa«
speedily determined that part of the sum which was required
should be raised by laying an additional impost, for a term oi
eight years, on wine and vinegar : but something more than this
fvas needed. Several absurd schemes were suggested. Many
country gentlemen were disposed to put a heavy tax on all new
buildings in the capital. Such a tax, it was hoped, would check
the growth of a city which had long been regarded with jealousy
and aversion by the rural aristocracy. Dudley North's plan was
that additional duties should be imposed, for a term of eight
years, on sugar and tobacco. A great clamour was raised.
Colonial merchants, grocers, sugar bakers and tobacconists, pe-
titioned the House and besieged the public offices. The people
of Bristol, who were deeply interested in the trade with Virginia
and Jamaica, sent up a deputation which was heard at the bar
of the Commons. Rochester was for a moment staggered ; but
North's ready wit and perfect knowledge of trade prevailed,
both in the Treasury and in the Parliament, against all opposi-
tion. The old members were amazed at seeing a man who had
not been a fortnight in the House, and whose life had been chiefly
passed in foreign countries, assume with confidence, and discharge
with ability, all the functions of a Chancellor of the Exchequer.f
His plan was adopted ; and thus the Crown was in possession
of a clear income of about nineteen hundred thousand pounds,
derived from England alone. Such an income was then more
than sufficient for the support of the government in time of
peace. $
* Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North ; Life of Lord Guilford, 166 ; Mr.
M'Cullough's Literature of Political Economj'.
t Life of Dudley North, 1T6 ; LMisdale's Memoirs ; Van Citters, June 12-22, 1686.
t Commons' Journals, Mar<^ 1, 1689,
JAMES THE SECOND. 469
The Lords had, in the meantime, discussed several important
questions. Tiie Tory party had always been strong among the
peers. It included the whole bench of Bishops, and had been
reinforced during the four years which had elapsed since the
last dissolution, by several fresh creations. Of the new nobles,
the most- conspicuous were the Lord Treasurer Rochester, the
Lord Keeper Guildfoi'd, the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, the
Loi-d Godolphin, and the Lord Churcliill, who, after his return
from Versailles, had been made a Baron of England.
The peers early took into consideration the case of four
members of their body who had been impeached in the late
reign, but had never been brought to trial, and had, after a
long confinement, been admitted to bail by the Court of King's
Bench. Three of the noblemen who were thus under recog-
nisances were Roman Catholics. The fourth was ' a Protestant
of great note and influence, the Earl of Danby. Since he had
fallen from power and had been accused of treason by the
Commons, four Parliaments had been dissolved ; but he had
been neither acquitted nor condemned. In 1679 the Lords
had considered, with reference to his situation, the question
whether an impeachment was or was not terminated by a
dissolution. They had resolved, after long debate and full
examination of >recedents, that the impeachment was still
pending. That resolution they now rescinded. A few Whig
nobles protested against this step, but to little purpose. The
Commons silently acquiesced in the decision of the Upper House.
^Danby again took his seat among his peers, and became an
active and powerful member of the Tory party.*
The constitutional question on which the Lords thus, in
the short space of six years, pronounced two diametricalljl
opposite decisions, slept during more than a century, and wal
at length revived by the dissolution which took place durmg
the lon<^ trial of Warren Hastings. It was then necessary
to determine whether the rule laid down in 1679, or the
opposite rule laid down in 1685, was to be accounted the law
* Lords' Journals, March 18, 19, 1679. May 22, 1685-
470 HISTORY OF ENGLAND,
of the land. The point was long debated in both houses j
and the best legal and parliamentary abilities which an age
preeminently fertile both in legal and in parliamentary ability
could supply were employed in the discussion. The lawyers
were not unequally divided. Thurlow, Kenyon, Scott, and
Erskine maintained that the dissolution had put an end to
the impeachment. The contrary doctrine was held by Mansfield,,
Camden, Loughborough, and Grant. But among those states-
men who grounded their arguments, not on precedents andi
technical analogies, but on <leep and broad constitutional princi-
ples, there was little difference of opinion. Pitt and Grenville,
as well as Burke and Fox, held that the impeachment was still
pending. Both Houses by great majorities set aside the decision
of 1 685, and pronounced the decision of 1679 to be in conformity
with the law of Parliament.
Of the national crimes which had been committed during
the panic excited by the fictions of Gates, the most signal had
been the judicial murder of Stafford. The sentence of that
unhappy nobleman was now regarded by all impartial persons
as unjust. The principal witness for the prosecution had
been convicted of a series of foul perjuries. It was the duty
of the legislature, in such circumstances, to do justice to the
memory of a guiltless sufferer, and to efl'ace an unmerited
stain from a name lon^ illustrious in our annals. A bill for
reversing the attainder of Stafford was passed by the Upper
House, in spite of the murmurs of a few peers who were un-
willing to admit that they had shed innocent blood. The
Commons read the bill twice without a division, and ordered
it to be committed. But, on the day appointed for the com-
mittee, arrived news that a formidable rebellion had broken out
in the West of England. It was consequently necessary to
postpone much important business. The amends due to the
memory of Stafford were deferred, as was supposed, only for a
short time. But the misgovernment of James in a few months
completely turned the tide of jjublic feeling. During several
generations the Roman Catholics were in no condition to d'mand
repai'atiou for injustice, and accounted themselves happy if they
JAMES THE SECOND. 471
we'» p<ormitted to live unmolested in obscurity and silence. At
length, Jn the reign of King George the Fourth, more than a
hundred and forty years after the day on which the blood of
Stafford \ras shed on Tower Hill, the tardy expiation was accom-
plished. A law annulling the attainder and restoring the
injured fam.'{} to its ancient dignities was presented to Parlia-
ment by the ntmisters of the crown, was eagerly welcomed by
public men of ab parties, and was passed without one dissentient
voice.*
Tt is now necessary that I shouk^ trace the orfgin and pro-
gress of that rebellion hy which the deliberations of the Houses
were suddenly interrupted.
* Stat. S Geo. IV. c. 46.
472 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER V.
Towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, some
Whigs who had been deeply implicated in the plot so fatal to
their party, a^d who knew themselves to be marked out for de-
struction, had sought an asylum in the Low Countries.
These refugees were in general , men of fiery temper and
weak judgment. ^^ej were also under the influence of that
peculiar illusion which seems to belong to their situation, A
politician driven into banishment by a hostile faction generally
sees the society which he has quitted through a false medium.
Every object is distorted and discoloured by his regrets, tig
longings, and his resentments. Every little discontent appears
to him to portend a revolution. Every riot is a rebellion. He
cannot be convinced that his country does not pine for him as
much as he pines for his country. He imagines that all his old
associates, who still dwell at their homes and enjoy their estates,
are tormented by the same feelings which make life a burden to
himself. The longer his expatriation, the greater does this hal-
lucination become. The lapse ^of time, which cools the ardour
of the friends whom he has left behind, inflames his. Every
month his impatience to revisit his native land increases ; and
every month his native land remembers and misses him less.
This delusion becomes almost a madness when many exiles who
suffer in the same cause herd together in a foreign country.
Their chief employment is to talk of what they once were, and
of what they may yet be, to goad each other into animosity
against the common enemy, to feed each other with extrava-
gant hopes of victory and revenge. Thus they become ripe for
enterprises which would at once be pronounced hopeless by any
man whose passions had not deprived him of the power of cal-
culating chances.
JAMES TPTE SECOND. . A7b
In thi3 mood were many of the outlawr; v/ho Tind assembled
on the Continent. The correspondence which they kept up
with England was, for the most prrt, such as tended to excite
their feelings and to mi, l their judgment. Their informa-
tion concerning the temper of the public mind was chiefly
derived from the worst members of the Whig party, from men
wliiO were plotters and libellers by profession, who were pursued
by the oificers of justice, who were forced to skulk in disguise
through back streets, and who sometimes lay hid for weeks to-
gether in cocklofts and cellars. The statesmen who had for-
merly been the ornaments of the Country- Party, the statesmen
who afterwards guided the councils of the Convention, would
have given advice very different from that which was given by
such men as John Wildman and Henry Danvers.
Wild man had served forty years before in the parliamentary
army, but had been more distinguished there as an agitator than
as a soldier, and had early quitted the profession of arms for
pursuits better suited to his temper. His hatred of monarchy
had induced him to engage in a long series of conspiracies, first
against the Protector, and then against the Stuarts. But with
Wildmen's fanaticism was joined a tender cure for his own
safety. He had a v, onderf ul skill in grazing the edge of treason.
No man understood better how to instigate others to desperate
enterprises by words which, when repealed to a jury, might
seem innocent, or, at worst, ambiguous. Such was his cunning
that, though always plotting, though alw'ays known to be plot-
ting, and though long malignantly watched by a vindict'ive gov-
ernment, he eluded every danger, and died in liis bed, after
having seen two generations of his accomplices die on the gal-
lows.* Danvers was a man of the same class, hetheaded, but
fainthearted, constantly urged to the bi'ink of danger by enthusi-
asm, and constantly stopped on that brink by cowardice. He
had considerable influence among a portion of the Baptists,
had written largely in defence of their peculiar opinions, and
•Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, book xiv.; Burnet's Own Times, i.
BiC, C25; Wade's and Ireton's Karrativus, Lansdowne MS. 1152* West's informal
tion in the Appendix to Sprat's True Account.
474 HliSTORT OP ENGLAND.
had drawn down on hinaself the severe censure of the most
respectable Puritans by attempting to palliate the crimes of
Matthias and John of Leyden. It is probable that, had he
possessed a little courage, he would have trodden in the foot-
steps of the wretches whom he defended. He was, at this tune,
concealing himself from the officers of justice ; for warrants
were out against him on account of a grossly calumnious paper
of which the government had discovered him to be the author.*
It is easy to imagine what kind of intelligence and counsel
men, such as have been described, were likely to send to the
outlaws in the Netherlands. Of the general character of those
outlaws an estimate may be formed from a few samples.
One of the most conspicuous among them was John Ayloffe,
a lawyer coi. .£ -"ed by affinity with the Hydes, and through the
Hydes, with James. Ayloffe had early made himself remark-
able by offering a whimsical insult to the government. At a
time when the ascendency of the court of Versailles had excited
general uneasiness, he had contrived to put a wooden shoe, the
established type, among the English, of French tyranny, into
the chair of the House of Commons. He had subsequently
been concerned in the Whig plot ; but there is no reason to be-
lieve that he was a party to the design of assassinating the
royal brothers. He was a mau of parts and courage ; but his
moral character did not stand high. The Puritan divines
whispered that he was a careless Gallio or something worse, and
that, whatever zeal he might profess for civil liberty, the Saints
would do well to avoid all connection with him.f
Nathaniel Wade was, like Ayloffe, a lawyer. He had long
resided at Bristol, and had been celebrated in his own neigh-
bourhood a* a vehement republican. At one time he had
•London Gazette, January, 4, 1684-5; Ferguson MS. in Eachard's History, iii.
764; Grey's Narratives ; Sprat's True Account; Danvers's Treatise on Baptism ;
Danvei-s's Innocency and Truth vindicated; Crosby's History of the English Bap-
tists.
t Sprat's True Account; Burnet, 1. 634 ; "Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845.
Lord Howard of Escrick accused Ayloffe of proposing to assassinate the Duke of
York ; but Lord Howard was an abject liar ; and this story was not part of his
original confession, but was added afterwards by way of supplement, and there-
fore deserves no credit whatever.
JAMES THE SECOND. 475
formed a project of emigrating to New Jersey, where he expected
to find institutions better suited to his taste than those of Eng-
land. His activity in electioneering had introduced him to the
notice of some Whig nobles. They had emj^loyed liim j^rofes-
sionally, and had, at length, admitted him to their most secret
counsels. He liad been deeply concerned in the scheme of in-
surrection, and had undertaken to head a rising in his own city.
He had also been privy to the more odious plot against the lives
of Charles and James. But he always declared that, though
privy to it, he had abhorred it, and had attempted to dissuade
his associates from carrying tlieir design into effect. For a man
bred to civil pursuits, Wade seems to have had, in an unusuaP ,
degree, that sort of ability and that sort of nerve which *make a
good soldier. Unhappily his principles and his courage proved
to be not T)f sufficient force to support him when the fight was
over, and when in a prison, he had to choose between death and
infamy.*
Another fugitive was Richa.^d Goodenough, who had for-
merly been Under Sheriff of London. On this man his party
had long relied for services of no honourable kind, and espe-
cially for the selection of jurymen not likely to be troubled
with scruples in political cases. * He had been deeply concerned
in those dark and atrocious parts of the Whig plot which had
been carefully concealed from the most respectable Whigs. Nor
is it possible to plead, in extenuation of his .guilt, that he was
misled by inordinate zeal for the public good. For it will be seen
that after having disgraced a noble cause by his crimes, he be-
trayed it in order to escape from his well merited punishmentf
Very different was the character of Richard Rumbold. He
had held a commission in Cromwell's own regiment, had guard-
ed the scaffold before the Banqueting House on the day of the
great execution, had fought at Dunbar and Worcester, and had
always shown in the highest degree the qualities which distin-
* Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845 ; Lansdswne MS. 1152 ; Holloway's
narrative in tlie Appendix to Sprat's True Account. Wade owned tjjat HoUoway
had told nothing but truth.
f Sprat's True Account and Appendix, passim.
476 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
guished tlie invincible army in which he served, courage of the
truest temper, fiery enthusiasm, both political and religious,
and with that enthusiasm, all the power of selfgovernment
which is characteristic of men trained in well disciplined camps
to command and to obey. When the Republican troops were
disbanded, Rumbold became a maltster, and carried on his trade
near Hoddesdon, in that building from which the Rye House
plot derives its name. It had been suggested, though not abso-
lutely determined, in the conferences of the most violent and un-
scrupulous of the malecontents, that armed men should be
stationed in the Rye House to attack the Guards who were to
escort Charles and James from Newmarket to London, In
these Gonferences Rumbold had borne a part from which he
would have shrunk with horror, if his clear understanding had
not been overclouded, and his manly heart corrupted, by party
spirit.*
A more important exile was Ford Grey, Lord Grey of
Wark. He had been a zealous Exclusionist, had concurred in
the design of insurrection, and had been committed to the Tow-
er, but had succeeded in making his keepers drunk, and in effect-
in w his escape to the Continent. His parliamentary abilities were
great, and his manners pleasingi but his life had been sullied by
a great domestic crime. His wife wa^ a daughter of the noble
house of Berkeley. Her sister, the Lady Henrietta Berkeley,
was allowed to a^ociate and correspond with him as with a
brother by blood. A fatal attachment sprang up. The high
spirit and strong passions of Lady Henrietta broke through all
restraints of vJrtue and decorum. A scandalous elopement dis-
closed to the whole kingdom the shame of two illustrious fami-
lies. Grey and some of the agents who had served him in his
amour were brought to trial on a charge of conspiracy. A
scene unparalleled in our legal history was exhibited in the
Court of King's Bench. The seducer appeared with daunt-
less front, accompanied by his paramour. Nor did the great
* Sprat's True Account and Appendix ; Proceedings against Rumboli'i in the
Collection of State Trials j Burnet's Own Times, i. 633 ; Appendix to Fox's His-
tory, No. IV.
JAMES THE SECOND, 477
Whisf lords flineh from their friend's side even on that ex-
tremity. Those whom he had wronged stood over against him,
and were moved to transports of rage hy the siglit of liim. The
old Earl of Berkeley poured forth reproaches and curses on the
wretched Henrietta. The Countess gave eyidence broken by
many sobs, and at length fell down in a swoon. The jury found
a verdict of Guilty. When the court rose Lord Berkeley called'
on all his friends to help him to sieze his daughter. The par-
tisans of Grey rallied round her. Swords were drawn on both
sides ; a skirmish took place in Westminster Hall ; and it was
with difficulty that the Judges and tipstaves parted the com-
batants. In our time such a trial would be fatal to the character
of a public man ; but in that age the standard of morality among
the great was so low, and party spirit was so violent, that Grey
still continued to have considerable influence, though the Puri-
tans, who formed a strong section of the Whig party, looked
somewhat coldly on him.*
One part of the character, or rather, it may be, of the for-
tune, of Grey deserves notice. It was admitted that every-
where, except on the field of battle, he showed a high degree of
courage. More than once, in embarrassing circumstances, when
his life and liberty were at stake, the dignity of his deportment
and his perfect command of all his faculties extorted praise from
those who neither loved nor esteemed him. But as a soldier he
incurred, less perhaps by his fault than by mischance, the degrad-
ing imputation of personal cowardice.
In this respect he differed widely from his friend the Duke
of Monmouth. Ardent and intrepid on the field of battle,
Monmouth was everywhere else effeminate and irresolute. The
accident of his birth, his personal courage, and his superficial
graces, had placed him in a post for which he was altogether un-
fitted. After witnessing the ruin of the party of which he had
been the nominal head, l\e had retired to Holland. The Prince
and Princess of Orange had now ceased to regard him as a rival.
They received him most hospitably ; for they hoped that, by
* Grey's narrati^t'e ; his trial in the Collection of State Trials ; Sprat's Tru«
Account. *
478 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
treating him with kindness, they should establish a claim to the
gratitude of his father. They knew that paternal affection was
not yet wearied out, that letters and supplies of money still
came secretly from Whitehall to Monmouth's retreat, and that
Charles frowned: on those who sought to pay their court to
him by speaking ill of his banished son. The Duke had been
encouraged to expect that, in a very short tinie, if he gave no
new cause of displeasure, he would be recalled to his native land,
and restored to all his high honours and commands. Animated
by such expectations he had been the life of the Hague during
the late winter. He had been the most conspicuous figure at a
succession of balls in that splendid Orange Hall, which blazes
on every side with the most ostentatious colouring of Jordfens
and Hondthorst.* He had taught the English country dance
to the Dutch ladies, and had in his turn learned from them to
skate on the canals. The Princess had accompanied him in his
expeditions on the ice ; and the figure which she made there,
poised on one leg, and clad in petticoats shorter than are gener-
ally worn by ladies so strictly decorous, had caused some won-
der and mirth to the foreign ministers. The sullen gravity
which had been characteristic of the Stadtholder's court seemed
to have vanished before the influence of the fascinating English-
man. Even the stern and pensive William relaxed into good
humour when his brilliant guest appeared. f
Monmouth meanwhile carefully avoided all that could give
offence in the quarter to which he looked for protection. He
saw little of any Whigs, and nothing of those violent men who
had been concerned in the worst part of the Whig plot. He
V a therefore loudly accused, by his old associates, of fickleness
and ingratitude. $
By none of the exiles was this accusation urged with more
vehemence and bitterness than by Robert Ferguson, the Judas
of Dryden's great satire. Ferguson was by birth a Scot ; but
* In the Pepysian Collection is a print representing one of the halls which
about this time "William and Mary gave in the Oranje Zaal.
t Avaux Neg. January 25, 1685. Letter from James to the Princess of Oranga
dated January 1685, among Birch's Extracts in the British Museum.
t Grey's Narfative ; Wade's Confession, Lanedowne MS, 1153,
JAMES THE SECOND. 479
England had long been his residence. At the time of the Res-
toration, indeed, he had held a living in Kent. He had been
bred a Presbyterian; but the Presbyterians had cast him out,
and he had become an Independent. He had been master of an
academy which the Dissenters had set up at Islington as a rival
to Westminster School and the Charter House ; and he had
preached to large congregations at a meeting house in Moor-
fields. He had also published some theological treatises which
may still be found in the dusty recesses of a few old libraries ;
but, though texts of Scripture were always on his lips, those
who had pecuniary transactions with him soon found him to be
a mere swindler.
At length he tui'ned his attention almost entirely from
theology to the worst part of politics. He belonged to the
class whose office it is to render in troubled times to exasp,era-
ted parties those services from which honest men shrink in dis-
gust and prudent men in fear, the class of fanatical knaves.
Violent, malignant, regardless of truth, insensible to shame,
insatiable of notoriety, delighting in intrigue, in tumult, in mis-
chief for its own sake, he toiled during many years in the dark-
est mines of faction. He lived among libellers and false witnesses.
He was the keeper of a secret purse from which agents too vile
to be acknowledged received hire, and the director of a secret
press whence pamphlets, bearing no name, were daily issued.
He boasted that he had contrived tp scatter lampoons about the
terrace of Windsor, and even to lay them under the royal pil-
low. In this way of life he was put to many shifts, was forced
to assume many names, and at one time had four different
lodgings in different corners of London. He was deeply en-
gaged in the Rye House plot. There is, indeed, reason to
believe that he was the original author of those sanguinary
schemes which brought so much discredit on the whole Whig
part3\ When the conspiracy was detected -and his associates
were in dismay, hq bade them farewell with a laugh, and told
them that they were novices, that he had been used to flight,
concealment and disguise, and that he should never leave off
plotting while he lived. He escaped to the Continent. But it
480 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
seemed that even on the Continent he was not secure. The
English envoys at foi-eign courts were directed to be on the
watch for him. The French government offered a reward of
five hundred pistoles to any who would seize him. Nor was
it easy for him to escape notice ; for his broad Scotch accent,
his tall and lean figure, his lantern jaws, the gleam of his sharp
eyes which were always overhung by his wig, his cheekc inflamed
by an eruption, his shoulders deformed by a stoop, and his gait
distinguished from that of other men by a peculiar shufile,
made him remai'kable wherever he appeared. But, though he
was, as it seemed, piti'sued with peculiar animosity, it was whis-
pered that this animosity was feigned, and that the officers of jus-
tice had secret orders not to see him. That he was really a bitter
malecontent can scarcely be doubted. But there i - strong reason
to believe that he provided for his own safety by pretending at
Whitehall to be a spy on the Whigs, and by furnishing the
government witli just so much information as sufficed to keep
up his credit. This hypothesis furnishes a simple explanation
of what seemed to his associates to be his unnatural reckless-
ness and audacity. Being himself out of danger, he always
gave his vote for the most violent and perilous course, and
sneered very complacently at the pusillanimity of men who, not
having taken the infamous precautions on which he relied, were
disposed to think twice before they placed life, and objects
dearer than life, on a single hazard.*
As soon as he was in the Low Countries he began to form
new projects against the English government, and found among
his fellow emigrants men ready to listen to his evil counsels.
Monmouth, however, stood obstinately aloof; and, without the
help of Monmouth's immense popuIarit3% it was impossible to
effect anything. Yet such was the imf)atience and rashness of
the exiles that they tried to find another leader. They sent an
embassy to that solitary retreat on the shores of Lake Leman
where Edmund Ludlow, once conspicuous aifiong the chiefs of
* Burnet, i. 542 ; Wood, Atli. Ox. under the name of Owen ; Absalom and Ach-
tophel, part ii.; Eachard, iii. 682, 697 ; Sprat's True Account, passm; Loud. Gaz.
Aug. 6, 1683 ; Nonconformist's Memorial ; North's Examen, 399.
JAMES THE SECOND. 481
the parliamentary army and among the members of the High
Court of Justice, had, during many years, saved himself from
the vengeance of the restored Stuarts. The stern old regicide,
howevei-, refused to quit his hermitage. His work, he said, was
done. If England was still to be saved, she must be saved by
younger men.*
The unexpected demise of the crown changed the whole
aspect of affairs. Any hope which the proscribed Whigs might
have cherished of returning peaceably to their native land was
extinguished by the death of a careless and goodnatured prince,
and by the accession of a prince obstinate in all things, and
especially obstinate in revenge. Ferguson was in his element.
Destitute of the talents both of a writer and of a statesman, he
had in a high degree the unenviable qualifications of a tempter;
and now, witLthe malevolent activity and dexterity of an evil
spirit, he ran from outlaw to outlaw, chattered in every ear, and
stirred up in every bosom savage animosities and wild desires.
He no longer despaii-ed of being able to seduce Monmouth.
The situation of that unhappy young man was completely
changed. While he was dancing and skating at the Hague, and
expecting every day a summons to London, he was over-
whelmed with misery by the tidings of his father's death and of
his uncle's accession. During the night which followed the
arrival of the news, those who lodged near him could distinctly
hear his sobs and his piercing cries. He quitted the Hague the
next day, having solemnly pledged his word both to the Prince
and to the Princess of Orange not to attempt anything against
the government or England, and having been supplied by them
with money to meet immediate demands.f
The prospect which lay before Monmouth was not a bright
one. There was now no probability that he would be recalled
from banishment. On the Continent his life could no longer
be passed amidst the splendor and festivity of a court. His
cousins at the Hague seem to have really regarded him with
* Wade's Confessiou, Harl. MS. 6845.
t Avaux Neg. Feb. 20, 22, 1685; Monmouth's letter to James from Bingwood.
31
482 HISTORY OP ENGLAND*
kindness ; but they could no longer countenance him openly
without serious risk of producing a rupture between England
and Holland. William offered a kind and judicious suggestion.
The war which was then raging in Hungary, between the
Emperor and the Turks, was watched by all Europe with in-
terest almost us great as that which the Crusades had excited
five hundred years earlier. Many gallant gentlemen, both Pro-
testant and Catholic, were fighting as volunteers in the common
cause of Christendom. The Prince advised Monmouth to re-
pair to the Imperial camp, and assured him that, if he would do
so, he should not want the means of making an appearance be-
fitting an English nobleman.* This counsel was excellent : but
the Duke could not make up his mind. He retired to Brussels
accompanied by Henrietta Wentworth, Baroness Wentworth of
Kettlestede, a damsel of high rank and ample fortune, who
loved him passionately, who had sacrificed for. his sake her
maiden honour and the hope of a splendid alliance, who had
followed him into exile, and whom he believed to be his wife
in the sight of heaven. Under the soothing influence of female
friendship, his lacerated mind healed fast. He seemed to have
found happiness in obscurity and repose, and to have forgotten
that he had been the ornament of a splendid court and the head
of a great party, that he had commanded armies, and that he
had aspired to a throne.
But he was not suffered to remain quiet. Ferguson employed
all his powers of temptation. Grey, who knew not where to
turn for a pistole, and was ready for any undertakmg, however
desperate, lent his aid. No art was spared which could draw
Monmouth from retreat. To the first invitations which he re-
ceived from his old associates he returned unfavourable answers.
He pronounced the difficulties of a descent on England insuijer-
able. protested that he was sick of public life, and begged to be
left in the enjoyment of his newly found happiness. But he
was little in the habit of resisting skilful and urgent importun-
ity. It is said, too, that he was induced to quit his retirement
* Boyer's History of King William the Third, 2d edition, 1703, vol. i. 160.
JAMES THE SECOND. 483
by the same powerful influence which had made that retirement
delightful. Lady Wentworth wished to see him a King. Her
rents, her diamonds, her credit were put at his disposal. Mon-
mouth's judgment was not convinced; but he had not the firm-
ness to resist such solicitations.*
By the English exiles he was joyfully welcomed, and unani-
mously acknowledged as their head. But there was another
class of emigrants who were not disposed to recognize his su-
premacy. Misgovernment, such as had never been known in
the southern part of our island, had driven from Scotland to
the Continent many fugitives, the intemperance of whose politi-
cal and religious zeal was pi'oportioned to the oppression which
they had undergone. These men were not willing to follow an
English leader. Even in destitution and exile they retained
their punctilious national pjide, and would not consent that their
country should be, in their persons, degraded into a province.
They had a captain of their own, Archibald, ninth Earl of Ar-
gyle, who as chief of the great tribe of Campbell, was known
among the population of the Highlands by the proud name of
Mac Callum More. His father, the Marquess of Argyle, had
been the head of the Scotch Covenanters, had greatly contribu-
ted to the ruin of Charles the First, and was not thought by the
Royalists to have atoned for this offense by consenting to be-
stown the empty title of King, and a state prison in a palace, on
Charles the Second. After the return of the royal family the
Marquess was put to death. His marquisate became extinct;
but his son was permitted to inherit the ancient earldom, and
was still among the greatest if not the greatest, of the nobles of
Scotland. The Earl's conduct during the twenty years which
'followed the Restoration had been, as he afterwards thought,
criminally moderate. He had, on some occasions, opposed the
* Welvvood's Memoirs, App. xv. ; Burnet, i. 630. Grey told a somewhat differ-
ent story; but he told it to save his life. The Spanish ambassador at the English
court, Don Pedro de Ronquillo, in a letter to the governor of the Low Countries
written about this time, sneers at Monmouth for living on the bounty of a fond
woman, and hints a very unfounded suspicion that the Duke's passion was alto-
gether interested. "Hallandose hoy tan falto de raedios que ha menester tras-
lormar.'je en Amor con Miledi en vjsta de la ecesidad de poder subsistir."— Ron-
quillo to Grana,y'^''.V^°'1685.
484 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
administration which afflicted his country : but his opposition
had been languid and cautious. His compliances in ecclesiusti.
cal matters had given scandal to rigid Presbyterians : and so
far had he been from showing any inclination to resistance that,
when the Covenanters had been persecuted into insurrection,
he had brought into the field a large body of his dependents to
support the government.
Such had been his political course until the Duke of York
came down to Edinburgh armed with the whole regal authority.
The despotic viceroy soon found that he could not expect entire
support from Argyle. Since the most powerful chief in the
kingdom could not be gained, it was thought necessary that
he should be destroyed. On grounds so frivolous that even the
spirit of party and the spirit of chicane were ashamed of them,
he was brought to trial for treason, convicted, and sentenced to
death. The partisans of the Stuarts afterwards asserted that it
was never meant to carry this sentence into effect, and that the
only object of the prosecution was to frighten him into ceding his
extensive jurisdiction in the Highlands. Whether James de-
signed, as his enemies suspected, to commit murder, or only, as
his friends affirmed, to commit extortion by threatening to com-
mit murder, cannot now be ascertained. " I know nothing of
the Scotch law," said Halifax to King Charles ; " but this I
know, that we should not hang a dog here on the grounds on
which my Lord Argyle has been sentenced." *
Argyle escaped in disguise to England, and thence passed
over to Friesland. In that secluded province his father had
bought a small estate, as a place of refuge for the family in civil
troubles. It was said, among the Scots that this purchase had
been made in consequence of the predictions of a Celtic seer, to
A^hom it had been revealed that Mac Galium More would one
day be driven forth from the ancient mansion of his race at
Inverary.f But it is probable that the politic Marquess had
• Proceedings against Argyle in the Collection of State Tiials ; Burnet, i. 521 ;
A True and Plain Account of the Discoveries made in Scotland, ir.R!; The
Scotch Mist Cleared ; Sir George Mackenzie's Vindication ; Lord Fountainhall'a
Chronoloiical Notes.
t Information of Robert Smith in the Appendix to Sprat's True Accotmt.
JAMES THE SECOND. 485
been warned rather by the signs of the times than by the visions
of any prophet. In Frieshxnd Earl Archibald resided during
some time so quietly that it was not generally known whither
he had fled. From his retreat he carried on a correspondence
with his friends in Great Britain, was a party to the Whig
conspiracy, and concerted with the chiefs of that conspiracy a
plan for invading Scotland.* This plan had ^oeen dropped
upon the detection of the Rye House [dot, but became agaiu the
subject of bis thoughts after the demise of the crown.
He had, during his residence on the Continent, reflected much
more deeply on religious questions than in the preceding years
of his life. In one respect the effect of these reflections on his
mind had been pernicious. His partiality for the synodical
form of church government now amounted to bigotry. When
he remembered how long he had conformed to the established
worship, he was overwhelmed with shame and remorse, and
showed too many signs of a disposition to atone for his defection
by violence and intolerance. He had however, in no long time,
an opportunity of proving that the fear and love of a higher
Power had nerved him for the most formidable conflicts by
which human nature can be tried.
To his companions in adversity his assistance was of the
highest moment. Though proscribed and a fugitive, he was
still, in some sense, the most powerful subject in the British
dominions. In wealth, even before his attainder, he was prob-
ably inferior, not only to the great English nobles, but to
some of the opulent esquires of Kent and Norfolk. But his
patriarchal authority, an authority which no wealth could give and
which no attainder could take away, made In'm, as a leader of an
insurrection, truly formidable. No southern lord could feel any
confidence that, if he ventured to resist the government, even
his own gamekeepers and huntsmen would stand by him. An
Earl of Bedford, an Earl of Devonshire, could not engage to
bring ten men into the field. Mac Galium More, penniless and
deprived of his earldom, might at any moment, raise a serious
• Tme aod PJaiu Account of the Piscoveries inaije w Scotlauil,
486 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
civil war. He had only to show himself on the coast of Lorn-,
and an army would, in a few days, gather round him. The force
which, in favourable circumstances, he could bring into the field,
amounted to five thousand fighting men, devoted to his service,
accustomed to the use of target and broadsword, not afraid to
encounter regular troops even in the open plain, and perhaps
superior to regular troops in the qualifications requisite for the
defence of wild mountain passes, hidden in mist, and torn by
headlong torrents. What such a force, well directed, could
effect, even against veteran regiments and skilful commanders,
was proved, a few years latei-, at Killiecrankie.
But, strong as was the claim of Argyle to the confidence of
the exiled Scots, there was a faction among them which regard-
ed him with no friendly feeling, and which wished to make use
of his name and influence, without entrusting to him any real
power. The chief of this faction was a lowland gentleman,
who had been implicated in the Whig plot, and had with dif-
ficulty eluded the vengeance of the court, Sir Patrick Hume, of
Polwarth, in Berwickshire. Great doubt has' been thrown on
his integrity, but without sufficient reason. It must, however,
be admitted that he injured his cause by perverseness as much
as he could have done by treachery. He was a man incapable
alike of leading and of following, conceited, captious, and wrong-
headed, an endless talker, a sluggard in action against the enemy
and active only against liis own allies. With Hume was closely
connected another Scottish exile of great note, who had many,
of the same faults, Sir John Cochrane, second son of the Earl
of Dundonald.
A far higher character belonged to Andrew Fletcher of Sal-
toun, a man distinguished by learning and eloquence, distin-
guished also by courage, disinterestedness, and public spirit,
but of an irritable and impracticable temper. Like many of
his most illustrious contemporaries, Milton for example, Har-
rington, Marvel, and Sidney, Fletcher had, from the misgovern,
ment of several successive princes, conceived a strong aversion
to hereditary monarchy. Yet he was no democrat. He was
the head of an ancient Norman house, and was proud of his
JAMES THE SECOND. 487
descent. He was a fine speaker and a fine writer, and was proud
of his intellectual superiority. Both in his character of gentleman,
and in his character of scholar, he looked down with disdain on the
common people, and was so little disposed to entrust them with
political power that he thought them unfit even to enjoy per-
sonal freedom. It is a curious circumstance that this man, the
most honest, fearless, and uncompromising i-epublican of his
time, should have been the author of a plan for reducing a
large part of the working classes of Scotland to slavery. He
bore, in truth, a lively resemblance to those Roman Senators
who, while they hated the name of King, guarded the privileges
,of their order with inflexible pride against the encroachments of
the multitude, and governed their bondmen and bondwomen by
means of the stocks and the scourge.
Amsterdam was the place where the leading emigrants,
Scotch and English, assembled. Argyle repaired thither from
Friesland, Monmouth from Brabant. It soon appeared that the
fugitives had scarcely anything in common except hatred of James
and itnpatience to return from banishment. The Scots were jeal-
ous of the English, the English of the Scots. Monmouth's high
pretensions were offensive to Argyle, who, proud of ancient
nobility and of a legitimate descent from kings, was by no
means inclined to do homage to the offspring of a vagrant and
ignoble love. But of all the dissensions by which the little
band of outlaws was distracted the most serious was that which
arose between Argyle and a portion of his own followers. Some
of the Scottish exiles had, i a long course of opposition to
tyranny, been excited into a morbid state of understanding and
temper, which made the most just and necessary restraint in-
supportable to them. They knew that without Argyle they
could do nothing. They ought to have known that, unless
they wished to run headlong to ruin, they must either repose
full confidence in their leader; or relinquish all thoughts of
military enterprise. Experience has fully proved that in war
every operation, from the greatest to the smallest, ought to be
under the absolute direction of one mind, and that every subor-
dinate agent, in his degree, ought to obey implicitly, strenuous*
488 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
ly, and with the show of cheerfulness, orders which he disap
proves, or of which the reasons are kept secret from him.
Representative assemblies, public discussions, and all the other
checks by which, in civil affairs, rulers are restrained from
abusing power, are out of place in a camp. Machiavel justly
imputed many of the disasters of Venice and Florence to the
jealousy which led those republics to interfere with every act
of their generals.* The Dutch practice of sending to an army
deputies, without whose consent no great blow could be struck,
was almost equally pernicious. It is undoubtedly by no means
certain that a captain, who has been entrusted with dictatorial
power in the hour of peril, will quietly surrender that power in
the hour of triumph ; and this is one of the many considerations
which ought to make men hesitate long before they resolve to
vindicate public liberty by the sword. But, if they determine
to try the chance of war, they will, if they are wise, entrust to
their chief that plenary authority without which war cannot be
well conducted. It is possible that, if they give him that au-,
thority, he may turn out a Cromwell or a Napoleon. Bift it is
almost certain that, if they withhold from him that authority,
their enterprises will end like the enterprise of Argyle.
Some of the Scottish emigrants, heated with republican
enthusiasm, and utterly destitute of the skill necessary to the
conduct of great affairs, employed all their industry and in^
genuity, not in collecting means for the attack which they were
about to make on a formidable enemy, but in devising restraints
on their leader's power and securities against his ambition. The
selfcomplacent stupidity with which they insisted on organising
an army as if they had been organising a commonwealth would
be incredible if it had not been frankly and even boastfully
recorded by one of themselves. t
At length all differences were compromised. It was deter-
mined that an attempt should be forthwith made on the western
coast of Scotland, and that it should be promptly followed by a
descent on England.
* Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio, lib. ii. cap. 33.
t See Sir Patrick Hume's Narrative, passim.
JAMES THE SECOND. 489
Argyle was to hold the uominal command in Scotland : but
he was placed under the control of a Committee which reserved
to itself all the most important parts of the military administra-
tion. This committee was empowered to determine where the
expedition should land, to appoint officers, to superintend the
levying of troops, to dole out provisions and ammunition. All
that was left to the general was to direct the evolutions of the
army in the field, and he was forced to promise that even in the
field, except in the case of a surprise, he would do nothing with-
out the assent of a council of war.
Monmouth was to command in En"land. His soft mind had,
as usual, taken an impress from the society which surrounded
him. Ambitious hopes, which had seemed to be extinguished,
revived in his bosom. He remembered the affection with which
he had been constantly greeted by the common people in town
and country, and expected that they would now rise by hundreds
of thousands to welcome him. He remembei'ed the good will
which the soldiers had always borne liim, and flattered himself
that they would come over to him by regiments. Encouraging
messages reached him in quick succession from London. He
was assui'ed that the violence and injustice with which the elec-
tions had been carried on had driven the nation mad, that the
prudence of the leading Whigs had with difficulty prevented a
sanguinary outbreak on the day of the coronation, and that all
the great Lords who had supported the Exclusion Bill were im-
patient to rally round him. Wildman, who loved to talk treason
in parables, sent to say that the Earl of Richmond, just two
hundred years before, had landed in England with a handful of
men, and had a few days later been crowned, on the field of
Bosworth, with the diadem taken from the head of Richard.
Dan vers undertook to raise the City. The Duke was deceived
into the belief that, as soon as he set up his standard, Bedford-
shire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Cheshire would rise in
arms.* He consequently became eager for the enterprise from
which a few weeks before he had shrunk. His countrymen did
not impose on him restrictions so elaborately absurd as those
* Grey's Narrative ; Wade's Confession, Harl. MS- 6845.
490 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
which the Scotch emigrants had devised. All that was required
of him was to promise that he would not assume the regal title
till his pretensions has been submitted to the judgment of a free
Parliament.
It was determined that two Englishmen, Ayloffe and Rum
bold, should accompany Argyle to Scotland, and that Fletchet
should go with Monmouth to England. Fletcher, from the be-
ginning, had augured illof the enterprise : but his chivalrous spirit
would not suffer him to decline a risk which his friends seemed
eager to encounter. When Grey repeated with approbation
what Wildmau had said about Richmond and Richard, the well
read and thoughtful Scot justly remarked that there was a great
difference between the fifteenth century and the seventeenth.
Richmond was assured of the support of barons, each of whom
could bring an army of feudal retainers into the field ; and
Richard had not one regiment of regular soldiers.*
The exiles were able to raise, partly from their own resources
and partly from the contributions of well wishers in Holland,
a sum sufficient for the two expeditions. Very little was obtain-
ed from London. Six thousand pounds had been expected
thence. But instead of the money came excuses from Yfildman,
which ought to have opened the eyes of all who were not wil-
fully blind. The Duke made up the deficiency by pawning his
own jewels and those of Lady Wentworth. Arms, ammunition,
and provisions were bonght, and several ships which lay at
Amsterdam were freighted.!
It is remarkable that the most illustrious and the most
grossly injured man among the British exiles stood far aloof
from these rash counsels. .John Locke hated tyranny and
persecution as a philosopher ; but his intellect and his temper
preserved-him from the violence of a partisan. He had lived
on confidential terms with Shaftesbury, and had thus incurred
the displeasure of the court. Locke's prudence had, however,
been such that it would have been to little purpose to bring
him even before the corrupt and partial ti-ibunals of that age.
In <r-e point, however, he was vulnerable. He was a student
• Burnet, i. 631. t Grey's Narrative.
JAMES THE SECOND. 491
of Christ Church in the University of Oxford. It was deter-
mined to di4ve from that celebrated college the greatest man
of -whom it could ever boast. But this was not easy. Locke
had, at Oxford, abstained from expressing any opinion on the
politics of the day. Spies had been set about him. Doctors of
Divinity and Masters of Arts had not been ashamed to p<3rform
the vilest of all oflfices, that of watching the lips of a companion
in order to report his words to his ruin. The conversation in
the hall had been purposely turned to irritating topics, to the
Exclusion Bill, and to the character of the Earl of Shaftesbury,
but in vain. Locke neither broke out nor dissembled, but
maintained such steady silence and composure as forced the
tools of power to own with vexation that never man was so
complete a master of his tongue and of his passions. When it
Avas found that treachery could do nothing, arbitrary power was
used. After vainly trying to inveigle Locke into a fault, the
government resolved to punish him without one. Orders came
from Whitehall that he should be ejected ; and those orders the
Dean and Canons made haste to obey.
Locke was travelling on the Continent for his health when he
learned that he had been deprived of his home and of his bread
without a trial or even a notice. The injustice with which he
had been treated would have excused him if he had resorted to
violent methods of redress. But he was not to be blinded by
personal resentment : he augured no good from the schemes of
those who had assembled at Amsterdam ; and he quietly j-e-
paired to Utrecht, where, while his partners in misfortune were
planning their own destruction, he employed lumself in writing
Ms celebrated letter on Toleration.*
The English government was early apprised that something
was in agitation among the outlaws. An invasion of England
* Le Clerc's Life of Locke ; Lord King's Life of Locke ; Lord Grenville'3
Oxford and Locke. Locke must not be confounded with the Anabapist Nicholas
Look, whose name was spelled Locke in Grey's Confession, and who is mentioned
in the Lansdowue MS. 1152, and in the Buccleuch narrative appended to Mr.
Pose's dissertation. I should hardly think it necessary to make this remark, but
that the similarity of the two names appears to have misled a man so well acquaint'
ed.with tlie history of those times as Speaker Onslow. See his note on Burnet, i.
492 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
seems not to have been at first expected ; but It was apprehended
that Argyle would shortly appear in arms among his clansmen.
A proclamation was accordingly issued directing that Scotland
should be put into a state of defence. The militia was ordered
to be in readiness. All the clans hostile to the name of Camp^
bell were set in motion. John Murray, Marquess of Athol, was
appointed Lord Lieutenant of Argyleshire, and, at the head of a
great body of his followers, occupied the castle of Inverary.
Some suspected persons were arrested. Others were compelled
to give hostages. Ships of war were sent to cruise near the
i^le of Bute ; and part of the army of Ireland was uoved to
the coast of Ulster.*
While these preparations were making in Scotland, James
called into his closet Arnold Van Citters, who had long resided
hi England as Ambassador from the United Provinces, and Ever-
ard Van Dykvelt, who, after the death of Charles, had been sent
by the State General ou a special mission of condolence and
congratulation. The King said that he had received from un-
questionable sources intelligence of designs which were forming
against the throne by his banished subjects in Holland. Some
of the exiles were cutthroats, whom nothing but the special
providence of God had prevented from committing a foul mur-
der ; and among tliem was the owner of the spot which had
been fixed for the butchery, " Of all men living," said the
King, " Argyle has the greatest means of annoymg me ; and of
all places Holland is that whence a blow may be best aimed
against me." The Dutch envoys assured liis Majesty that what
he had said should instantlv be communicated to the sovern-
ment which they represented, and expressed their full confi-
dence that every exertion would be made to satisfy him.f
They were justified in expressing this confidence. Both
the Prince of Orange and the States General, were, at this time,
most desirous that the hospitality of their country should not be
abused for purposes of which the English government could
justly complain. James had lately held language which en-
•Wodrow, book iii. chap, ix; Ix)ndon Gazette, May 11,1685; Barillon, May 11-21,
t Kegister of the Proceedings of the States General, May 5-15, 1685
JAMKS THE SECOND. 493
couraged the hope that he would not patiently submit t() the
ascendency of France. It seemed probable that he would con-
sent to form a close alliance with the United Provinces and the
House of Austria. There was, therefore, at the Hague, an extreme
anxiety to avoid all that could give him offence. The personal
interest of William was also on this occasion identical with the
interest of his father in law.
But the case was one which required rapid and vigorous
action ; and the nature of the Batavian institutions made
such action almost impossible. The Union of Utrecht, rudely
formed, amidst the agonies of a revolution, for the purpose of
meeting immediate exigencies, had never been deliberately
revised and perfected in a time of tranquillity. Every one of
the seven commonwealths which that Union had bound together
retained almost all the rights of sovereignty, and asserted those
rights punctiliously against the central government. As the
federal authorities had not the means of exacting prompt obedi-
ence from the provincial authorities, so the provincial authorities
had not the means of exacting prompt obedience from the muni-
cipal authorities. Holland alone contained eighteen cities, each
of which was, for many purposes, an independent state, jealous
of all interference from without. If the rulers of such a city
received from the Hague an order which was unpleasing to
them, they either neglected it altogether, or executed it languidly
and tardily. In some town councils, indeed, the influence of
the Prince of Orange was all powerful. But unfortunately the
place where the British exiles had congregated, and where their
ships had been fitted out, was the rich and populous Amster-
dam ; and the magistrates of Amsterdam were the heads of the
faction hostile to the federal government and to the House of
Nassau. The naval administration of the United Provinces
was conducted by five distinct boards of Admiralty. One of
those boards sate at Amsterdam, was partly nominated by the
authorities of that city, and seems to have been entirely ani-
mated by their spirit.
All the endeavours of the federal government to effect what
James desired were frustrated by the evasions of the function-
494 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
aries of Amsterdam, and by the blunders of Colonel Bevil
Skelton, who had just arrived at the Hague as envoy from
England. Skelton had been born in Holland during the Eng-
lish troubles, and was thei-efore supposed to be peculiarly quali-
fied for his post ; * but he was, in truth, unfit for that and for
every other diplomatic situation. Excellent judges of character
pronounced him to be the most shallow, fickle, passionate, pre-
sumptuous, and garrulous of men.f He took no serious notice
of the proceedings of the refugees till three vessels which had
been equipped for the expedition to Scotland were safe out of
the Zuyder Zee, till the arms, ammunition, and provisions were
on board, and till the passengers had embarked. Then, instead
of applying, as he should have done, to the States General, who
sate close to his own door, he sent a messenger to the magis-
trates of Amsterdam, with a request that the suspected ships
might be detained. The magistrates of Amsterdam answered
that the entrance of the Zuyder Zee was out of their jurisdic-
tion, and referred him to the federal government. It was
notorious that this was a mere excuse, and that, if there had
been any real wish at the Stadthouse of Amsterdam to prevent
Argyle from sailing, no difficulties would have been made.
Skelton now addressed himself to the States General. They
showed every disposition to comply with his demand, and, as
the case was urgent, departed from the course which they ordi-
narilv observed in the transaction of business. On the same
day on which he made his application to them, an order, drawn
in exact conformity with his request, was despatched to the
Admiralty of Amsterdam. But this order, in consCv/uence of
some misinformation, did not correctly describe the situation of
the ships. They were said to be in the Texel. They were in
the Vlie. The Admiralty of Amsterdam made this error a plea
for doing nothing ; and, before the error could be rectified, the
three ships had sailed. $
* This is mentioued iiV his credentials, dated on the 16th of March, 1684-6.
+ Bonrepaux to Seignelay, February 4-14, 1686.
t Avaux Neg. m^'^ ' May 1-11, May 515, 1686 ; Sir Patrick Hume's Narrative ;
Letter from the Admiralty of Amsterdam to the States General, dated June 20,
1685 ; Memorial of Skelton, delivered to the States Geueral, May 10, 1685.
JAMES THE SECOND. 495
The last hours which Argyle passed on the coast of Holland
^ere hours of great anxiety. Near him lay a Dutch man
,)f war whose broadside would in a moment have put an end
to his expedition. Round his little fleet a boat was rowing, in
jvhich were some persons with telescopes whom he suspected
to be spies. But no effectual step was taken for the purpose of
detaining him ; and on the afternoon of the second of May he
stood out to sea before a favourable breeze.
The voyage was prosperous. On the sixth the Orkneys
were in sight. Argyle very unwisely anchored off Kirkwall,
and allowed two of his followers to go on shore there. The
Bishop ordered them to be arrested. The refugees proceeded
to hold a long and animated debate on this misadventure : for,
from the beginning to the end of their expedition, however
languid and irresolute their conduct might be, they never in
debate wanted spirit or perseverance. Some were for an attack
on Kirkwall. Some were for proceeding without delay to
Argyleshire. At last the Earl seized some gentlemen who
lived near the coast of the island, and proposed to the Bishop
an exchange of prisoners. The Bishop returned no answer ;
and the fleet, after losing three days, sailed away.
This delay was full of danger. It was s^jeedily known at
Edinburgh that the rebel squadron had touched at the Orkneys.
Troops were instantly put in motion. When the Earl reached
his own province, he found that preparations had been made to
repel him. At Dunstaffnage he sent his second son Charles on
shore to call the Campbells to arms. But Charles returned with
gloomy tidings. The herdsmen and fishermen were indeed ready
to rally round Mac Callum More ; but, of the heads of the clan,
some were in confinement, and others had fled. Those gentle-
men who remained at their homes were either well affected to
the government or afraid of moving, and refused even to see the
son of their chief. From Dunstaffnage the small armament
proceeded to Campbelltown, near the southern extremity of the
peninsula of Kintyre. Here- the Earl published a manifesto,
drawn up in Holland, under the direction of the Committee, by
James Stewart, a Scotch advocate, whose pen was, a few months
496 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
later, employed in a very different way. In this paper were
set forth, with a strength of language sometimes approaching to
scurrility, many real and some imaginary grievances. It was
hinted that the late King had died by poison. A chief object of
the expedition was declared to be the entire suppression, not
only of Popery, but of Prelacy, which was termed the most bit-
ter root and offspring of Popery ; and all good Scotchmen were
exhorted to do valiantly for the cause of their country and of
their God.
Zealous as Argyle was for what he considered as pure religion,
he did not scruple to practise one rite half Popish and half
Pagan. The mysterious cross of yew, first set on fire, and then
quenched in the blood of a goat, was sent forth to summon all
the Campbells, from sixteen to sixty. The isthmus of Tarbet
was appointed for the place of gathering. The muster, though
small indeed when compared with what it would have been if
the spirit and strength of the clan had been unbroken, was still
formidable. The whole force assembled amounted to about
eighteen hundred men. Argyle divided his mountaineers into
three regiments, and proceeded to appoint officers.
The bickerings which had begun in Holland had never been
intermitted during the whole course of the expedition ; but at
Tarbet they became more violent than ever. The Committee
wished to interfere even with the patriarchal dominion of the
Earl over the Campbells, and would not allow him to settle the
military rank of his kinsmen by his own authority. While
these disputatious meddlers tried to wrest from him his power
over the Highlands, they carried on their own correspondence
with the Lowlands, and received and sent letters which were
never communicated to the nominal General. Hume and his
confederates had reserved to themselves the superintendence of
the stores, and conducted this important part of the adminis-
tration of war with a laxity hardly to be distinguished from
dishonesty, suffered the arms to be spoiled, wasted the provisions,
and lived riotously at a time whenthey ought to have set to all
beneath them an example of abstemiousness.
The great question was whether the Highlands or the Low-
JAMES THE SECOND. 497
lands should be the seat oi war. The Earrs first object was
to establish his authority over his own domains, to drive out the
invading clans which had been poured from Perthshire into Ar-
gyleshire, and to take possession of the ancient seat of his family
at Inverary. He might then hope to have four or five thousand
claymores at his command. With such a force he would be able
to defend that wild country against the whole power of the king-
dom of Scotland, and would also have secured an excellent base
for offensive operations. This seems to have been the wisest
course open to him. Rumbold, who had been trained in an ex-
cellent military school, and wlio, as an Englishman, might be sup-
posed to be an impartial umpire between the Scottish factions, did
all in his power to strengthen the Earl's hands. But Hume and
Cochrane were utterly impracticable. Their jealousy -of Argyle
was, in truth, stronger than their wish for the success of the
expedition. They saw that, among his own mountains and
lakes, and at the head of an army chiefly composed of his own
tribe, he would be able to bear down their opposition, and to
exercise the full authority of a General. They muttered that
the only men who had the good cause at heart were the Low-
landers, and that the Campbells took up arms neither for liberty
cor for the Church of God, but for Mac Galium More alone.
Cochrane declared that he would go to Ayrshire if he
tvent by himself, and with nothing but a pitchfork in his hand.
Argyle, after long resistance, consented, against his better judg-
ttient, to divide his little array. He remained with Rumbold in
the Highlands. Cochrane and Hume were at the head of the
force which sailed to invade the Lowlands.
Ayrshire was Cochrane's object : but the coast of Ayrshire
was guarded by English frigates; and the adventurers were
under the necessity of running up the estuary of the Clyde to
Greenock, then a small fishing village consisting of a single row
of thatched hovels, now a great and flourishing port, of which the
customs amount to more than five times the whole revenue which
the Stuarts derived from the kingdom of Scotland. A party of
militia lay at Greenock : but Cochrane, who wanted provisions,
was determined to land. Hume objected. Cochrane was per-
32
498 HISTORY OF ENGLA»~«rf
emptory, and ordered an officer, named I'4|)\kiL iwe, to take
iwenty men ia a boat to the shore. But the wrangi'cg spirit
of the leaders had infected all ranks. Elphinstone aviswered
that he was bound to obey only reasonable commands, that he
considered this command as unreasonable, and, in short, th&t he
would not go. Major Fullarton, a brave man, esteemed by all
parties, but peculiarly attached to Argyle, undertook to lanvl
with only twelve men, and did so in spite of a fire from tht»
coast. A slight skirmish followed. The militia fell back.
Cochrane entered Greenock and procured a supply of meal, but
found no disposition to insurrection among the people.
In fact, the state of public feeling in Scotland was not such
as the exiles, misled by the infatuation common in all ages to
exiles, had supposed it to be. The government was, indeed,
hateful and hated. But the malecontents were divided into par-
ties which were almost as hostile to one another as to their
rulers ; nor was any of those parties eager to join the mvaders.
Many thought that the insurrection had no chance of success,
The spirit of many had been effectually broken by long and
»ruel oppression. There was, indeed, a class of enthusiasts who
were little in the habit of calculating chances, and whom oppres-
sion had not tamed but maddened. But these men saw little
difference between Argj^le and James. Their wrath had been
heated to such a tem^^erature that what every body else would
^iave called boiling zeal seemed to them Laodicean lukewarm-
iiess. The Earl's pasc life had been stained by what they re-
garded as the vilest apostasy. The very Highlanders whom he
now summoned to extirpate Prelacy he had a few years before
summoned to defend it. And were slaves who knew nothinar
and cared nothing about religion, who were ready to fight for
synodical government, for Episcopacy, for Popery, just as Mac
Galium More might be pleased to command, fit allies for the
people of God? The manifesto, indecent and intolerant as was
its tone, was, in the view of these fanatics, a cowardly and
woi'ldly performance. A settlement such as Argyle would have
made, such as was afterwards made by a mightier and happier
deliverer, seemed to them not worth a struggle. They wanted
JAMES THE SECOND. 499
not only Ireeaom of conscience for themselves, but absolute
dominion over the consciences of others ; not only the Presby-
terian doctrine, polity- and worship, but the Covenant in its
utmost rigour. Nothing would content them but that every
end for which civil society exists should be sacrificed to the as-
cendency of a theological system. One who believed no form
of church government tj be vv^rth a breach of Christian charity,
and who recommended comprehension and toleration, was in
their phrase, haltu)g between Jehovah and Baal. One who
condemned such acts as the murder of Cardinal Beatoun and
Archbishop dharpe fell into the same sin for which Saul had
been rejected from behig King over Israel. All the rules, by
which, among oivilised and Christian men, the horrors of. war
are mitigated, were abominations in the sight of the Lord.
Quarter was to be neither taken nor triven. A Malay running
a muck, a mad dog pursued by a crowd, were the models to be
imitated by warriors fighting in just self-defence. To reasons
such as guide the conduct of statesmen and generai.s the minds
of these zealots were absolutely impervious. That a man should
venture to urge such reasons was sufficient evidence that he
was not one of the faithful. It the divine blessing were with-
held, little would be effected by crafty politicians, by veteran
captains, by cases of arms from Holland, or by regiments of
unregenerate Jelts from the mountains of Lorn. If, on the
other hand, the Lord's time were indeed come, he could still,
as of old, cause '.he foolish things of the world to confound the
wise, and could save alike by many and by few. The broad-
swords of Athol and the baj^onets of Claverhouse would be put
to rout by weapons as insignificant as the sling of David or the
pitcher of Gideon.*
Cochrane, having found it impossible to raise the population
on the south of the Clyde, rejoined Argyle, who was in the
island of Bute. The Earl now again proposed to make an at-
* If any person is inclined to suspect that I have exaggerated the absurdity
and ferocity of those meu, I would ndviae him to read two books, which will con.
vinee him that I have rather softened than overcharged the portrait, the Hind
Let Loose, and Faithful Contendings Displayed.
i>OQ HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
tempt upon luverary. Again he encountered a pertinacious
opposition. Tlie seamen sided with Hume and Cochrane. The
Highlanders were absolutely at the command of their chieftain.
There was reason to fear that the two parties would come to
blows ; and the dread of such a disaster induced the Committee
to make some concession. The castle of Ealan Ghieriir, situa-
ted at the mouth of Loch Riddan, was selected to be the chief
place of arms. The military stores were disembarked there.
The squadron was moored close to the walls in a place where
it was protected by rocks and shallows such as, it was thought,
no frigate could pass. Outworks were thrown up. A battery
was planted with some small guns taken from the ships. The
command of the fort was most unwisely given to Elphinstone,
who had already proved himself much more disposed to argue
with his commanders than to fight the enemy.
And now, during a few hours, there was some show of vigour.
Rumbold took the castle of Ardkinglass. The Earl skirmished
successfully with Athol's troops, and was about to advance on
Inverary, when alarming news from the ships and factions in
the Committee forced him to turn back. The King's frigates
had come nearer to Ealan Ghierig than had been thought possi-
ble. The Lowland gentlemen positively refused to advance
further into the Highlands. Argyle hastened back to Ealan
Ghierig. There he proposed to make an attack on the frigates.
His ships, indeed, were ill fitted for such an encounter. But
they would have been supported by a flotilla of thirty largo
fishing boats, each well manned with armed Highlanders. The
Committee, however, refused to listen to this plan, and effect-
ually counteracted it by raising a mutiny among the soldiers.
All was now confusion and despondency. The provisions had
been so ill managed by the Committee that there was no longer
food for the trooi)S, The Highlanders consequently deserted
by hundreds; and the Earl, brokenhearted by his misfortunes,
yielded to the urgency of those who still pertinaciously insisted
that he should march into the Lowlands,
The little army therefore hastened to the shore of Loch Long',
passed that inlet bv nig-ht in boats, and landed in Dumbarton*
AHTA BARBARA. CAIilFOflN!.
lXJ±2JT_
JAMES THE SECOND. "501
shire. Ilitlior, on the following morning, came news that thfl
frigates had forced a passage, that all the Earl's ships had been
taken, and that Elphinstone had fled from Ealan Ghierig with-
out a blow, leaving the castle and stores to the enemy.
All that remained was to invade the Lowlands under every
disadvantage. Argyle resolved to make a bold push for Glas-
gow. But, as soon as this resolution was announced, the very
men, who had, up to that moment, been urging him to hasten
into the low country, took fright, argued, remonstrated, and
when argument and remonstrance proved vain, laid a scheme
for seiznig the boats, making their own escape, and leaving
their General and his clansmen to conquer or perish unaided.
This scheme failed ; and the poltroons who had formed it were
compelled to share with braver men the risks of the last ven-
ture.
During the march through the country which lies between
Loch Long aiul Loch Lomond, the insurgents were constantly
infested by parties of militia. Some skirmishes took place, in
which the Earl had the advantage ; but the bands which he re-
pelled, falling back before him, spread the tidings of his ap-
proach; and, soon after he had crossed the river Leven, he found
a strong body of regular and irregular troops prepared to en-
counter him.
He was for giving battle. Ayloffe was of the same opinion.
Hume, on the other hand, declared that to fioht would be mad-
ness. lie saw one regiment in scarlet. More might be behind.
To attack such a force was to rush on certain death. The best
course was to remain quiet till night, and then to give the enemy
the slip.
A sharp altercation followed, which was with difficulty qui-
eted by the mediation of Rumbold. It was now evening. The
hostile armies encamped at no great distance from each other.
The Earl ventured to propose a uight attack, and was again
overruled.
Since it was determined not to night, nothing was left but to
take the siep which Hume had recommended. There was a
chance that, by decamping secretly, and hastening all night
502 HISTORY OF ENGLANB.
across heaths and morasses, the Earl raight gain many miles
on the enemy, and might reach Glasgow without further ol>
struction. The watch fires were left burning; and the march
began. And now disaster followed disaster fast. The guides
mistook the tracls across the moors, and led the army into
boggy ground. Military order could not be preserved by un-
disciplined and disheartened soldiers under a dark sky, and
on a treacherous and uneven soil. Panic after panic spread
through the broken ranks. Every sight and sound was
thought to hidicate the approach of pursuers. Some of the
officers contributed to spread the terror which it was their
duty to calm. The army had become a mob ; and the mob
imelted fast away. Great numbers fled under cover of the
night. Rumbold and a few other brave men whom no danger
could have scared lost their way, and were unable to rejoin the
main body. When the day broke, only five hundred fugitives,
wearied and disj^irited, assembled at Kilpatrick.
All thought of prosecuting the war was at an end : and it
was plain that the chiefs of the expedition would have sufficient
difficulty in escaping with their lives. They fled in different
directions. Hume reached the Continent in safety. Cochrane
was taken and sent up to London. Argyle. hoped to find a
secure asylum under the roof of one of his old servants who
lived near Kilpatrick. But this hope was disappointed ; and
he was forced to cross the Clyde. He assumed the dress of a
peasant and pretended to be the guide of Major Fullarton, whose
courageous fidelity was proof to all danger. The friends
journeyed together through Renfrewshire as far as Inchinnan.
At that place the Black Cart and the White Cart, two streams
which now flow through prosperous towns, and turn the
wheels of many factories, but which then held their quiet course
through moors and sheepwallcs, mingle before they join the
Clyde. The only ford by which the travellers could cross was
guarded by a party of militia. Some questions were asked.
Fullarton tried to draw suspicion on himself, in order that his
companion might escape unnoticed. But the minds of the
questioners misgave them that the guide was not the rude
JAlUl.^S THE SECOND. 503
clown that he seemed. Tpoy laid hands on him. He broke
loose and sprang into the wat^'-, but was instantly chased. He
stood at bay for a short time agH.wstfive assailants. But he had
no arms except his pocket pistol?, and they were so wet, in con-
sequence of his plunge, that they would not go off. He was
struck to the ground with a broadsV'ord, and secured.
He owned himself to be the EpiI of Argyle, probably in
the hope that his great name would ei-.ite the awe and pity of
those who had seized him. Aiyi indeed tliw were much moved.
For they were plain Scotchmen of humble rank, and, though in
arms for the crown, probably cherished a p'vference for the
Calvinistic church government and worship, and had been
accustomed to reverence their captive as the headv^f an illustrious
house and as a champion of the Protestant religion. But,
though they were evidently touched, and though some, of them
even wept, they were not disposed to relinquish a large .^eward
and to incur the vengeance of an implacable government. They
therefore conveyed their prisoner to Renfrew. The man who
bore the chief part in the arrest was named Riddell. On th»s
account the whole race of Riddells was, during more than -^
century, held in abhorrence by the great tribe of Campbell
Within living memory, when a Riddell visited a fair in Argyle
shire, he found it necessary to assume a false name.
And now commenced the brightest part of Argyle's career.
His enterprise had hitherto brought on him nothing but
reproach and derision. His great error was that he did not
resolutely refuse to accept the name without the power of a
general. Had he remained quietly at his retreat in Friesland,
he would in a few years have been recalled with honour to his
country, and woidd have been conspicuous among the ornaments
and the props of constitutional monarchy. Had he conducted
his expedition according to his own views, and carried with him
Ao followers but such as were prepared implicitly to obey all his
orders, he might possibly have effected something great. For
ivhat he wanted as a captain seems to have been, not courage,
;aor activity, nor skill, but simply authority. He should have
^nown that of all wants this is the most fatal. Armies have
604: HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
triumphed under leaders wlio possessed no very eminent q«;iii
fications. But what army commanded by a debating club eva*
escaped discomfiture and disgrace ?
Tlie great calamity which had fallen on Argyle had this
advantage, that it enabled him to show, by jiroofs not to be
mistaken, what manner of man he was. From the day when
he quitted Friesland to the day when his followers separated
at Kilpatrick, he had never been a free agent. He had borne
the responsibility of a long series of measures which his
judgment disaj)proved. Now at length he stood alone.
Captivity had restored to him the noblest kind of liberty, the
liberty of gov3rning himself in all his words and actions
accordmg to his own sense of the right and of the becoming.
From that moment he became as one inspired with new
wisdom and virtue. His intellect seemed to be strengthened
and concentrated, his moral character to be at once elevated
and softened. The insolence of the conquerors spared no-
thing that could try the temper of a man proud of ancient no-
bility and of patriarchal dominion. The prisoner was di-agged
through Edinburgh in triumph. He walked on foot, barehead-
ed, up the whole length of that stately street which, overshadow-
ed by dark and gigantic piles of stone, leads from Holyrood
House to the Castle. Before hun marched the hangman, bear-
ing the ghastly instrument which was to be used at the quar-
tering block. The victorious party had not forgotten that,
thirty-five years before this time, the father of Argyle had
been at the head of the faction which put Montrose to death.
Before that event the houses of Graham and Campbell had
borne no love to each otlier; and they had ever since been at
deadly feud. Care was taken that the prisoner should pass
through the same gate and the same streets through which
Montrose had be:n led to the same doom.* When the Earl
reached the Castle his legs were put in irons, and he was in-
formed that he had but a few days to live. It had been deter*
• A few words which were in the first five editions have been omitted in thi&
place. Here and in another passage I had, as Mr. Aytoun has observed, mistaken
the City Guards, which were eounnanded by an olticer named Graham, for thf
Dragoons of Graham of Glaverhoiis(?-
JAME3 THE SECOND. 505
mined not to bring him to trial for his recent offence, but to
put him to death under the sentence pronounced against him
several years before, a sentence so flagitiously unjust that the
most servile and obdurate lawyers of that bad age could not
speak of it without shame.
But neither the ignominious procession up tlie High Street,
nor the near view of death, had power to disturb the gentle and
majestic patience of Argyle. His fortitude was tried by a still
more severe test. A paper of interrogatories was laid before
him by order of the Privy Council. He replied to those ques-
tions to which he could reply without danger to any of his
friends, and refused to say more. He was told that unless he
returned fuller answers he should be put to the torture. James,
who was doubtless sorry that he could not feast his own eyes
with the sight of Argyle in the boots, sent down to Edinburgh
positive orders that nothing should be omitted which could
wring out of the traitor information against all who had been
concerned in the treason. But menaces were vain. "With tor-
ments and deatTi in immediate prospect Mac Galium More
thought far less of himself than of his poor clansmen. " I was
busy this day," ho wrote from his cell, " treating for them, and
in some hopes. Dut this evening orders came that I must die
upon Monday or Tuesday ; and I am to be put to the torture if
I answer not all questions upon oath. Yet I hope God shall
support me."
The torture was not inflicted. Perhaps the magnanimity of
the victim had moved the conquerors to unwonted compassion.
He himself remarked that at first they had been very harsh to ■
him, but that they soon began to treat him with respect and
kindness. God, he said, had melted their hearts. It is certain
that he did not, to save himself from the utmost cruelty of his
enemies, betray any of his friends. On the last morning of his
life he wrote these wo.ds : " I have named none to their disad-
vantage. I thank God he hath supported me wonderfully ! ''
He composed his own epitaph, a short poem, full oi meaning
and spirit, simple and forcible in style, and not contemptible in
versification. In this little piece he complained that, though
506 HISTORY OF KNGLAND.
his enemies had repeatedly decreed his death, his friends naci
heen still more cruel. A comment on these expressions is to be
found in a letter which he addressed to a lady residing in Hol-
land. She had furnished him with a large sum of money for
his expedition, and he thought her entitled to a full explanation
of the causes which had led to his failure. lie acquitted his
coadjutors of treachery, but described their folly, their igno-
rance, and their factious perverseness, in terms wliich their own
testimony has since proved to have been richly deserved. He
afterwards doubted whether he had not used language too se-
vere to become a dying Christian, and, in a separate paper,
begged his friend to suppress what he had said of these men.
*' Only this I must acknowledge," he mildly added ; " they
were not governable."
Most of his few remaining hours were passed in devotion.
and in affectionate intercourse with some members of his family.
He professed iw> repentance on account of his last enterprise, but
bewailed, with great emotion, his former compliance in spiritual
things with the pleasure of the government. • He had, he said,
been justly punished. One who had so long been guilty of cow-
ardice and dissimulation was not worthy to be the instrument of
salvation to the State and Church. Yet the cause, he frequently
repeated, was the cause of God, and would assuredly triumph.
" 1 do not," he said, " take on myself to be a prophet. But I
have a strong impression on my spirit, that deliverance will come
very suddenly." It is not strange that some zealous Presby-
terians should have laid tip his Baying in their hearts, and should,
at a later period, have attributed it to divine inspiration.
So effectually had religious faith and hope, co operating with
natural courage and equanimity, composed his spirits, that, on
the very day on which he was to die, he dined with appetite,
conversed with gaiety at table, and, after his last meal, lay
down, as he was wont, to take a short slumber, in order that
his body and mind might be in full vigour when he should
mount the scaffold. At this time one of the Lords of the Coun-
cil, who had probably been bred a Presbyterian, and had been
seduced by interest to join in oppressing tho Ch'^ch of which
JAMES THE SECOND. 607
he had once been a member, came to the Castle with a message
from his brethren, and demanded admittance to the P^arl. It
was answered that the Earl was asleep. The Privy Councillor
thonght that this was a subterfuge, and insisted on entering.
The door of the cell was softly opened ; and there lay Argyle
on the bed, sleeping, in his irons, the placid sleep of infancy.
The conscience of the renegade smote him. He turned away
sick at heart, ran out of the Castle, and took refuge in the
dwelling of a lady of his family who lived hard by. There he
flung himself on a couch, and gave himself up to an agony of
remorse and shame. His kinswoman, alarmed by his looks and
groans, thought that he had been taken with sudden illness,
and begged him to drink a cup of sack. " No, no," he said ;
" that wi do me no good." She prayed him to tell her what
had disturbed him. " I have been," he said, " in Argyle's pris-
on. I have seen him within an hour of eternity, sleeping as
sweetly as ever man did. But as foi me ."
And now the Earl had risen from his bed, and Lad prepared
himself for what was yet to be endured. He was first brought
down the High Street to the Council House, where he was to
remain during the short interval which was still to elapse before
the execution. During that interval he asked for pen and ink,
and wrote to liis wife : " Dear heart, God is unchangeable : He
liath always been good and gracious to mc : and no place alters
it. Forgive me all my faults • and now comfort thyself in Him,
in whom only true comfort is to be found. The Lor-^, be with
thee, bless and comfort thee, my dearest. Adieu."
It was now time to leave the Council Hnnse. The divines
who attended the prisoner were not of his own persuasion ;
but he listened to them with civility, and exhorted them to
caution, their flocks against those doctrines which all Protestant
churches unite in condemning. He mounted the scaffold, where
the rude old guillotine of Scotland, called the Maiden, awaited
him, and addressed the people in a speech, tinctui-ed with the
peculiar phraseology of his sect, but breathing the spirit of
serene piety. His enemies, he said, he forgave, as he hoped to
be forgiven. Only a single acrimonious expression escaped
60S HISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
him. One of the episcopal clergymen who attended him went
to the edge of the scaffold, and called out in a loud voice, '• My
Lord dies a Protestant." " Yes," said the Earl, stepping for-
ward, "• and not only a Protestant, but with a heart hatred of
Popery, of Prelacy, and of all superstition." He then embraced
his friends, put into their hands some tokens of remembi'ance
for his wife and children, kneeled down, laid his head on the
block, prayed during a few minutes, and gave the signal to the
executioner. His head was fixed on the top of the Tolbooth,
where the head of Montrose had formerly decayed.*
The head of the brave and sincere, thougli not blameless
Rumbold, was already on the West Port of Edinburgh. Sur-
rounded by factious and cowardly associates, he had, through
the whole campaign, behaved himself like a soldier trained in
the school of the great Protector, had in council strenuously
-supported the authority of Argyle, and had in the field been dis-
tinguished by tranquil intrepidity. After the dispersion of the
army he was set upon b}'^ a party of militia. He defended liim-
self desperately, and would have cut his way through them, had
they not hamstringed his horse. He was brought to Edinburgli
mortally wounded. The wish of the government was that he
should be executed in P^ngland. But he was so near death,
that, if he was not hanged in Scotland, he could not be hanged
at allj and the pleasure of hanging him was one which the
conquerors could not bear to forego. It was indeed not to be
expected that Ihey would show much lenity to one who was re-
garded as the chief of the Rye House plot, and who was the
owner of the buikling from which that plot took its name : but
the insolence with which they treated the dying man seems to
our more humane age almost incredible. One of the Scotch
♦The authors from whom I have taken the history of Argj'le's expedition are
Sir Patrick Hume, who was an eyewitness of what he related, and Wodrow, who
had access to materials of the greatest value, among which were the Earl's own
papers. Wherever there is a question of veracity hetween Argyle and Hume, f
have no doubt that Argyle's narrative ought to be followed.
See also Burnet, i. 631, and the life of Bresson, published by Dr. Mac Crie.
The account of the Scotch rebellion in the Life of James the Second, is a ridicu-
lous romance, not written by the King himself, nor derived from his papers, but
comno-ed by a Jacobite who did jiot even take the trouble to look at a map ©f
the seat of war.
JAMES THE SECOND. 509
Privy Councillors told him that he was a confounded villain.
" I am at peace with God," answered liumbold, calmly ; " how
then can I be confounded ? "
He was hastily tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanced
and quartered within a few hours, near the City Cross in the
High Street. Though unable to stand without the support of
two men, he maintained his fortitude -to the last, and under the
gibbet raised his feeble voice against Popery and tyranny with
such vehemence that the officers ordered the drums to strike
up, lest the people should hear him. He was a friend, he said,
to limited monarchy. But he never would believe that Provi-
dence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and
spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be
ridden. " I desire," he cried, " to bless and magnify God's holy
name for this, that I stand here, not for any wrong that I have
done, but for adhering to his cause in an evil day. If every hair of
my head were a man, in this quarrel I would venture them all."
Both at his trial and at his execution he spoke of assassina-
tion with the abhorrence which became a good Christian and a
brave soldier. He had never, he protested, on the faith of a
dying man, harboured the thought of committing such villany.
But he frankly owned that, in conversation with his fellow con-
spirators, he had mentioned his own house as a place where
Charles and James might with advantage be attacked, and that
much had been said on the subject, though nothing had been
determined. It may at first sight seem that this acknowledg-
ment is inconsistent with his declaration that he had always
regarded assassination with horror. But the truth appears to
be that he was imposed upon by a distinction which deluded
many of his contemporaries. Nothing would have induced him
to put poison into the food of the two princes, or to poniard
.them in their sleep. But to make an unexpected onset on the
troop of Life Guards which surrounded the royal coach, to
exchange sword cuts and pistol shots, and to take the chance of
slaying or of being slain, was, in his view, a lawful military
operation. Ambuscades and surprises were among the ordinary
incidents of vv^ar. Every old soldier, Cavalier or Roundhead, had
510 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
been engaged in such eDterprises. If in the skirmish the King
should fall, he wouhJ fall by fair lighting and not by murder.
Precisely the same reasoning was employed, after the Revolu-
tion, by James himself and by some of his most devoted follow-
ers, to justify a wicked attempt on the life of William the
Third. A band of Jacobites was commissioned to attack the
Prince of Orange in his winter quarters. The meaning latent
under this specious phrase was that the Prince's throat was to
be cut as he went in his coach from Richmond to Kensinsfton.
It may seem strange that such fallacies, the dregs of the Jesuiti-
cal casuistry, should have had power to seduce men of heroic
spirit, both Whigs and Tories, into a crime on which divine and
human laws have justly set a peculiar note of infamy. But no
sophism is too gross to delude minds distempered by party
spirit.*
Argyle, who survived Rumbold a few hours, left a dying
testimony to the virtues of the gallant Englishman. " Poor
Rumbold Avas a great support to me, and a brave man, and died
Christianly." f
Ayloflfe showed as much contempt of death as either Argyle
or Rumbold : but his end did not, like theirs, edify pious minds.
Though political sympathy had drawn him towards the Puri-
tans, he had no religious sympathy with them, and was indeed
regarded by them as little better than an atheist. He belonged
to that section of the Whigs which sought for models rather
among the patriots of Greece and Rome than among the proph-
ets and judges of Israel. He was taken prisoner, and carried
* "Wodrow, III. ix. 10 ; Western Martyrology ; Burnet, i.'633 ; Fox's History,
Appendix iv. I can find no way. except that indicated in the text, of reconciling
Rumbold's denial that he had ever admitted into his mind the thought of assas-
sination witli his confession that he had himself mentioned his own house as a
convenient place for an attack on the royal brothers. The distinction which I
suppose him to have taken was certainly taken by another Rye House conspirator,
who was, like him, an old soldier of the Commonwealth, Captain W^alcot. Ou
Walcot's trial, West, the witness for the crown, said, " Captain, you did agree to
be one of those that were to fight the Guards." " What, then, was the reason,"
asked Chief Justice Peniberton, " that he would not kill the King?" He said,"
answered West, " that it was a base thing to kill a n^ked roan, and he would not
doit."
t Wodrow, lU. ix, 9.
JAMES THE SECOND. 511
to Glasgow. There he attempted to destroy himself with a
small penknife : but though he gave himself several wounds,
iioue of them proved mortal, and he had strength enough left
to bear a journey to London. He was brought before the
Privy Council, and interrogated by the King, but had too much
elevation of mind to save himself by informing against others.
A story was current among the "Whigs that the King said,
"You had better be frank with me, Mr. Ayloffe. You know
that it is in my power to pardon you." Then, it was rumoured,
the captive broke his sullen silence, and answered, " It may be
in your power ; but it is not in your nature." He was executed
under his old outlawry before the gate of the Temple, and died
with stoical composure.*
In the meantime the vengeance of the conquerors was merci-
lessly wreaked on the people of Argyleshire. Many of the
Campbells were hanged by Athol without a trial ; and he was
with difficulty restrained by the Privy Council from taking
more lives. The country to the extent of thirty miles round
Inverary was wasted. Houses were burned : the stones of
mills, were broken to pieces : fruit trees were cut down, and the
very roots seared with fire. The nets and fishing boats, the
sole means by which many inhabitants of the coast subsisted,
were destroyed. More than three hundred rebels and malecon-
tents were ti'an sported to the colonies. Many of them were'
also sentenced to mutilation. On a single day the hangman of
Edinburgh cut off the ears of thirty-five prisoners. Several
women were sent across the Atlantic after being first branded
in the cheek with a hot iron. It was even in contemplation to
obtain an act of Parliament proscribing the name of Campbell,
as the name of Macgregor had been proscribed eighty years
before. t
Argyle's expedition appears to have produced little sensa-
tion in the south of the island. The tidings of his landing
reached London just before the English Parliament met. The
» Wade's narrative, Harl. MS. 6845 ; Burnet, i. 634 ; Van Citters's Despatch
of N^^if' 1685 ; Luttrell's Diary of the same datei
t Wodrow, III. ix. 4, and til. 5x. 10. Wodrow gives from the Acts of Council
the names of all the prisoners who were transported, mutilated or branded.
53 2 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
KiDg mentioned the news from the throne ; and the Houses
assm*ed him that they would stand by him against every enemy.
Nothing more was required of them. Over Scotland they had
no authority ; and a war of which the theatre was so distant,
and of which the event might, almost from the first, be easily
foreseen, excited only a languid interest in London.
But, a week before the final dispersion of Argyle's army,
England was agitated by the news that a more formidable
invader had landed on her own shores. It had been agreed
among the refugees that Monmouth should sail from Ilolland
six days after the departure of the Scots. He had deferred
his expedition a short time, probably in the hope that most of
the troops in the south of the island would be moved to the
north as soon as war broke out in the Highlands, and that he
should find no force ready to oppose him. When at length he
was desirous to proceed, the wind had become adverse i
violent.
While his small fleet lay tossing in the Texel, a contest was
going on among the Dutch authorities. The States General
and the Prince of Orange were on one side, the Town Council
and Admiralty of Amsterdam on the other.
Skelton had delivered to the States General a list of the
refugees whose residence in the United Provinces caused unea-
siness to his master. The States General, anxious to grant
every reasonable request which James could make, sent copies
of the list to the provincial authorities. The provincial au-
thorities sent copies to the municipal authorities. The magis-
trates of all the towns were directed to take such measures as
might prevent the proscribed Whigs from molesting the English
government. In general those directions were obeyed. At
Rotterdam in particular, where the influence of William was
all powerful, such activity was shown as called forth warm ac-
knowledgments from James. But Amsterdam was the chief
seat of the emigrants ; and the governing body of Amsterdam
would see nothing, hear nothing, know of nothing. The High
Bailiff of the city, who was himself in daily communication with
Ferguson, reported to the Hague that he did not know where
JAMES THE SECOND. 513
to find a single one of the refugees ; and with this excuse the
federal government was forced to be content. The truth was
that the lilnglish exiles were us well known at Amsterdam,
and as mach stared at in the streets, as if they hud beej;*
nese.
*
Chi
A few days later, Skelton received orders from his Court
to request that, in consequence of the dangers which threatened
his master's throne, the three Scotch regiments in the ser-
vice of the United Provinces might be sent to Great Britain
without delay. He applied to the Prince of Orange ; and
the prince undertook to manage the matter, but predicted that
Amsterdam would raise some difficulty. The prediction
proved correct. The deputies of Amsterdam refused to con-
sent, and succeeded in causing some delay. But the question
was not one of those on which, by the constitution of therepvib-
lic, a single city could prevent the wish of the majority frorr.
being carried into effect. The influence of William prev.-^dled;
and the troops were embarked with great expedition.!
Skelton was at the same time exerting himself, not indeed
very judiciously or temperately, to stop the ships which the
English refugees had fitted out. He expostulated in warm
tei'ms with the Admiralty of Amsterdam. The negligence of
that board, he said, had already enabled one band of rebels to
invade Britain. For a second error of the same kind there
* Skelton's letter is dated the 7-17th of May 1C8G. It will be found, together
with a letter of the Si-hout oi- High Bailiff of Amsterdam, in a little volume pub-
lished a few months later, and entitled, " liistoire des Evenemens Tragiques
d'Angleterre." The documents inserted in that \york are, as far as I have exam-
ined them, given exactly from the Dutch archives, except that Skelton's French,
wliich was not the purest, is slightly corrected. See also Grey's Narrative.
<;joodei)ough, on hi.s examination after the battle of Sedgemoor, said, "The
iScnout of Amsterdam was a particular friend to this last design." Lansdowne
MS. 1152.
It is not worth while to refute those writers who represent the Prince of
Orange as an accomplice in Monmouth's enterprise. The circumstance on which
they chiefly rely is that the authorities of Amsterdam took no effectual steps for
preventing tho expedition from sailing. This circumstance is in truth the strong-
est proof that the expedition was not favoured by William. No person, not pro-
foundly ignorant of the institutions and politics of Holland, would hold theStad-
tholder answerable for the proceedings of the heads of the Loevestein party.
t Avnnv Ncg. .Tune 7-17. S-ls, U--24, 1G85 ; Letter -f the Prmcc of I )ra']ge t«
Lord Rochester, June 9, 1685.
33
514 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
could be no excuse. He peremptorily demanded that a large
vessel, named the Helderenbergh, might be detained. It \va»
pretended that this vessel was bound for the Canaries. But,
in truth, she had been freighted by Monmouth, carried twenty<
six guns, and was loaded with arms and ammunition. The
Admiralty of Amsterdam replied that the liberty of trade and nav-
igation was not io be restrained for light reasons, and that the
Helderenbergh could not be stopped without an order from the
States General, Skelton, whose uniform practice seems to have
been to begin at the wrong epd, now had recourse to the States
General. The States General gave the necessary orders. Then
the Admiralty of Amsterdam pretended that there was not a
sufficient naval force in the Texel to seize so large a ship as the
Helderenbergh, and suffered Monmouth to sail unmolested.*
The weather was bad : the voyage was long; and several
English men of war were cruising in the channel. But Mon-
mouth escaped both the sea and the enemy. As he passed by
the cliffs of Dorsetshire, it was thought desirable to send a boat
to the beach with one of the refugees named Thomas Dare.
This man, though of low mind and manners, had great influence
at Taunton. He was directed to hasten thither across the coun-
try, and to apprise his friends that Monmouth would soon be on
English ground. t
On the morning of the eleventh of June the Helderenbergh,
accompmied by two smaller vessels, appeared off the port of
Lyme. That town is a small knot of steep and narrow alleys,
lying on a coast wild, rocky, and beaten by a stormy sea. The
place was then chiefly remarkable for a pier which, in the days
of the Plantagenets, had been constructed of stones, unhewn
and uncemented. This ancient work, known by the name of
the Cob, enclosed the only haven where, in a space of many
miles, the fishermen could take refuge from the tempests of the
Channel.
» Van Citters, June 9-19, June 12-22, 1085. The correspondence of .Skelton
with the States General and with the Admiralty of Amsterdam is in the ar-,hive»
at the Flague. Some pieces will he found in the Evfenemens Tragiques dV I'gle
erre. See also Burnet, i. fi^O.
t Wade's Confession in the Hardwicke Papers ; Harl. MS. 6845.
JAMES THE SECOND.
The appearance of the three ships, i'oreign built a;:d v.
out colours, perplexed the inhabitants of Lyme ; and tiu
easiness increased when it was found that th.' Cuaouii
officers, who had gone on board according to usage, did i
turn. The town's 2>eople repaired to the cliffs, und g.izcd <
and anxiously, but could find no solution of the niystf:\.
length seven boats put off from the largest of the strange ve .-v
and rowed to the shore. From these boats landed about eighi_\
men, well armed and appointed. Among them were Monmouth,
Grey, Fletcher, Ferguson, Wade, and Anthony Buyse, an officer
who had been in the service of the Elector of Brandenburg.*
Monmouth commanded silence, kneeled down on the shore,
thanked God for having preserved the friends of liberty and
pure religion from the perils of the sea, and implored the divine
blessing on what was yet to be done by land. Pie then drew
his sword, and led his men over the cliffs into the town.
As soon as it was known under what leader and for what
purpose the expedition came, the enthusiasm of the populace
burst through all restraints. The little town was in an uproar
with men running to and fro, and shouting " A Monmouth ! a
Monmouth! the Protestant religion! " Meanwhile the ensign
of the adventurers, a blue flag, was set up in the marketplace.
The military stores were deposited in the town hall ; and a
Declaration setting forth the objects of the expedition was read
from the Cross.f
This Declaration, the masterpiece of Ferguson's genius, was
not a grave manifesto such as ought to be put forth by a leader
drawing the sword for a great public cause, but a libel of the
lowest class, both in sentiment and language. $ It contained
undoubtedly many just charges against the government. But
these charges were set forth in the prolix and inflated style of a
* See Buyse's evidence against Monmouth and Fletclier in tlie Collection of
State Trials.
t Journals of the House of Commons, June 13, 1685 ; Hail. MS. 6845 ; Lans-
downe MS. 1152.
t Burnet, i. 641 ; Goodenough's confession in the Lansdowne MS. 1152. Copies
of the Declaration, as originally printed, are very rare ; but there is one in the
British Museum.
516 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
bad i^amphlet ; and the paper contained other charges of •which
the whole disgrace falls on those who made them. The Duke
of York, it was positivel_y affirmed, had burned down London,
had strangled Godfrey, had cut the throat of Essex, and had
poisoned the late King. On account of those villanous and
annatural crimes, but chiefly of that execrable fact, the late
horrible and barbarous parricide, — such was the copiousness
and such the felicity of Ferguson's diction, — James was declared
a mortal and bloody enemy' a tyrant, a murderer, and an usurper.
No treaty should be made with him. The sword should not be
sheathed till he had been brought to condign punishment as a
traitor. The government should be settled on principles favour-
able to liberty. All Protestant sects should be tolerated. The
forfeited charters should be restored. Parliament should be
held annually, and should no longer be prorogued or dissolved
by royal caprice. The only standing force should be the militia :
the militia should be commanded by the Sheriffs ; and tb.e
Sheriffs should be chosen by the freeholders Finally Mon-
mouth declared that he could prove himself to have been born
in !;i\v;'ui wedlock, and to be, liy right of blood. King of Eng-
land, l/ut that, for the present, he waived his claims, that he
would leave them to the indgmcat of a free Parliament, and
that, in the meantime, he desired to be considered only as the
Captain General of the English Protestants, who were hi arms
against tyranny and Popery.
Disgraceful as this manifesto was to those who put it forth,
it was not unskilfully framed for the purpose of stimulating the
passions of the vulgar. In the West the effect was great. The
gentry and clergy of that part of England were indeed, with
few ex^-i^ptions, Tories. But the yeomen, the traders of the
towns, tlie peasants, and the artisans were generally animated
by the old Roundhead spirit. Many of them were Dissenters,
and had been goaded by petty persecution into a temper fit for
desperate enterprise. The great mass of the population ab-
horred Popery and adored Monmouth. He was no stranger to
them His progress through Somersetshire and Devonshire in
the summer of 1680 was still fresh in the memory of all men.
JAMES THE SECOND. 51?
He was on that occasion sumptuously entertained by Thoma?
Thynne ,at Longleat Hall, then, and perhaps still, the most
magnificent country house in England. From Longleat to
Exeter the hedges were lined with shouting spectators. The
roads were strewn with boughs and flowers. The multitude,
in their eagerness to see and touch their favoui'ite, broke down
the palings of parks, and besieged the mansions where he was
feasted. When he reached Chard his escort consisted of five
thousand horsemen. At Exete.r all Devonshire had been gath-
ered together to welcome him. One striking part of the show
was a company of nine hundred young men who, clad in a white
uniform, marched before him into the city.* The turn of for-
tune which had alienated the gentry from his cause had produced
no effect on the common people. To them he was still the
good Duke, the Protestant Duke, the rightful heir whom a vile
conspiracy kept out of his own. They came to his standard in
crowds. All the clerks whom he could employ were too few
to take down the names of the recruits. Before he had been
twenty-four hours on English ground he was at the head of
fifteen hundred men. Dare arrived from Taunton with forty
horsemen of no very martial appearance, and brought encourag-
ing intelligence as to the state of public feeling in Somer
setshire. As yet all seemed to ])i-omise well.t
But a force was collecting ;it Bridport to oppose the insur-
gents. On the thirteenth of June the red regiment of Dorset-
shire militia came pouring into that town. The Somersetshire,
or yellow regiment, of which Sir William Portman, a Tory
gentleman of great note, was Colonel, was expected to arrive on
the following day-t The Duke determined to strike an imme-
diate blow. A detachment of his troops v/as preparing to march
to Bridport when a disastrous event threw the whole camp into
confusion.
Fletcher of Saltoun had been appointed to command the
* Historical Account of the Life and luagnanimous Actions of the most illus-
trious Protestant Prince James, Duke of r»Ionmoutli, 1G83.
t "Watle's Confession, Hard\vicl;e Papers ; Axo Papers ; Havl. MS. 6845.
i Harl. MS. C815.
518 HISTORY OF ENGI,AND.
cavalry under Grey. Fletcher was ill mounted ; and indeed
there were few chargers in the camp which had not been taken
from the plough. When he was ordered to Bridport, he
thought that the' exigency of the case warranted him in bor-
rowing, without asking permission, a fine horse belonging to
Dare. Dare resented this liberty, and assailed F'letcher with
gross abuse. Fletcher kept his temper better than any one
who knew him expected. At last Dare, presuming on the pa-
tience with which his insolence had been endured, ventured to
shake a switch at the high born and high spirited Scot.
Fletcher's blood boiled. He drew a pistol and shot Dare dead.
Such sudden and violent revenge would not have been thought
strange in Scotland, where the law had always been weak,
where he who did not right himself by the strong hand was not
likely to be righted at all, and where, consequently, human life
was held almost as cheap as in the worst governed provinces
of Italy. But the people of the southern part of the island
were not accustomed to see deadly weapons used and blood
spilled on account of a rude word or gesture, except in duel
between gentlemen with equal arms. There was a general cry
for vengeance on the foreigner who had murdered an English-
man. Monmouth could not resist the clamour. Fletcher, who,
when his first burst of rage had spent itself, was overwhelmed
with remorse and sorrow, took refuge on boai-d of the Helder-
enbergh, escaped to the Continent, and repaired to Hungary,
where he fought bravely against the common enemy of Christ-
endom.*
Situated as the insurgents were, the loss of a nian of parts
and energy was not easily to be repaired. Early on the morn-
ing of the following day, the fourteenth of .June, Grey, accom-
panied by Wade, marched with about five hundred men to
attack Bridport. A confused and indecisive action took place,
such as was to be expected when two bands of ploughmen,
officered by country gentlemen and barristers, were opposed to
each other. For a time Monmouth's men drove the militia be-
* Buyse'8 evidence in the Collection of State Trials ; Burnet, i. 642 ; Fergu-
son's MS. quoted by Eachard.
JAMES THE SECOND. 510
fore them. Then the militia made a stand, and Monmouth's
men retreated in some confusion. Grey and his cavalry never
stopped till they were safe at Lyme again : but Wade rallied
tlie infantry and brought them off in good order.*
There was a violent outcry against Grey ; and some of the
adventurers pressed Monmouth to take a severe course. Mon-
mouth, however, would not listen to this advice. His lenity has
been attributed by some writers to his good nature, which un-
doubtedly often amounted to weakness. Others have supposed
that he was unwilling to deal liarshly with the only peer
who served in his army. It is probable, however, that the
Duke, who, though not a general of the highest order, under-
stood war very much better than the preachers and lawyers who
were always obtruding their advice on him, made allowances
which people altogether inexpert in military affairs never
thought of making. In justice to a man who has had few de-
fenders, it must be observed that the task, which, throughout
this campaign, was assigned to Grey, was one which, if he had
been the boldest and most skilful of soldiers, he would scarcely
have performed in such a manner as to gain credit. He was
at the head of the cavalry. It is notorious that a horse soldier
requires a longer training than a foot soldier, and that the war
horse requires a longer training than his rider. Something may
be done with a raw infantry which has enthusiasm and animal
courage : but nothing can be more helpless than a raw cavalry,
consisting of yeomen and tradesmen mounted on cart horses
and post horses ; and such was the cavalry which Grey com-
manded. The wonder is, not that his men did not stand fire
with resolution, not that they did not use their weapons with
vigour, but that they were able to keep their seats.
Still recruits came in by hundreds. Arming and drilling
went on all day. Meantime the news of the insurrection had
spread fast and wide. On the evening on which the Duke
landed, Gregory Alford, Mayor of Lyme, a zealous Tory, and a
bitter persecutor of Nonconformists, sent off his servants to give
the alarm to the gentry of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire, and
* London Gazette, June 18, 1685 ; Wade's Confession, Hardwicke Papers.
520 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
himself took horse foi' the West. Late at night he stopped at
HonitoD, uud theuce despatched a few hurried lines to London
with the ill tidings.* He then puslied on to Exeter, where he
found Christopher Monk, Duke of Albemarle. This noblemau,
the son and heir of George Monk, the restorer of the Stuarts,
was Lord Lieutenant of Devonshire, and was then holding a
muster of militia. Four thousand men of the trainbands were
actually assembled under his command. He seems to have
thought that, with this force, he should be able at once to crush
the rebellion. He therefore marched towards Lyme.
But when, on the afternoon of Monday the fifteenth of June,
he reached Axminster, he found the insurgents drawn up there
to encounter him. They presented a resolute front. Four
field pieces were pointed against the royal troops. The thick
hedges, vidiich on each side overhung the narrow lanes, v/ere
lined with musketeers. Albemarle, however was less alarmed
by the preparations of the enemy than by the spirit whicli ap-
peared in his own ranks. Such was Monmouth's popularity
among the common people of Devonshire that, if once the
trainbands had cauo-ht si^ht of his well known face and fii^ure,
they would have probably gone over to him in a body.
Albemarle, therefore, though he had a great superiority of
force, thought it advisable to retreat. The retreat soon became
a rout. The whole country was strewn with the arms and uni-
forms whicli the fucritives had thrown awav ; and, had Mon-
mouth urged the pursuit with vigour, he would probably have
taken Exeter without a blow. But he was satisfied with the
advantage which he had gained, and thought it desirable that his
recruits should be better trained before they were employed in
any hazardous service. He therefore marched towards Taunton,
where he arrived on the eighteenth of June, exactly a week
after his landing. f
The Court and the Parliament had been greatly moved by
* Lords' Journals, June 13, 1685.
t Wade's Confession ; Ferguson MS. ; Axe Papers, HarL MS. 6845 ; Oldmixon,
701, 702. Oldmixon, who was then a boy, lived very near the scene of these
events.
JAMES THE SECOND. 521
the news from the West. At five in the morning of Saturday
the thirteenth of June, the King had received the letter wliich
the Mayor of Lyme had despatched from Honiton. The Privv
Council was instantly called together. Orders were given that
the strength of every company of infantry and of every troop
of cavalry should be increased. Commissions were issued for
the levying of new regiments. Alford's communication was
laid before the Lords; and its substance was communicated
to the Commons by a message. The Commons examined the
couriers who IukI arrived from the West, and instantly ordered
a bill to be brought m for attani ting Monmouth of high treason.
Addresses were voted assuring tlie King that both his peers
and his people were determihed to stand by him with life and for-
tune against all his enemies. At the next meeting of the Houses
tliey ordered the Declaration of the rebels to be burned by the
hangman, and passed the bill of attainder through all its stages.
That b-.!l received the royal assent on the same day; and a re-
ward of five thousand pounds was promised for the apprehension
Oi Monmouth.*
The fact that Monmouth was m arms against the government
v/as so notorious that the bill of attainder became a law with
only a faint show of opposition from one or two peers, and has
seldom been severely censured even by Whig historians. Yet,
when we consider how important it is that legislative and judi-
cial functions should be kept distinct, how important it is that
common fame, liowever strong and- general, should not be re-
ceived as a legal proof of guilt, how important it is to main-
tain the rule that no man shall be condemned to death without
an opportunity of defending himself, and how easily and speedily
breaches in great principles, when once made, are widened, we
shall probably be disposed to think that the course taken by the
Parliament was open to some objection. Neither House had
before it anything which even so corrupt a judge as Jeffreys
could have directed a jurj' to consider as proof of Monmouth's
crime. The messengers examined by the Commons were not on
* London Gazette, June IS, 168j ; Lords' and Conimous' Jcurnals, June 13 and
15 ; Dutch Despatcli, 16-26,
522 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
oath, and might therefore have related mere fictions without
incurring the penalties of perjury. The Lords, who might have
administered an oath, appeared not to have examined any wit-
ness, and to have had no evidence before them except the letter
of the ^Rlayor of Lyme, which, in the ' eye of the law, was no
evidence at all. Extreme danger, it is trvie, justifies extreme
remedies. But the Act of Attainder was a remedy which could
not operate till all danger was over, and wliich would become
superfluous at the very moment at which it ceased to be null.
While Monmouth was in arms it was impossible f o execute him.
If he should be vanquished and taken, there would be no hazard
and no difficulty in trying him. It was afterwards remembered
as a curious circumstance that, among zealous Tories who went
up with the bill from the House of Commons to the bar of the
Lords, was Sir John Fenwick, member for Northumberland.
This gentleman, a few years later, h;;(l occasion to reconsider
the w'lole subject, and then came to the conclusion that acts of
attainder are altogether unjustifiable. *
The Parliament gave other proofs of loyalty in this hour of
peril. The Commons authorised the King to raise an extraor-
dinary sum of four hundred thousand pounds for his present
necessities, and, that he might have no difficulty in finding the
money, proceeded to devise new imposts. Tlie scheme of tax-
ing houses lately built in the capital was revived and strenuous-
ly supported by the country gentlemen. It was resolved not
only that such houses should be taxed, but that a bill should
be brought in prohibiting the laying of any new foundations
within the bills of mortality. The resolution, however, was not
carried into effect. Powerful men who had land in thesuburl s.
and who hoped to see new streets and squares rise on their es-
tates, exerted all their influence against the project. It was
found that to adjust the details would be a work of time ; and
the King's wants were so pressing that he thought it necessary
to quicken the movements of the House by a gentle exhortation
* Oldinixon is wrong in naying that Fenwick carried up tliebill. It was carried
np, as appears from tiie Journals, by Loid Ancram. See Delamere's Observa-
Uons ou the Attainder of the Late Duke of Monmouth.
JAMES THE SECOND. 525
to speed. The plan of taxmg buildings was therefore relin-
quished ; and new duties were imposed for a term of five years
on foreign silks, linens, and spirits.*
• The Toriea of the Lower House proceeded to introduce
what they called a bill for the preservation of the King's per-
son and government. They proposed that it should be high
treason to say that Monmouth was legitimate, to utter any
words tending to bring the person or government of the sover
eign into hatred or contempt, or to make any motion in Parlia-
ment for changing the order of succession. Some of tlicse
provisions excited general disgust and alarm. The Whigs, few
and weak as they were, attempted to rally, and found them-
selves reinforced by a considerable number of moderate and
sensible Cavaliers. Words, it was said, may easily be misun-
derstood by a dull man. They may be easily misconstrued by
a knave. What was spoken metaphorically may be apprehended
literally. What was spoken ludicrously may be apprehended
seriously. A particle, a tense, a mood, an emphasis, may
make the whole difference between guilt and innocence. Tlie
Saviour of mankind himself, in whose blameless life malice
could find no acts to impeach, had been called in question
for words spoken. False witnesses had suppressed a syllable
ivhich would have made it clear that those words were figurative,
and had thus furnished the Sanhedrim with a pretext under v/liieh
the foule&t of all judicial murders had been perpetrated. With
such an example on record, who could affirm that, if mere talk
were made a substantive treason, the most loyal subject would
be safe ? These arguments produced so great an effect that in
the committee amendments were introduced which greatly miti-
gated the severity of the bill. But the clause which made it
high treason in a member of Parliament to propose the exclu-
sion of a prince of the blood seems to have raised no debate,
and was retained. That clause was indeed altogether unimpor-
tant, excent .1.3 a proof of the ignorance and inexperience of
the hotbeaced Koyalists wno thronged the House of Commons,
ilad they learned the first rudiments of legislation, they would
• Commous' JorrriLls of June 17, 18, and 19, 1685 ; Reresby's Memoirs.
524 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
have known that the enactment to which they attached so much
value would be superfluous while the Parliament was disposed
to maintain the order of succession, and would be repealed as
soon as there was a Parliament bent on changing the order of
succession.*
The bill, as amended, was passed and carried up to the
Lords, but did not become law. The King had obtained from
the Parliament all the pecuniary assistance that he could e>xpect ;
and he conceived that, while rebellion was actually rarjin"-, the
loyal nobility and gentry would be of more use in their counties
than at Westminster. He therefore hurried their deliberations
to a close, and, on the second of July, dismissed them. On
the same day the royal assqnt was given to a law reviving that
censorshij) of the pr'^b? which had terminated in 1G79. This
object was affected by a few words at the end of a miscellaneous
statute which continued several expiring acts. The courtiers
did not think that tbey had gained a triumph. The Whigs did not
utter a murmur. Neither in the Lords nor in the Commons
was tliere any division, or even, as far as can now l)e learned,
any debate on a question which would, in our age, convulse the
whole frame of society. In truth, the change was slight and
almost imperceptible ; for, since the detection of the Rye House
plot, the liberty of unlicensed printing had existed only in name.
During many months scarcely one Whig pamphlet had been
published except by stealth ; and by stealth such pamphlets
might be published still. f
The Houses then rose. They were not prorogued, but only
adjourned, in order that, when they should reassemble, they
might take up their business in the exact state in wliich they
had left it.|
Wliile the Parliament was devising sharp laws against Mon-
mouth and his partisans, he found at Taunton a reception which
* Commons' Journals, June 10, 29, 1G85 ; I^ord Lonsdale's Memoirs, 8, 9 ; Bur-
net, i. 639. Tlie bill, as amentled by the committee, will be found in Mr. rox's
historical work. Appendix iii. IE Burnet's account be correct, the offences
whi.A, by the amended bill, were made punishable only with civil incapacities,
were, by the original bill, made capital.
t 1 Jac.n. C.7 ; Lords' Journals, July 2, 1C85.
X Lords' and Commons' Journals, July 2, 1S85.
JAMES THK SECOND. 525
mignt well encourage hira to hope that his enterprise would
have a prosperous issue. Tiuuitou, like most other towns in the
south of England, was, in that age, more important than -it pres-
ent. Those towns have not indeed declnied. On the contra-
ry, they are, with very few exceptions, larger and richer, better
built and better peopled, than in the seventeenth century. But,
though they have positively advanced, they have relatively gone
back. They have been far outstripped in wealth and popula-
tion by the great manufacturing and commercial cities of the
north, cities which, ia the time of the Stuarts, were but begin-
ning to be known as seats of industry. When Monmouth
marched into Taunton it was an eminently prosperous place;
Its markets were plentifully supplied. It was a celebrated seat
of the woollen manufacture. The people boasted that they
lived in a land flowing with milk and honey. Nor was this Ian*
guage held only by partial natives; for every stranger who
climbed the graceful tower of St. Mary Magdalene owned that
he saw beneath him the most fertile of English valleys. It was
a country rich with orchards and green pastures, among which
were scattered, in gay abundance, manor houses, cottages, and
villago spires. The townsmen had long leaned towards Pres-
byterian divinity and Whig politics. In the g^'<3at civil war
Taunton had, through all vicissitudes, adhered to the Parlia-
ment, had been twice closely besieged by Goring, and had been
twice defended with heroic valour by Robert Blake, afterwards
the renowned Admiral of the Commonwealth. Wliole streets
had b'jen burned down by the mortars and gi-enades of the Cav-
aliers. -Food had been so scai'ce that the I'osolute governor had
announced his intention of putting the garrison on rations of
horse flesh. But the spirit of the town had never been subdued
either by fire or by hunger.*
The Restoration had produced no efiect on the temper of
the Taunton men. They had still continued to celebrate the
anniversary of the happy day on which the siege laid to their
town by the royal army had been raised ; and their stubborn
attachment to the old cause had excited so much fear and re-
* Savage's ettition ^< Toulmiu's History of Tauiiton.
526 HISTORY OF ENGLA.ND.
sentment at Whitehall that, by a royal order, their moat had
beeu filled up, and their wall demolished to the fouudation.*
The puritanical spirit had beeu kept up to the height among
them by the precepts and example of one of the most celebrated
of the dissenting clergy, Joseph Alleine. Alleine was the au-
thor of a tract, entitled, An Alarm to the Unconverted, which
is still popular both in England and in America. From the
gaol to which he was consigned by the victorious Cavaliers, lie
addressed to his loving friends at Taunton many epistles breath-
ing the spirit of a truly heroic piety. His frame soon sank un-
der the effects of study, toil, and persecution ; but his memory
was long cherished with exceeding love and reverence by those
whom he had exhorted and catechised. f
The children of the men who, forty years before, had manned
the ramparts of Taunton against the Royalists, now welcomed
Monmouth with transports of joy and affection. Every door
and window was adorned with wreaths of flowers. No man
appeared in the streets without wearing in his hat a green bough,
"the badge of the popular cause. Damsels of the best families
in the town wove colours for the insurgents. One flag in par-
ticular was embroidered gorgeously with emblems of royal dig-
nity, and was offered to Monmouth by a train of young gii'ls.
He received the gift with the winning courtesy which distin-
guished him. The lady who headed the procession presented
him also with a small Bible of great price. He took it with a
show of reverence. '' I come," he said, " to defend the truths
contained in this book, and to seal them, if it must be so, with
my blood.'" t
But, while Monmouth enjoyed the applause of the multitude,
he could not but perceive, with concern and apprehension, that
the higher classes were, with scarcely an exception, hostile
to his undertaking, and that no ' rising had taken place except
in the counties where he had himself appeared. He had
been assured by agents, who professed to have derived their
* Sprat's true Account ; Toulmin's History of Taunton.
t Life and Death of Josenli Alleine, 1372 ; Nonconformists' Memorial.
t Harl. MS. T006 ; Oldmixon, 702 : Eachard, iii. 763.
JAMES THE SECOND. 527
information from Wildmun, that the whole Wiiig aristocracy-
was eager to take arms. Nevertiieless more tlian a week had
now elapsed since the bhie standard had been set up at Lyme.
Day labourers, small farmers, shopkeepers, apprentices, dissent-
ing preachers, had flocked to the rebel camp : but not a single
peer, baronet, or knight, not a sh)gle member of the House of
Commons, and scarcely any esquire of sufficient note to have
ever been in the commission of the peace, liad joined the invaders.
Ferguson, who, ever since the death of Charles, had been
Monmouth's evil angel, had a suggestion ready. The Duke
had put himself into a false position by declining the royal title.
Had he declared himself sovereign of England, his cause would
have worn a show of legality. At present it was impossible to
reconcile his Declaration with the principles of the constitution.
It was clear that either Monmouth or his uncle was rightful
King. Monmouth did not venluie to pronounce himself the
rightful King, and yet denied that his uncle was so. Those
who fought for -James fought for the ouh person who ventured
to claim the throne, and were therefore clearly in thei)' duty,
according to the laws of the realm. Those who fought for
Monmouth fought for some unknown polity, which was to be
set up by a convention not yet in existence. None could
wonder that men of high raid< and ample fortune stood aloof
from an enter|)rise which threatened with destruction that
system in the permanence of which they were deeply interested.
If the Duke would assert his legitimacy and assume the crown,
he would at once remove this ol)jection. The quesiion would
cease to be a cpiestion l)etween the old constitution and a new
constitution. It would be merely a question of hereditary right
between two prhices.
On such grounds as these Ferguson, almost immediately
after the landing, had earnestly pressed the Duke to proclaim
himself King ; and Grey had seconded Ferguson. Monmouth
had been very willing to take this advice ; but Wade and other
republicans had been refractory ; and their chief, with his usual
pliability, had yielded to their arguments. At Taunton the
subject was revived. Monmouth talked in private with the
528 HISTOKY OF KNGLAND.
dissentients, assured them that he s;iw no other way of obtaining
^he support of any portion of Vae aristocracy, and succeeded in
oxtortinu their rehictant consent. On the morninij of the
wentieth of Juno he was proclaimed in the market phic<; of
Taunton. His followers repeated liis new title with affectionate
delight. But, as some confusion might have arisen if he had
been called King James the Second, they commonly used the
strange appellation of King Monmouth ; and by this name their
unliappy favorite was often mentioned in the western counties,
within the memory of persons still living.*
Within twenty-four hours after he had assumed the regal
title, lie put forth several proclamations headed with his sign
niauuel. -By one of these he set a price on the head of his rival.
Another declared the Parliament then sittinor at Westminster an
unlawful assemblage, and commanded the members to disperse.
A third forbade the people to" pay taxes to the usurper. A
fourth pi'onounced Albei'marle a traitor.t
Albermarle transmitted these proclamations to London
merely as specimens of folly and impertinence. They pro-
duced no effect, except wonder and contempt ; nor had Mon-
mouth any reason to think that the assumption of royalty had
improved his position. Only a week liad elapsed since he had
solemnly bound himself not to take the crown till a free Par-
liament should have acknowledged his rights. By breaking
that engagment he had incurred the imputation of levity, if
not of perfidy. The class which he had hoped to concdiate
still stood aloof. The reasons which prevented the great Whig
lords and gentlemen from recognizing him as their King were
at least as strong as those wdiich had prevented them from
rallying around him as their Captain General. They disliked
indeed the person, the religion, and the politics of James. Buf
♦ Wade's ronrfRsicti ; Goodeiiough's Confession, Ilarl. MS. 1152; Olcimixon,
702. Ferguson's denial io quite undeserving of credit. A copy of the procla.
matiou is tu tlio Har. MS 700G .
y Copies ol thf last three proclamations arc in the British museum ; Harl.
MS. 7006. 'ITie first I have never seen ; but it is mentioned by "Wade
JAMES THE SECOND. 529
fMmes was no longer young. His eldest daughter was justly
popular. She was attached to the reformed faith. She was
married to a prince who was the hereditary chief of the Pro-
testants of the Continent, to a prince who had been bred
in a republic, and whose sentiments were supposed to
be such as became a constitutional King. Was it wise
to incur the horrors of civil war, for the mere chance
of being able to effect immediately what nature would,
without bloodshed, without any violation of law, effect, in all
probability, before many years should have expired ? Perhaps
there might be reasons for pulling down James. But what rea-
son could be given for setting up Monmouth ? To exclude a
prince fiom the throne on account of unfitness was a course
agreeable to Whig principles. But on no principle could it be
proper to exclude rightful heirs, who were admitted to be, not
only blameless, but eminently qualified for the highest public
trust. That Monmouth was legitimate, nay, that he thought
himself legitimate, intelligent men could not believe. He was
therefore not merely an usurper, but an usurper of the worst
sort, an impostor. If he made out any semblance of a case, he
could do so only by means of forgery and perjury. All honest
and sensible persons were unwilling to see a fraud which, if
practised to obtain an estate, would have been punished with
the scourge and the pillory, rewarded with the English crown.
To the old nobility of the realm it seemed insupportable that the
bastard of Lucy Walters should be set up high above the law-
ful descendants of the Fitzalans and De Veres. Those who
were capable of looking forward must have seen that, if Mon-
mouth should succeed in overpowering the existing government,
there would still remain a war between him and the House of
Orange, a war which might last longer and produce more misery
than the war of the Roses, a war which might probably break
up the Protestants of Europe into hostile parties, might arm
England and Holland against each other, and might make both
those countries an easy prey to France. The opinion, there-
fore, of almost all the leading Whigs seems to have been that
Monmouth's enterprise could not fail to end in some great dis-
a4
530 HISTOIIT OF ENGLAND.
aster to the nation, but that, on the whole, his defeat would be
a less disaster than his victory.
It was not only by the inaction of the "Whig aristocracy that
the invaders were disappointed. The wealth and power of
London had sufficed in the preceding generation, and might
again suffice, to turn the scale in a civil conflict. The London-
ers had formerly given many proofs of their hatred of Popery
and of eheir affection for the Protestant Duke. He had too
readily believed that, as soon as he landed, there would be a
rising in the capital. But, though advices came down to him
that many thousands of the citizens had been enrolled as vol-
unteers for the good cause, nothing was done. The plain truth
v/as that the agitators who had urged him to invade England,
who had promised to rise on the first signal, and who had })er«
haps imagined, while the danger was remote, that they should
have the courage to keep their promise, lost heart when the
critical time dn w near. Wildmau's fright was such that ha
seemed to have lost his understanding. The craven Danvers
at first excused his inaction by saying that he would not take
np arms till Monmouth was proclaimed King, and. when Mon-
mouth had />een proclaimed King, turned round and declared
that good republicans were absolved from all engagements to a
leader who had so shamefully broken faith. In every age the
vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among dem-
agogues.*
On the day following that on which Monmouth had assumed
the regal title he marched from Taunton to Bridgewater. His
own spirits, it was remarked, were not high The acclamations,
of the devoted thousands vi'ho surrounded him wherever he
turned could not dispel the gloom which sate on his brow.
Those who had seen him dmi'ig his progress through Some:--
setshire five years before could not now observe without pity
the traces of distress and anxiety on those soft and pleasing
features which had won so many hearts, f
Ferguson was in a very different temper. With this man's
* Grey's Narrative ; Ferccnson's >T'=^., Fnrhard, iii. 754.
t Persecution Exposed, by John Whiting.
JAMES THE SECOND. 531
knavery was strangely mingled an eccentric vanity which re-
sembled madness. The thought that he had raised a rebellion
and bestowed a crown had turned his head. He swaggered
about, brandishing his naked sword, and crying to the crowd of
spectators who had assembled to see the army march out of
Taunton, " Look at me ! You have heard of me. I am Fer-
guson, the famous Ferguson, the Ferguson for whose liead so
many hundred pounds have been offered." And this man, at
once unprincipled and brainsick, had in his keeping the under-
standing and the conscience of the unhappy Monmouth.*
Brido-ewater was one of the few towns which still had some
Whig magistrates. The Mayor and Aldermen came in their
robes to welcome the Duke, walked befoie him in procession
to the liigh cross, and there proclaimed him King. His troops
found excellent quarters, and were furnished with necessaries
at little or no cost by the people of the town and neighbour-
hood. He took up his residence in the Castle, a building
which had been honoured by several royal visits. In the
Castle Field his army was encamped. It now consisted of
about six thousand men, and might easily have been increased
to double the number, but for the want of arms. The Duke
had brought with him from the Continent but a scanty supply
of pikes and muskets. Many of his followers had, therefore,
no other weapons than such as could be , fashioned out of the
tools which they had used in husbandry or mining. Of these
rude implements of war the most formidable was made by fast-
ening the blade of a scythe erect on a strong pole.f The tith-
ing men of the country round Taunton and Bridgewater re-
ceived orders to search everywhere for scythes and to bring all
that could be found to the camp. It was impossible, however,
even with the help of these contrivances, to supply the demand ;
and great numbers who were desirous to enlist were sent awaj'.i
The foot were divided into six regiments. Many of the
men had been in the militia, and still wore their uniforms, red
*Harl. MS. 6845.
t One of these weapons may still be seen in the tower.
t Grey's Narrative ; Paschall's Narrative in the Appendix to Heywood's Vin-
dication.
532 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
and yellow. The eavalry vvere about a thousand in number ;
but most of them had only large colts, such as were then bred
m great herds on the marshes of Somersetshire for the purpose
of supplying London with coach horses and cart horses. These
animals were so far from being fit for any military purpose
that they had not yet learned to obey the bridle, and became
ungovernable as soon as they heard a gun fired or a drum beat-
en. A small body guard of forty young men, well armed, and
mounted at their own charge, attended Moumoutli. The peo-
})le of Bridgewaler, who were enriched by a thriving coast trade,
furnished him witli a small sum of money.*
All this time the forces of the government were fast as-
sembling. On the west of the rebel army, Albemarle still kept
together a large body of Devonshire militia. On the east, the
trainbands of Wiltshire had mustered under the command of
Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. On the north east, Henry
Somerset, Duke of Beaufort, was in arms. The power of
Beaufort bore some faint resemblance to that of the great
barons of the fifteenth century. He was President of Wales
and Lord Lieutenant of four English counties. His official
tours through the extensive region in which he represented the
majesty of the throne were scarcely inferior in pomp to royal
progresses. His household at Badminton was regulated after
the fashion of an earlier generation. The land to a great extent
round his pleasure grounds was in his own hands ; and the
labourers who cultivated it formed part of his family. Nine
tables were every day spread under his roof for two hundred
persons. A crowd of gentlemen and pages were under the
orders of the steward. A whole troop of cavalry obeyed the
master of the horse. The fame of the kitchen, the cellar, the
kennel, and the stables was spread over all England. The
gentry, many miles round, were proud of tlie magnificence of
their great neighbour, and were at the same time charmed by his
affability and good nature. He was a zealous Cavalier of the
old school. At this crisis, therefore, he used his whole influ-
ence and authority in support of the crown, and occupied
* Oldmixoi), 702.
JAMES THE SECOND. 5^3
Bristol with the trainbands of Gloucestershire, who seem to
have heeu better disciphued than most other troops of that
description.*
In the counties more remote from Somersetshire the sup-
porters of tlie throne were on the alert. The militia of Sussex
bei>an to march westward, under the command of Richard,
Lord Lumlej^ who, though he had lately been converted from
the Roman Catholic religion, was still firm in his allegiance
to a Roman Catholic King. James Bertie, Earl of Abingdon,
called out the arra}^ of Oxfordshire. John Fell, Bishop of
Oxford, who was also Dean of Christchurch, summoned the
undergraduates of his University to take arms for the crown.
The P-ownsmen crowded to give in their names. Christchurch
alone furnished near a hundred pikemen and musketeers.
Young noblemen and gentlemen commoners acted as othcers ;
and the eldest son of tlie Lord Lieutenant was Colonel. f
But it was chiefly on the regular troops that the King relied.
Churchill had been sen ; westward with the Blues; and Fever-
sham was following with all the forces that could be spared from
the neiirhbourhood of London. A courier had started for Holland
with a letter directing Skeltou instantly to request that Li)e
fhreo Enirlish regiments in the Dutch service mi^dit be sent to
the Thames. When the request v/as made, the party hostile to
the House of Orange, headed by the deputies of Amsterdam,
again tried to cause delay. But the energy of William, who
had almost as much at stake as James, and who saw Monmouth's
progress with serious uneasiness, bore down opposition ; and in
a few days the troops sailed.! Tlie three Scotch regiments
were already in England. They had arrived at Gravesend in
excellent condition, and James had reviewed them on Black-
heath. He repeatedly declared to the Dutch Ambassador that
he had never in his life seen finer or better disciplined soldiers,
* North's Life of Guildford, 132. Accounts of Beaufort's progress tliiough
Wales and tho neiglibouring counties are in tlie London Gazettes of July 16S4.
Letter of Beaufort to Clarendon, .June 19, 1CS5.
t Bishop Fell to Clarendon, June 20 ; Abingdon to Cla-reudon, June 20, 25, 20,
1G85 ; Lansdowne MS. Sid.
t Ava\ix, July 5-15, 6-16, li;i>5.
5S4 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
and expressed the warmest gratitude to tlie Prince of Orange
and the States for so valuable and seasonable a reinforcement.
This satisfaction, however, was not unmixed. Excellently as
the men went through their drill, they were not untainted with
Dutch politics and Dutch divinity. One of them was shot and
another flociied for drinkinof the Duke of Monmouth's health.
It was therefore not thought advisable to place them in the post
of danger. They were kept in the neighbourhood of London
till the end of the campaign. But their arrival enabled the
King to send to the West some infantiy which would otherwise
have been wanted in the capital.*
While the government was thus preparing for a conflict witli
the rebels in the field, precautions of a different kind were not
neglected. In London alone two hundred of those persons who
were thought most likely to be at the head of a Whig move-
ment were arrested. Among the prisoners were some merchants
of great note. Every man who was obnoxious to the Court
went in fear. A general gloom overhung the capital. Business
languished on the Exchange ; and the theatres were so generally
deserted that a new opera, written by Dryden, and set off by
decorations of unprecedented magnificence, was withdrawn, be-
cause the receipts would not cover the expenses of the perform-
ance.f The magistrates and clergy were everywhere ^active.
The Dissenters were every where closely observed. In Cheshire
and Shropshire a fierce persecution raged ; in Northamptonshire
arrests were numerous ; and the gaoi of Oxford was crowded
with prisoners. No Puritan divine, however moderate his opin-
ions, however guarded his conduct, could feel any confidence
that he should not be torn from his family and flung into a dun-
geon.!
Meanwhile Monmouth advanced from Bridgewater harassed
through the whole march by Churchill, who appears to have
done all that, with a handful of men, it was possible for a brave
* Van Citters, J^'l^il!!: July 3-13, 21-31, 1685; Avaux Neg. July 5-15 ; London
July 10,
Gazette, July 6.
■^ o-j-rUiou, July 6-16, 1685 ; Scott's preface to Albion ana AiCaiAus.
+ .cr viiiuaoii to Clarencion, June 29, IGUo ; Life of Philip Henry, by Bates.
ja:\ii:s the second. 535
and skilful officer to effect. The rebel army, much annoyed,
both by the enemy iind by a heavy fall of rain, halted in the
evening of the twenty-second of June at Glastonbury. The
houses of tlie little town did not afford shelter for so large a
force. Some of the troops were therefore quartered in the
{hurches, and others lighted their fires among the venerable
'uins of the Abbey, once the wealthiest religious house in our
island. From Glastonbury the Duke marched to Wells, and
from Wells to Shepton Mallet.*
Hitherto he seems to have wandered from place to place
witli no other object than that of collecting troops. It was now
necessary for him to form some plan of military operations.
His first scheme was to seize Bristol. Many of the chief in-
liabitants of that important place were Whiga. One of the
ramifications of the Whig plot had extended thither. The gar-
rison consisted only of the Gloucestershire trainbands. If Beau-
fort and his rustic followers could be overpowered before the
regulai'- troops arrived, the rebels would at once lind themselves
possessed of ample pecuniary resources ; the credit of Mon-
mouth's arras would be raised ; ami his friends tliroughouL the
kinsrdora would be encouraired to declare themselves. Bristol
had fortifications which, on the north of the Avon towards
Gloucestershire, were weak, but on the south towards Somerset-
shire were much stronger. It was therefore determined that the
attack should be made on the Gloucestershire side. But for this
nurpose it vas necessary to take a circuitous route, and to cross
"he Avon at Keynsham. The bridge at Keynsham had been
partly demolished by the militia, and was at present impassable.
A detachment was therefore sent forward to make the necessary
repairs. • The other troops followed more slowly, and on the
evening of the twenty-fourth of June halted for repose at Pens-
ford. At Pcnsford they were only five miles from the Somer-
setshire side of Bristol ; but the Gloucestershire side, which
could be reached only by going round through Keynsham, was
distant a long day's march. f
* London Gazette, June 22, and June 25, 16S5 ; Wade's Oonfession ; Oldmixon,
703 ; Ilarl. MS. 6S-15.
t Wad«'8 ConfeBsion.
536
HISTOKV OF ENGLAND.
That night was one of great tumult and expectation in
Bristol. The partisans of Monmouth knew that he was almost
witiun sigiit of their city, and imagined that he would be among
them before daybreak. About an hour after sunset a mer-
chantman lying at the quay took fire. ' Such an occurrence, in
a port crowded with sliipping, could not_but excite great alarm.
The wliole river was iu commotion. The streets were crowd-.
vd. StuUtious cries were heard amidst the darkness and confu-
sion. It was afterwards asserted, both by Whigs and by Tories,
that the fire had been kindled by the friends of Moninouth, in
the hope that the trainbands would be busied in preventiu"- the
conflagration from spreading, and that in the meantime the rebel
army would make a bold push, and would enter the city on the
Somersetshire side. If such was the design of the incendiaries,
h completely failed. Beaufort, instead of sending his men to
the quay, kept them all night drawn up under ai-ms round the
beautiful church of Saint Mary Redcliff, on the south of the
Avon. He would see Bristol burnt down, he said, nay, he
would burn it down himself, rather than that it should be occu-
pied by traitors. He was able, with the help of some reguhn-
cavalry which had joined him from Chippenham a few hohrs
before, to prevent an insurrection. It migiit perhaps havebren
beyond his power at once to overawe the malecontents within
the walls and to repel an attack from without : but no sucl;
attack was made. The fire, which caused so much com-
motion at Bristol, was distinctly seen at Pensford. Monmoutli,
however, did not think it expedient to change his plan. lie i-c-
mained quiet till sunrise, and then marched to Keynsham. There-
he found the bridge repaired. He determined to let his army
rest during the afternoon, and, as soon as night came, -to pro-
ceed to Bi-istol.*
But it was too late. The King's forces were now near at
iiand. Colonel Oglethorpe, at the head of about a nandred
Men of the Life Guards, dashed into Keynsham, scattered tv/o
troops of rebel horse which ventured to oppose him, and retired
* "Wade's Confession ; Oldmixon', T03'; Hafl. MS. 6S45 ; Charge of Jeffreys to
the gi-and jury of Bristol, Sept. 21, 16fS.
JAMKS Tilli SECOND. 537
•ditcv iiillicting much injury and suffering little. lu tliese cir-
eumistauceo it was thought necessary to relinquish tlie desigu oa
Bristol* .
But what was to be done ? Several schemes were proposed
and discussed. It was suggested that Monmouth might hasten
to Gloucester, might cross the Severn there, might break down
tlie bi'idge boliind him, and, with his right flank protected by
the rivei-j miglit- march through Worcestershire into Shropsliire
and Cheshii-e. He had formerly made a progress througli those
counties, and had been received there with as much enthusiasm
as m Somersetshire and Devonshire. His presence miglit revive
the z'?;d of his old friends ; aiid Lis array might in a i^ \v days
be swollen to double its present numbers.
Oa full consideration, however, it appeared that this plan,
though specious, was impracticable. The rebels Vv^ere ill shod
for such work as they had lately undergone, and wei'e exhaust-
ed by toiling, day after day, through deep mud under heavy
rain. Harassed and impeded as thoy would be at every stage
by the enemy's cavalry, tliey could not hope to reach Glouces-
ter without being overtaken by the main body of the royal troops,
and forced to a general action under every disadvantage.
Then it was proposed to enter Wiltshire. Persons who
professed to know that county well assured the Duke that he
would be joined there by such strong reinforcements as would
make it safe for him to give battle, f
He took this advice, and turned towards Wiltshire. He
first summoned Bath. But Bath was strongly garrisoned for
the King ; and Feversham was fast approaching. The rebels,
therefore, made no attem[)t on the walls, but hastened to Philip's
Norton, where they halted on the evening of the twenty-sixth
of June.
Feversham followed them thither. Early on the morninsr
of the twentv-scventh they were alarmed bv tidino-s tJiat he
was close at hand. They got into order, and lined the hedges
leading to the town.
* Loiicion Gazette, June 29, 16S5 ; "Wade's Confession
t Wade's Confession.
538 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
The aavanced guard of the royal army soon appeared. I(
consisted of about five hundred men, commanded by the Duke
of Grai'ton, a youth of bold spirit and rough manners, who was
probably eager to show that he had no share in the disloyal
schemes of his half brother. Grafton soon found himself in a
deep lane with fences on both sides of him, from which a gall-
ing fire of musketry was kept up. Still he pushed boldly on
till he came to the entrance of Philip's Norton. There his way
was crossed by a barricade, fi'om which a tliii'd fire met him full
in front. His men now lost heart, and made the best of their
way back. Before they got out of the lane more than a hun-
dred of them had been killed or wounded. Grafton's retreat
was intercepted by some of the rebel cavalry : but he cut his
way gallantly through them, and came off safe.*
The advanced guard, thus repulsed, fell back on the main
body of the royal forces. The two armies were now face to
face ; and a few shots were exchanged that did little or no ex-
ecution. Neither side was impatient to come to action. Fever-
sham did not wish to fight till his artillery came up, and fell
back to Bradford. Monmouth, as soon as the night closed in,
quitted his position, marched southward, and by daybreak ar-
rived at Frome, where he hoped to find reinforcements.
Frome was as zealous in his cause as either Taunton or
Bridgewater, but could do nothing to serve him. There had
been a rising a few days before ; and Monmouth's declaration
had been posted up in the market place. But the news of this
movement had been carried to the Earl of Pembroke, who lay
at no great distance with the Wiltshire militia. He had instant-
ly marched to Frome, had routed a mob of rustics who, with
scythes and pitchforks, attempted to oppose him, had entered
the town and had disarmed the inhabitants. No weapons,
therefore, were left there ; nor was Monmouth able to furnish
any.f
The rebel army was in evil case. The march of the preced-
ing night had been wearisome. The rain had fallen in torrents ;
* London Gazette, July 2, 1685 ; Barillon, July 6-16; Wade's Confession.
June 30,
t London Gazette, June 29, 1685 ; Van Citters, j^;n7ior
JAMES THE SECOND. 539
and the roads had become mere quagmires. Nothing was heard
of the promised succours irom VViltsliire. One messenger brought
news that Argyle's forces had been dispersed in Scotland.
Another reported that Feversham, having been joined by his
artillery, was about to advance. Monmouth understood war too
well not to know that his followers, with all their courage and
all their zeal, were no match for regular soldiers. He had till
lately flattered himself with thp hope that some of those regi-
ments which he had formerly commanded would pass over to
his standard : but that hope he was now compelled to relinquish.
His heart failed him. He could scarcely muster firmness enough
to give orders. lu his misery he complained bitterly of the
evil counsellors who had induced him to quit his happy retreat
in Brabant. Against Wildman in particular he broke forth into
violent imprecations.* And now an ignominious thought rose in
his weak and agitated mind. He would leave to the mercy of
the government the tliousands who had, at his call and for his
sake, abandoned their quiet fields and dwellings. He would
steal away with his chief officers, would gain some seaport before
his flight was eusjjected, would escape to the Continent, and
would forget his ambition and his shame in the arms of Lady
AVentworth. He seriously discussed this scheme with his lead-
ing advisers. Some of them, trembling for their necks, listened
to it with approbation ; but Grey, who, by the admission of
his detractors, was intrepid everywhere except where swords
were clashing and guns going off around him, opposed the das-
tardly proposition with great ardour, and implored the Duke to
face every danger rather than requite with ingratitude and
treachery the devoted attachment of the TVestern peasantry. t
The scheme of flight was abandoned : but it was not now
easy to form any plan for a campaign. To advance towards
London would have been madness ; for the ro:id lay right across
Salisbury Plain ; and on that vast open space regular troops,
and above all regular cavalry, would have acted with every ad-
vantage' against undisciplined men. At this juncture a report
* Harl. MS. 6845; Wade'a Confeesion.
t "Wade's Confession ; Eachard, iii. 766.
540 SISTOKY OF ENGLAND.
readied the camp that the rustics of tlie marshes near Axbridtre
had risen in defence of the Protestant religion, had armed them-
selves with flails, bludgeons, and pitchforks, and wore assembling
b}' thousands at Bridgewater. Monmouth determined to return
thither, and to strengthen himself with these new allies."^
The rebels accordingly proceeded to Wells, and arrived
there in no amiable temper. They were, with few exceptions,
hostile tJ Prelacy; and they showed their hostility in a way
very lltJo to their honour. They not oidy tore the lead from
the roof of the magnificent Cathedral to. make bullets, an act
for which they might fairly plead tire necessities of war, but
^.• ;ntonly defaced the ornaments of the building. Grey with
dllliculty preserved the altar from the insults of some ruffians
who wished to carouse round it, by taking his stand before it
with his sword drawn. f
On Thursday, the second of July, Monmouth again entered
Bridgewater, m circumstances far less cheering than those in
which he had marched thencb ten days before. The reinforce-
ment which he found there was inconsiderable. The royal army
was close upon him. At one moment he thought of fortifying
the town ; and hundreds of labourers were summoned to dig
trenches and throw up mounds. Then his mind recurred to the
plan of marching into Cheshire, a plan which he had rejected as
impracticable when he was at Kcynsham, and which assuredly
was not more practicable now that he was at Bridgewater. $
While lie was thus wavering between projects equally hope-
less, the King's forces came in sight. They consisted of about
two thousand five hundred regular troops, and of about fifteen
hundred of the Wiltshire militia. Early on the morning of
Sunday, the fifth of July, they left Somerton, and pitched their
tents that day about three miles from Bridgewater, on the plain
of Sedgemoor.
Dr. Peter Mew, Bishop of Winchester, accompanied them.
This prelate had in his youth borne arms for Charles the First
* V/.-idc's Coufession.
t LojiUon Gazette, July 6, 16S5 : Van Citters, July .?-].•!; Oldmixon, 703.
J Wade'H Confession.
JAMES THE SECOND. 541
against the Parliament. Neither his years nor his profession liad
wholly extinguished his martial ardour ; and he probably thought
that the appearance of a fatlier of the Protestant Church in tiie
Kiuo''s camp might confirm the loyalty of some honest men who
were waveruig between their horror of Popery and their liorrof
of rebellion.
The steeple of the parish church of Eridgewater is said to
be the loftiest of Somersetshire, and commands a wide view
over the surrounding country. IMonmouth, accompanied by
tome of his officers, went up to the top of the square tower from
which the spire ascends, and observed through a telescope the
position of the enemy. Beneath him lay a flat expanse, now
rich with cornfields and apple trees, but then, as its name im-
ports, for the most part a dreary morass. When the rains were
heavy, and the Parret and its tributary streams rose above their
banks, this tract was often flooded. It was indeed ancient-
ly part of that great swamp which is renowned in our early
chronicles as having arrested the progress of two successive
races of invaders, which long protected the Celts against the
aorrrrpssions of the kinsfs of Wessex, and Vv^hich sheltered Alfred
fi'om the pursuit of the Danes. In those remote times this re-
gion could be traverf ed only in boats. It was a vast pool, where
in were scattered many islets of shifting and treacherous soil,
overhung with rank jungle, and swarming with deer and wild
swine. Evexi in the days of the Tndors, the traveller whose
journey lay from Ilchester to Bridgewater was forced to make
a circuit of several miles in order to avoid the waters. When
Monmouth looked upon Sedgemoor, it had been partially re-
claimed by art, and was intersected by many deep and wide
trenches which, in that country, are called rhines. In the midst
of the moor rose, clustering round the towers of churches, a few
villages of which the names seem to indicate that they once were
surrounded by waves. In one of these villages, called Weston
Zoyland, the royal cavalry lay ; and Feversham had fixed his
head quarters there. Many persons still living have seen the
daughter of the servant girl who waited on him that day at table ;
and a large dish of Persian ware, which was set before him, is
542 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Still carefully preserved in the neighbourhood. It is to be ob-
served that the population of Somersetshire does not, like that
of the manufacturing districts, consist of emigrants from distant
places. It is by no means unusual to find farraei's wlio cultivate
the same land which their ancestors cultivated when the Plan-
tagenets reigned in England. The Somersetshire traditions are,
therefore, of no small value to a historian.*
At a greater distance from Bridgewater lies the villao-e of
Middlczoy. In that village and its neighbourhood, the Wilt-
shii-e militia were quartered, under the command of Pembroke.
On the open moor, not far from Chedzoy, were encamped
several battalions of regular infantry. Monmouth looked
gloomily on tliem. He could not but remember how, a few
years before, he had, at the head of a column composed of some
of those very men, driven before him in confusion the fierce en-
thusiasts who defended Bothwell Bridge. He could distino-uish
among the hostile ranks that gallant band which was then called
from the name of its Colonel, Dumbarton's regiment, but which
has long been known as the first of the line, and which, in all the
four quarters of the world, has nobly supported its early reputa-
tion. "I know those men," said Monmouth ; " thev will fight
If I had but them, all would go well " f
Yet the aspect of the enemy was not altogether discourag-
ing. The three divisions of the royal army lay far apart from
one another. There was an appearance of negligence and of
relaxed discipline in all their movements. It was reported that
they were drinking themselves drunk Avith the Zoyland cider.
The incapacity of Feversham, who commanded in chief, was
notorious. Even at this momentous crisis he thought only of eat-
ing and sleeping. Churchill was indeed a captain equal to tasks
far mofe arduous than that of scattering a crowd of ill armed and
♦Matt. West. Flor. Hist., A. D. 788; MS. Chronicl- quoted by Mr. Sharon
Turner in the History of the Anglo-Saxons, book IV. chap, xix ; Drayton's
Polyolbion, iii ; Leland's Itinerary ; Oldniixon, 703. Oldniixon was then at
Bridgewater, and probably saw tlie Duke on the church tower. The dish men
tioned in the text is the property of Mr. Stradling, who has taken laudable pains
to preserve the r.lics and traditions of the Western insurrection.
t Oldniixon. 70.3.
JAMES THE SECOND. 543
ill trained peasants. But the genius, which, at a later period,
humbled six Marshals of France, was not now in its proper place,
Feversham told Churchill little, and gave him no encouragement
to offer any suggestion. The lieutenant, conscious of superior
abilities and science, impatient of the control of a chief whom
he despised, and tremblin/y for the fate of the army, nevertheless
preserved his characteristic self-command, and dissembled his
feelings so well that Feversham praised his submissive alacrity,
and promised to report it to the King.*
Monmouth, having observed the disposition of the royal
forces, and having been apprised of the state m which they were,
conceived that a night attack might be attended with success.
He resolved to run the hazard , and preparations were instantly
made.
It was Sund.iy ; and his followers, who had, for the most
part, been brought up after the Puritan fashion, passed a great
part of the day in religious exercises. The Castle Field, iu
which the army was encamped, presented a spectacle such as,
since the disbanding of Cromwell's soldiers, England had never
seen. The dissenting preachers who had taken arms aganist
Popery, and some of whom had probably fought ui the great
civil war, prayed and preached in red coats and huge jackboots,
with swords by their sides. Ferguson was one of those who
harangued. He took for his text the awful imprecation by
which the Israelites who dwelt beyond Jordan cleared them-
selves from the charge ignorantly brought against them by their
brethren on the other side of the river. " The Lord God of
Gods, the Lord God of Gods, he knoweth ; and Israel he shall
know. If it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the
Lord, save us not this day." f
That an attack was to be made under cover of the night was
no secret in Bridgewater. The town was full of women, who
had repaired thither by hundreds from the surrounding region,
to see their husbands, sons, lovers, and brothers once more.
There were many sad partings that day ; and many parted
* Churchili to Clarendon, July 4, 1685.
i Oldmixon, 703 ; Observator, Aug. 1, 1685
544 HISTORY OV ENGLAND.
never to meet again.* The report of the intended attack came
to the ears of a young girl who was zealous for the King.
Though of modest character, she had the courage to resolve
that she would herself bear the intelligence to Feversham.
She stole out of Bridgewater, and made her way to the royal
camp. But that camp was not a place where female innocence
could be safe. Even the officers, despisuig alike the irregular
force to which they were opposed, and the negligent general
who commanded them, had indulged largely in wine, and were
ready for any excess of licentiousness and cruelty. One of
thorn seized the unhappy maiden, refused to listen to her errand,
and brutally outraged her. She fled in agonies of rage and
shame, leaving the wicked army to its doom.t
And now the time for the great hazard drew near. The
night was not ill suited for such an enterprise. The moon was
indeed at the full, and the northern streamers were shining
brilliantly. But the marsh fog lay so thick on Sedgemoor that
no object could be discerned thei-e at the distance of fifty
paces. $
The clock struck eleven ; and the Duke with his body guard
rode out of the Castle. He was not in the frame of mind
which befits one who is about to strike a decisive blow. The
very children who pressed to see him pass observed, Uid I ng
remembered, that his look was sad and full of evil augury.
His army marched by a circuitous path, near six miles in length,
* Paschall's Narrative in Heywood's Appendix.
t Kennet, ed. 1710, iii. 432. I am forced to believe tliattliis lamentable tory
is tiTie. Tlie Bishop declares that it was communicated to him in the year 171S
by a brave officer of the Blues, who had foiight ?* Sedgemoor, and wh had him-
Belf seen the poor girl depart in aji agony of disUe; s.
t Narrative of an oflicer of the Horse G.iards in Kennet, ed 1718, iii. 432;
MS. Journal of the "Western Rebellion, kept by Mr. Edv/r.rd Dummer ; Drydeu's
Hind and Panther, part II. The lines of Dryden are remarkable : —
"Such were the pleasing tnumphs of the sky
Fot James's late nocturnal victory.
The fireworks which his an£;els made obov*.
The plerj^e of his almighty patron's love,
Tsaw myself the lambent ea.'.y liffht
Gild the brown horror and dispel the night.
The messenger with speed the tidinirs hore,
News which three lahou in; nations did restore :
3ut heaven's own Nuntius was arrived before."
JAMES THE SECOND. 51.1
towards the royal encampment on Sedgemoor. Part of tiic
route is to this day called War Lane. The foot were led l.v
Monmouth himself. The horse were confided to Grey, in sjiitc
of the remonstrances of some who remembei-ed the mishap ;:t
Bridport. Orders were given that strict silence should be ])rc-
served, that no drum should be beaten, and no shot fired. Tlu
word by which the insurgents were to recognise one another in
the darkness was Soho. It had doubtless been selected m
allusion to Soho Fields in London, where their leader's palace
stood.*
At about one in the morning of Monday the sixth of July,
the rebels were on the open moor. But between them and the
enemy lay three broad rhines filled with water and soft mud.
Two of these, called the Elack Ditch and the Langmooi- Rhine,
Monmouth knew that he must pass. But, strange to say, the
existence of a trench, called the Bussex Rhine, which immedi-
ately covered the royal encampment, had not been mentioned
to him by any of his scouts
The wains which carried the ammunition remained at the
entrance of the moor The horse and foot, in r. long narrow
column, passed the Black Ditch by a causeway. There was a
similar causeway across the Langmoor Rhine but the guide,
in the fog, missed his way There was some delay and some
tumult before the error could be rectified. At length the
passage was effected : but, in the confusion, a pistol went off.
Some men of the Horse Guards, who were en watch, heard the
report, and perceived that a great multitude was advancing
through the mist. They fired their carbines, and galloped off
in different directions to give the alarm. Some hastened to
Weston Zoyland, where the cavalry lay. One trooper spurred
to the encampment of the ir.fautry, and cried, out ^■cIlcmently
that the enemy was at hand. The drums of Dumbarton's regi-
ment beat to arms; and the men got fast into their ranks. It
* It has been saiil by several writers, ami airiong them by Pennant, that tin
di9tri(-t in Loudon called Soho derived its name from the watchword of Tiloz-.-
mouth'w army at Sedgemoor. jMcntion of Soho Fields will ba found iu mai'V
books printed before the Western insurrection ; for example, in Chamberlayne's
State of England, 1684.
35
516 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
was time ; for Monmouth was already drawing up his army for
iction. He ordered Grey to lead the way with the cavalry,
and followed himself at the head of the infantry. Grey pushed
on till his progress was unexpectedly arrested by the Bussex
Rhine. Ou the opposite side of the ditch the King's foot were
hastily forming in order of battle.
" For whom are you ? " called out an officer of the Foot
Guards. " For the King," replied a voice from the ranks of
the rebel cavalry. " For which King?" was then demanded.
The answer was a shout of " King Monmouth," mingled with
the war cry, which forty years before had been inscribed on the
colours of the jiarliamentary regiments, " God Avith us." The
royal troops instantly fired such a volley of musketry as sent
the rebel horse flying in all directions. The world agreed to
ascribe this ignominious rout to Grey's pusillanimity. Yet it is
by no means clear that Churchill would have succeeded bettei
at the head of men who had never before handled arms ou
horseback, and whose horses were unused, not only to stand
fire, but to obey the rein.
A few minutes after the Duke's horse had dispersed thorn,
selves over the moor, his infantry came up running fast, and
guided through the gloom by the lighted matches of Dumbar-
ton's resiment.
Monmouth was startled Dy finding that a broad and pro-
found trench lay between him and the camp which he had
hoped to surprise. The insurgents halted on the edge of the
rhine, and fired. Part of the royal infantry on the opposite
bank returned the fire. During three quarters of an hour the
roar of the musketry was incessant. The Somersetshire peas-
ants behaved themselves as if they had been veteran soldiersj
save only that they levelled their pieces too high.
But now the other divisions of the royal army were in mo-
tion. The Life Guards and Blues came 2:»ricking fast from
Weston Zoyland, and scattered in an instant some of Grey's
horse, who had attemjjted to rally. The fugitives spread a
panic among their comrades in the" rear, who had charge of the
ammunition. The waggoners drove off at full speed, and nevel
JAMES THE SECOND. 547
stopped till they were many miles from the field of battle.
Monmouth had hitherto done his part like a stout and able
warrior. lie had been seen on foot, pike in hand, encouraging
his infantry by voice and by example. But he was too well ac-
quainted with military affairs not to know that all was over.
His men had lost the advantage which surprise and darkness
had given them. They were deserted by the horse and by the
ammunition waggons. The King's forces were now united and
in good order. Feversham had been awakened by the firing,,
had got out of bed, had adjusted his cravat, had looked at him-
self well in tlie glass, and had come to see what his men were
doing. Meanwhile, what was of much more importance,
Churchill had rapidly made an entirely new disposition of the
royal infantry. The day was about to break. The event of a
conflict on an open plain, by broad sunlight, could not be doubt-
ful. Yet Monmouth should have felt that it was not for him to
fly, while thousands whom affection for him had hurried to de-
struction were still fighting manfully in his cause. But vain
hopes and the intense love of life prevailed. He saw that if
he tarried the royal cavalry would soon intercept his retreat.
He mounted and rode from the field.
Yet his foot, though deserted, made a gallant stand. The
Life Guards attacked them on the right, the Blues on the left ;
but the Somersetshire clowns, with theii- scythes and the butt
ends of their muskets, faced the royal horse like old soldiers.
Oglethorpe made a vigorous attempt to break them and was man-
fully repulsed. Sarsfield, a brave Irish officer, whose name
afterwards obtained a melancholy celebrity, charged on the
other flank. His men were beaten back. He was himseli
struck to the ground, and lay for a time as one dead. But the
struggle of the hardy rustics could not last. Their powder
and ball were spent. Cries were heard of " Ammunition ! For
God's sake ammunition ! " But no ammunition was at hand.
And now the King's artillery came up. It had been posted
half a mile Off, on the high road from "Weston Zoyland to
Bridgewater. So defective were then the appointments of an
English army that there would have been much difficulty in
548 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
dragging the great guns to tlie place where the battle was raging',
had not the Bishop of Winchester offered his coach horses and
traces for the purpose. This interference of a Christian prelate
in a matter of blood has, with strange inconsistency, been con-
demned by some Whig writers who can see nothing criminal in
the conduct of the numerous Puritan ministers then in arms
against the government. Even when the guns had arrived,
there was such a want of gunners that a serjeant of Dumbar-
ton's regiment was forced to take on himself the management
of several pieces.* The cannon, however, though ill served,
brought the engagement to a speedy close. The pikes of the
rebel battalions began to shake : the ranks broke ; the King's
cavalry charged again, and bore down everything before them ;
the King's infantry came pouring across the ditch. Even in
that extremity the Mendip miners stood bravely to their arms,
and sold their lives dearly. But the rout was in a few minutes
complete. Three hundred of the soldiers had been killed or
wounded. Of the rebels more than a thousand lay dead on the
inoor.t •
* Tliere is a -warrant of James directing that foi-ty pounds should be paid to
Sergeant Weems, of Dumbarton's regiment, " for good service in the action at
Sedgenioor in firing the great guns against the rebels.' — Historical Eecordof the
First or Koyal Regiment of Foot.
t James the Second's account of the battle of Sedgemoor in Lord Hardwicke's
State Papers ; Wade's Confession ; Ferguson's MS. Narrative in Eachard, iii. 768 ;
Narrative of an officer of tlie Horse Guards in Keiinet. ed. 1719, iii. 432, London
Gazette, July 9, 1685 ; Oldmixon, 703 ; Paschall's Narrative ; Burnet, i. 643 ; Eve-
lyn'sBiary, July 8; Van(.itters, July 7-17 ; Barillon, July9-19; Reresby's Memoirs ;
tlie Duke of Buckingham's battle of Sedgemoor, a Farce ; MS. Journal of the
Western Rebellion, kept by Mr. Edward Dummer, then serving in the train of
artillery employed by His JMajesty for the suppression of the same. The last
mentioned manuscript is in the Pepysian library, and is of the greatest value,
not on account of the narrative, which contains little that is remarkable, but on
account of the plans, which exhibit the battle in four or five different stages.
'• The history of a battle," says the greatest of living generals, " is not unlike
the history of a hall. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of
which the great result is the battle won or lost; but no individual can recollect
the rder in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes
all the difference as to their value or importance Just to show you how
little reliance can De placed oven on what aie supported the best accounts of a
battle, I mention tnat there are some circumstances mentioned in General 's
pceount which did not occur as he relates them. It is impossible to say when
each important occurence took place, or in what order."— Wellington Papers,
Aug. 8, and 17, 1815.
The battle Goncerning which the Duke of "Wellington wrote thus waa that of
JAMES THE SECOND, 649
So ended the last fight deserving the name of battle, that
has been fought on Englisli ground. The impression left on
the simple inhabitants of the neighbourhood was deep and laf^ting.
That impression, indeed, has been frequently renewed. For
even in our own time the plough and the spade have not seldom
turned up ghastly memorials of the slaughter, skulls, and thighr
bones, and strange weapons made out of implements of hus-
bandry. Old peasants related very recently that, in their child-
hood, they were accustomed to play on the moor at the fight
between King James's men and King Monmouth's men, and
that King Monmouth's men always raised the cry of Soho.*
What seems most extraordinary in the battle of Sedgemoor
IS that the event should have been for a moment doubtful, and
that the rebels should have resisted so long. That five or six
thousand colliers and ploughmen should contend during an hour
with half that number of regular cavaliy and infantry would
now be thought a miracle. Our wonder will, perhaps, be di-
■Waterloo, fought only a few ■weeks before, by broad day, under hi.; own vigilant
and experienced eye. YvTiat then must be the difficulty of compiling from twelve
or thirteen narratives an account of a battle fought more than a, hundred and
sixty years ago in such darkness that not a man of those engaged could see fifty
paces before him ? The difficulty is aggravated by the circumstance thnt those
witnesses v.lio liad the best opportunity of knowing the truth were by no means in-
clined to tell it. The Paper which I have placed at the head of my list of author-
ities Vtas evidently drawn up with extreme partiality to Feversham. Wade was
writing under the dread of the halter. Ferguson, who was seldom scrupulous about
tha truih of his assertions, lied on this occasion like Bobailil or Parolles. Old-
riixon, who v/as a boy at Bridgewater when the battle was f ought,and passed a great
part of his subsequent life there, was so much under the influence of local pas-
sions that his local information was useless to him. His desire to magnify the
valour of the Somersetshire peasants, a valour which their enemies acknowledged
and which did not need to be set off by exaggeration and fiction, led him to com-
pose an absurd romance. The eulogy which Barillon, a Frenchman accustomed
to despise raw levies, pronounced on the vanquished army, is of much more value,
" Son iniirterie fit fort bien. On eut de la peine k les rompre, et les soldats com-
battoient avec les crosses de mousquetet les scies qu'ils avoient au bout de grands
bastons au lieu do picques."
Lit', le is now to bo learned by visiting the field of battle ; for the face of the
country hns been greatly changed ; nnd the old Bussex Rhine on the banks of
wliich the great strngtrle took place, has long disappeared. The rhino iiow
called by Uiat name is of later date, and takes a different course.
1 h.'U'e derived much assistance from Mr. Roberts's account of the battle.
Life of Monmouth, chap. xxii. His narrative is in the main confirmed by
Dummer's plans.
♦ I learned these things from persons living close to Sedgemoor.
550 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
minished when we remember that, in the time of James the
Second, the discipline of the reguhir army was excremely lax,
and tliat, on the other hand, the peasantry were accustomed to
serve in the militia. The difference, therefore, between a regi-
ment of the Foot Guards and a regiment of clowns just enroll-
ed, though doubtless considerable, was by no means what it
now is. Monmouth did not loiid a mere mob to attack good
soldiers. For his followers were not altogether without a tinc-
ture of soldiership ; and Feversham's troops, when compared
with English trooj^s of our time, might almost be called a mob.
It was four o'clock : the sun was rising ; and the routed
army came pouring into the streets of Bridgewater. The up*
roar, the blood, the gashes, the ghastly figures which sank down
and never rose again, spread horror and dismay through the
town. The pursuers, too, were close behind. Those inhabi-
tants who had favoured the insurrection expected sack and
massacre, and implored the protection of their neighbours who
professed the Roman Catholic religion, or had made themselves
conspicuous by Tory politics ; and it is acknowledged bj!- the
bitterest of Whig historians that this protection was kindly and
generously given.*
During that day the conquerors continued to chase the fugi-
tives. The neiafhbourinsf villajjers lonnf remembered with what
a clatter of horsehoofs and what a storm of curses the whirlwuid
of cavalry swept by. Before evening five hundred jDrisoners
had been crowded into the parish church of AYestou Zoyland.
Eighty of them were wounded ; and five expired within the
consecrated walls. Great numbers of labourers were impressed
for the purpose of burying the slain. A few, who were notori-
ously partial to the vanquished side, were set apart for the hid-
eons office of quartering the captives. The tithing men of the
neighbouring parishes were busied in setting up gibbets and
providing chains. All this while tlic bells of "Weston Zoyland
and Chedzoy rang joyously ; and the soldiers sang and rioted on
the raoor amidst the corpses. For the farmers of the neighbour-
hood had made haste, as soon as the event of the fight was
« Oldmixon, 704.
JAMES THE SECOND. 551
known to send hogsheads of their best cider as peace offerings to
the victors.*
Feversham passed for a goodnatured man : but he was a
foreigner, ignorant of the laws and careless of the feelings of
the English. He was accustomed to the military license of
France, and had learned from his great kinsman, ihe conqueror
and devastator of the Palatinate, not indeed how to conquer,
but how to devastate. A considerable number of prisoners
were immediately selected for execution. Among them was a
youth famous for his speed. Hopes were held out to him that
his life would be spared if ho could run a race with one of the
colts of the marsh. The space through which the man kept up
with the horse is still marked by well known bounds on the
moor, and is about three quarters of a mile. Feversham was.
not ashamed, after seeing the performance, to send the wretch-
ed performer to the gallows. The next day a long line of gib-
bets appeared on the road leading from Bridgewater to Weston
Zoyland. On each gibbet a j^risoner was suspended. Four of
the sufferers were left to rot in irons. f
Meanwhile Monmouth, accompanied by Grey, by Buyse,
and by a few other friends, was flying from the field of battle.
At Chedzoy he stopped a moment to mount a fresh horse and
to hide his blue riband and his George, He then hastened
towards the Bristol Channel. From the rising ground on the
north of the field of battle he saw the flash and the smoke of
the last volley fired by his deserted followers. Before six
o'clock he was twenty miles from Sedgemoor. Some of his
companions advised him to cross the water, and seek refuge in
Wales ; and this would undoubtedly have been his wisest course.
He would have been in Wales many hours before the news of
his defeat was known there ; and in a country so wild and
so remote from the seat of government, he might have
remained long undiscovered. He determined, however, to
push for Hampshire, in the hope that he might lurk in the
cabins of deerstealers among the oaks of the New Forest, till
♦Locke's Western UebelHon ; Straclliiig's Chilton Priory.
t Locke's Western Rebellion ; Stradling's Chilton Priory ; Oldmixon, 704,
552 ' HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
means of conveyixnce to the Continent could be procured. He
therefore, with Grey and the German, turned to the southeast.
But the way was beset with dangers. The three fugitives had
to traverse a country in which every one already knew the
event of the battle, and in which no traveller of suspicious ap-
pearance could escape a close scrutiny. They rode on all day,
shunning towns and villages. Nor was this so difficult as it
may now appear. For men then living could remember the
time when the wild deer ranged freely through a succession oi
forests from the banks of the Avon in Wiltshire to the southern
coast of Ilampsliire.^**' At length, on Cranbourne Chase, the
strength of the horses failed. They were therefore turned
loose. The bridles and saddles were concealed. Monmouth
and his friends procured rustic attire, disguised themselves, and
proceeded on foot towards the New Forest. They passed the
night in the open air : but before morning they were surrounded
. on every side by toils. Lord Lumley, who lay at Riugwood
with a strong body of the Sussex militia, had sent forth parties
in every direction. Sir William Portman, with the Somerset
militia, had formed a chain of posts from the sea to the northern
extremity of Dorset. At five in the morning of the seventh,
Grey, who had wandered from his friends, was seized by two of
the Sussex scouts. He submitted to his fate with the calmness
of ono to whom suspense was more intolerable than despair.
" Since we landed," he said, " I have not had one comfortable
meal or one quiet night." It could hardly be doubted that the
chief rebel was not far off. The pursuers redoubled their vigi-
lance and activity. The cottages scattered over the heathy
country on the boundaries of Dorsetshire and Hampshire were
strictly examined by Lumley ; and the clown with whom Mon-
mouth had changed clothes was discovered. Portman came
with a strong body of horse and foot to assist in the search.
Attention was soon drawn to a place well fitted to shelter fugi-
tives. It was an extensive tract of land separated by an en-
closure, from the open country, and divided by numerous hedges
into small fields. In some of these fields the rye, the pease,
* Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire, 1691.
JAMES THE SECOND. 0D3
and the oats were hi<jli enonsrli to conceal a man. Others were
overgrown with fern and brambles. A poor woman reported
that she had seen two strangers lurking in this covert. Tha
near prospect of reward animated the zeal of the troops. It
was agreed that every man who did his duty in the search
should have a share of the promised five thousand pounds.
The outer fence was strictly guarded : the space within was
examined with indefatigable diligence; and several dogs of
quick scent were turned out among the bushes. The day closed
before the work could be completed : but careful watch was
kept all night. Thirty times the fugitives ventured to look
through the outer hedge: but everywhere they found a sentinel
on the alert : once they were seen and fired at ; they then
separated and concealed them; elves in different hiding places.
At sunrise the next morning the search recommenced, and
Buyse W3,s found. He owned that he had pa''ted from the
Duke only a few hours before. The corn and copsewood were
now beaten with more care than ever. At length a gaunt
figure was discovered hidden in a ditch. The pursuers sprang
on their prey. Some of them were about to fire : but Port-
man forbade all violence. The prisoner's dress was that of a
shepherd ; his beard, prematurely grey, was of several days'
growth. He trembled greatly, and was unable to speak. Even
those who had often seen him wore at first in doubt whether
this were truly the brilliant and graceful Monmouth. His
pockets were searched by Portman, and in them were found,
among some raw pease gathered in the rage of hunger, a watch,
a purse of gold, a small treatise on fortification, an album filled
R'ith songs, receipts, prayers, and charms, and the George with
whicli, many years before, King Charles the Second had decor-
ated his favourite son. Messengers were instantly despatched
to Whitehall with the good news, and with the George as a
token that the news was true. The prisoner was conveyed
under a strong guard to Ringwood.*
* Account of the manner of taking tlie late Duke of Monraoutli, published by
bis Majesty's command; Gazette ile France, July 18-28, 1G85 ; Eachard, jii. 710 J
Buniet, i. C64,aua Dartmouthe note : Vaw Citters, July 10-20, 1685-
554 IIISIORY OF ENGLAND.
And all was lost ; and nothing remained but that he should
prepare to meet death as became one who had thought him-
self not unworthy to wear the crown of William the Conqueror
and of Richard the Lionhearted, of the hero of Cressy and of
the hero of Agincourt. The captive might easily have called
to mind other domestic examples, still better suited to his
condition. Within a hundred years, two sovereigns whose
blood ran in his veins, one of them a delicate woman, had
been placed in the same situation in which he now stood. They
had shown, in the prison and on the scaffold, virtue of which,
in the season of jirosperity, they had seemed incapable, and had
half redeemed great crimes and errors by enduring with Chris-
tian meel<ness and princely dignity all that victorious enemies
could inflict. Of cowardice Monmouth had never been accused ;
and, even had he been wanting in constitutional courage, it
might have been expected that the defect would be supplied by
pride and by despair. The eyes of the whole world were upon
him. The latest generations would know how, in that extremi-
ty, he had borne himself. To the brave peasants of the West
he owed it to show that they had not poured forth their blood
for a leader unworthy of their attachment. To her who had
sacrificed everything for his sake he owed it so to bear himself
that, though she might weep for him, she should not blush for
him. It was not for him to lament and supplicate. His reason,
too, should have told hira that lamentation and supplication
would be unavailing. He had done that which could never be
forgiven. He was in the grasp of one who never forgave.
But the fortitude of Monmouth was not that highest sort of
fortitude which is derived from reflection and from selfrespect ;
nor had nature given him one of those stout hearts from which
neither adversity nor peril can extort any sign of weakness.
His courage rose and fell with his animal spirits. It was sus-
tained on the field of battle by the excitement of action. By the
hope of victory, by the strange influence of sympathy. All^
such aids were now taken away. The spoiled darling of the
court and of the populace, accustomed to be loved and wor-
shipped whej-ever he appeared, was now surrounded by stern
JAMES THE SECOND. 355
gaolers in whose eyes he read his doom. Yet a few hours of
gloomy seclusion, and he must die a violent and sliameful death.
His heart sank within him. Life seemed worth purchasing by
any humiliation ; nor could his mind, always feeble, and now
distracted by terror, perceive that humiliation must degrade, but
could not save him.
As soon as he reached Ringwood he wrote to the Kirig.
The letter was that of a man whom a craven fear had made in-
sensible to shame. He professed in vehement terms his remorse
for his treason. He affirmed that, when he promised his
cousins at the Hague not to raise troubles in England, he had
fully meant to keep his word. Unhappily he had afterwards
been seduced from his allegiance by some horrid people who
had heated his mind by calumnies and misled him by sophistry ;
but now he abhorred them : he abhorred himself. He begged
in piteous terms that he might be admitted to the royal pres-
ence. There was a secret which he could not trust to paper,
a secret which lay in a single word, and which, if he spoke that
word, would secure the throne against all danger. On the fol-
lowing day he despatched letters, imploring the Queen Dowager
and the Lord Treasurer to intercede in his behalf.*
AVhen it was known in London how he had abased himself
the general surprise was great ; and no man was more amazed
than Barillon, who had resided in P^ngland during two bloody
proscriptions, and had seen numerous victims, both of the Oppo-
sition and of the Court, submit to their fate without womanish
entreaties and lamentations. f
Monmouth and Grey remained at Ringwood two days.
They were then carried up to London, under the guard of a
large body of regular troops and militia. In the coach with the
Duke was an officer whose orders were to stab the prisoner if
a rescue were attempted. At every town along the road the
trainbands of the neighbourhood had been mustered under the
* The letter to the King was printed at tlie time by authority ; that to the
Queen l)owa:,'er will he found in Sir H. Kllis's Original Letters ; that to Roches-
ter in the Clarendon Correspondeuf e.
t "Oil troiive," he wrote, " fort &, redire icy qu'il ay t fait une chose si pen oi>
dinalre aux Anghus." July 14-23, ](>"..
556 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
command of the principal gentry. The march lasted three days,
and terminated at VauxluiH, where a regiment, commanded by
George Legge, Lord Dartmouth, was in readiness to receive the
prisoners. They were put on board of a state barge, and carried
down the river to AVhitehall Stairs. Luuiley and Portman had
alternately watched the Duke day and night till tliey had brought
him within the walls of the palace.*
Both the demeanour of Monmouth and that of Grey, during
the journey, filled all observers with surprise. Monmouth was
altogether umierved. Grey was not only calm but cheerful,
talked pleasantly of horses, dogs, and field sports, and even
made jocose allusions to the perilous situation in which he stood.
The King cannot be blamed for determining that Monmouth
should suffer death. Every Uian who heads a rebellion against
an established government stakes his life on the event ; and
rebellion was the smallest part of Monmouth's crime. He had
declared against his uncle a war without quarter. In the mani-
festo put forth at Lyme, James had been held up to execration
as an incendiary, as an assassin who had strangled one innocent
man and cut the throat of another, and, lastly, as the poisoner
of his own brother. To spare an enemy who had not scrupled
to resort to such extremities would have been an act of rare,
perhaps of blamable generosit\\ But to see him and not to
spare him was an outrage on humanity and decency. f This
outrage the King resolved to commit. The arms of the prisoner
were bound behind him with a silken cord ; and, thus secured,
he was ushered into the presence of the implacable kinsman
whom he had wronged.
Then Monmouth threw himself on the ground, and crawled
to the King's feet. He wept. He tried to embrace his uncle's
knees with his pinioned arms. He begged for life, only life,
life at any price. He owned that he had been guilty of a great
crime, but tried to throw the blame on others, particularly on
* Account of the manner of taking the Duke of Monmouth ; Gazette, July 16,
1685 ; Van Citters, .July 14-24.
t Barillon was evidently much shocked. " III se vient," he says, "de passer
icy, une cliose Wen extraordinaire et fort opposee k I'usage ordinaire des autres
nations," IS-2.S. 1685.
JAMES THE SECOND. 557
Argyle, who would rather have put his legs into the boots than
have saved his own life by such baseness. By the ties of kindred.
by the memory of the late King, who had been the best and
truest of brothei's, the unhappy man adjured James to show
some mercy. James gravely replied that tliis repentance was
of the latest, that he was sorry for the misery which the prison.
er had brought on himself, but that the case was not one for
lenity. A Declaration, filled with atrocious calumnies, liad
been put forth. The regal title had been assumed. For trea-
sons so aggravated there could be no pardon on this side of the
grave. The poor terrified Duke vowed that he had never wish-
ed to take the crown, but had been led into that fatal error by
others. As to the Declaration, he had not written it : he had
not read it : he had signed it without looking at it : it was all
the work of Ferguson, that bloody villain Fei-guson. " Do you
expect me to believe," said James, with contempt but too well
merited, " that you set your hand to a paper of such moment
without knowing what it contained ? " One depth of infamy
only remained ; and even to that the prisoner descended. He
was preeminently the champion of the Protestant religion.
The interest of that religion had been his plea for conspiring
against the government of his father, and for bringing on his
country the miseries of civil war ; yet he was not ashamed to
hint that he was inclined to be reconciled to the Church of
Rome. The King eagerly offered him spiritual assistance, but
said nothing of pardon or respite, " Is there then no hope ? "
asked Monmouth. James turned away in silence. Then Mon-
mouth strove to rally his courage, rose from his knees, and retired
with a firmness which he had not shown since his overthrow.*
Grey was introduced next. He behaved with a propriety
and fortitude which moved even the stern and resentful King,
frankly owned himself guilty, made no excuses, and did not
once stoop to ask his life. Both the pi;isoners were sent to the
Tower by water. There was no tumult ; but many thousands
* Burnet, i. 644 ; Evelyn's Diary, July 15 ; Sir J. Bramston's Memoirs ;
Reresby's Memoirs ; James to the Prince of Orange, July 14, 1685 ; Barillon,
July 16-26 ; Buccleucli MS.
538 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
of people, witQ anxiety and sorrow in their faces, tried to catch
a glimpse of the captives. The Duke's resolution failed as
soon as he had left the royal presence. On his way to his pris-
on he bemoaned himself, accused liis followers, and abjectly im-
plored the intercession of Dartmouth. " I know, my Lord,
that you loved my father. For his sake, for God's sake, try if
there be any room for mercy." Dartmouth replied that the
King had spoken the truth, and that a subject who assumed the
regal title excluded himself from all hope of pardon.*
Soon after Monmouth had been lodged in the Tower, he
was informed that his wife had, by the royal command, been
sent to see him. She was accompanied by the Earl of Claren-
don, Keeper of the Privy Seal. Her husband received her very
coldly, and addressed almost all his discourse to Clarendon,
whose intercession he earnestly implored. Clarendon held out
no hopes ; and that same evening two prelates. Turner, Bishop
of Ely, and Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, arrived at the
Tower with a solemn message from the King. It was Monday
night. On Wednesday morning Monmoutli was to die.
He was greatly agitated. The blood left his cheeks ; and
it was some time before he could speak. Most of the short
time which remained to him he wasted in vain attempts to ob-
tain, if not a pai-don, at least a respite. He wrote piteous letters
to the King and to several courtiers, but in vain. Some Roman
Catholic divines were sent to him from Whitehall. But they
soon discovered that, though he would gladly have purchased
his life by renouncing the religion of which he had professed
himself in an especial manner the defender, yet, if he was to
die, he would as soon die without their absolution as with it.f
* James to the Prince of Orange, July 14, 1685 ; Dutch Despatch of the same
date ; Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i. 64C ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, (1848) a copy
of this diary, from July 1685 to Sept. 1690, is among the Mackintosh papers. To
the rest I was allowed access l»y the kindness of the Warden of All Souls' College,
where the original MS. is deposited. The delegates of the Press of the University
of Oxford have since published the whole in six substantial volumes, which will,
I am afraid, find little favour with readers who seek only for amusement, but whicb
will always be useful as materials for history. (1857.)
t Buccleuch MS ; Life of James the Second, ii. 37, Grig. Mem. ; Van Cltters,
July 14-24, 1685 i Gazette de France, August 1-11.
JAMES THE SECOND. 559
Nor were Ken and Turner much better pleased with his
frame of mind. The doctrhie of nonresistance was, in tlieir
view, as in the view of most of their brethren, tlie distinguishing
badge of the Anglican Church. The two Bishops insisted on
Monmouth's owning that, in drawing the sword against the
government, lie had committed a great sin ; and, on this point, they
found him obstinately heterodox. Nor was this his only heresy.
He maintained that his connection with Lady Wentworth was
blameless in the sight of God. He had been married, he said, when
a child. He had never cared for his Duchess. The happiness
which he had not found at home he had sought in a round of
loose amours, condemned by religion and morality. Henrietta
had reclaimed him from a life of vice. To her he had been
strictly constant. They had, by common consent, offered up fer-
vent prayers for the divine guidance. After those prayers they
had found their affection for each other strengthened ; and they
could then no longer doubt that, in the sight of God, they were a
wedded pair. The Bishops were so much scandalised by this
view of the conjugal relation that they refused to administer
the sacrament to the prisoner. All that they could obtain from
him was a promise that, during the single night which still re-
mained to him, he would pray to be enlightened if he were in
error;
On the Wednesday morning, at his particular request, Doctor
Thomas Tenison, who then held the vicarage of Saint Martin's,
and, in that important cure, had obtained the high esteem of the
public, came to the Tower. From Tenison, whose opinions
were known to be moderate, the Duke expected more indulgence
than Ken and Turner were disposed to show. But Tenison,
whatever might be his sentiments concerning nonresistance in
the abstract, thouglit the late rebellion rash and wicked, and
considered Monmouth's notion respecting marriage as a most
dangerous delusion. Monmouth was obstinate. He had pray-
ed, he said, for the divine direction. His sentiments remained
unchanged ; and he could not doubt that they were correct.
Tenison's exhortations were in milder tone than those of the
Bishops. But he, like them, thought that he^hould not be
•560 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
justified in udministering the Eucharist to one whose penitenCS
was of so unsatisfactory a nature.*
The hour drew near : all hope was over ; and Monmouth
had passed from pusillanimous fear to the apathy of despair.
His children were brought to his room that he might take leave
of tli^m, and were followed by his wife. He ppoke to her
kindly, but without emotion. Though she was a woman of great
strength of mind, and had little cause to love him, her misery
was such that none of the bystanders could refrain from weep-
ing. He alone was unnioved.f
It was ten o'clock. The coach of the Lieutenant of the
Tower was ready. Monmouth requested his spiritual advisers
to accompany him to the place of execution ; and they
consented : but they told him that, in their judgment, he waa
about to die in a perilous state of mind, and that, if they at'
tended him it would be their duty to exhort him to the
last. As he passed along the ranks of the guards he saluted
them with a smile ; and he mounted the scaffold with a firm
tread. Tower Hill was covered up to the chimney tops with
an innumerable multitude of gazers, who, in awful silence,
broken only by sighs and the noise of weeping, listened for
the last accents of the darling of the people. '' I shall say
little," he began. " I come here, not to speak, but to die. I
die a Protestant of the Church of England." The Bishops
interrupted him, and told him that, unless he acknowledged
resistance to be sinful, he was no member of their church.
He went on to speak of his Henrietta. She was, he said, a
young lady of virtue and honour. He loved her to the last,
and he could not die without giving utterance to his feelings.
The Bishops again interfered, and begged him not to use such
taneuao'e. Some altercation followed. The divines have been
accused of dealing harshly with the dying man. But they
appear to have only discharged what, in their view, was a
eacred duty. Monmouth knew their principles, and, if he
lyished to avoid their importunity, should have dispensed with
■:. * Biiccleucli MS.; Life of James the Second, ii. 37, 38, Grig. Mem.; Bumet, i.
"-•^ ; Tenison's aetount in Kennet, iii. 432, ed. 1719. t Buccleuch MS
JAME3 THE SECOND. . 561
their attendance. Their general arguments against resistance
had no effect on him. But when they reminded him of the
ruin which he had brought on his brave and loving followers,
of the blood which had been shed, of the souls which had been
sent unprepared to the great account, he was touclied, and said,
in a softened voice, " I do own that. I am sorry that it ever
happened." They prayed with him long and fervently ; and he
joined in their petitions till they invoked a blessing on the
King. He remained silent. " Sir," said one of the Bishops,
"do you not pray for the King with us ? " Monmouth paused
some time, and, after an internal struggle, exclaimed " Amen."
But it was in vain that the prelates implored him to address to the
soldiers and to the people a few words on the duty of obedience
to the government. "I will make no speeches," he exclaimed.
" Only ten words, my Lord." He turned away, called his
servant, and put into the man's hand a toothpick case, the last
token of ill starred love. "Give it," he said, " to that person."
He then accosted John Ketch the executioner, a wretch who
had butchered many brave and noble victims, and whose name
has, during a century and a half, been vulgarly given to all who
have succeeded liir.i in his odious office.* " Here," said the
Duke, " are six guineas for you. Do not hack me as you did
my Lord Russell. I have heard that you struck him three or
four times. My servant will give you some more gold if you
do the work well." He then undressed, felt the edge of the
axe, expressed some fear that it was not sharp enough, and
laid his head on the block. The divines in the meantime con-
tinued to ejaculate with great energy : " God accept your re-
pentance ! God accept your imperfect repentance ! "
The hangman addressed himself to his office. But he had
been disconcerted by what the Duke had said. The first blow
* The name of Ketch was often associated with that of Jeffreys in the lampoons
jf those days.
" While Jeffreys on the bench, Ketch on the gibbet sits,"
isays one poet. In the year which followed Monmouth's execution Ketch was
turned out of his office for insulting one of the Sheriffs, and was succeeded by
a butcher named Rose. But in four months Rose himself was hanged at Tybum,
and Ketch was reinstated. Lnttrell's Diary, January 20, and May 28, 1686. See
a curious note by Dr. Grey, on Hudibras. part iii. canto ii. line 1534.
36
562 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
inflicted only a slight wound. The Duke struggled, rose from
the block, and looked reproachfully at the executioner. The
head sunk down once more. The stroke was repeated again and
again ; but still the neck was not severed, and the body continued
to move. Yells of rage and horror rose from the crowd. Ketch
flung down the axe with a curse. " 1 cannot do it," he said ; " my
heart fails me." " Take up the axe, man," cried the sheriff. " Fling
him over the rails," roared the mob. At length the axe was taken
up. Two more blows extinguished the last remains of life ; but a
knife was used to separate the head from the shoulders. The
crowd was wrought up to such an ecstasy of rage tliat the exe-
cutioner was in danger of being torn in pieces, and was con-
veyed away under a strong guard.*
In the meantime many handkerchiefs were dipped in the
Duke's blood ; for by a large part of the multitude he was
regarded as a martyr who had died for the Protestant religion.
The head and body were placed in a coffin covered with black
velvet, and were laid privately under the communion table of
Saint Peter's Chapel in the Tower. Within four years the
pavement of the chancel was again disturbed, and hard by the
remains of Monmouth were laid the remains of Jeffreys. In
truth there is no sadder spot on the earth than that little ceme-
tery. Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey
and St. Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration
and imperishable renown ; not, as in our humblest churches
and churchyards, with everything that is most endearing in
social and domestic charities ; but with whatever is darkest in
human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph
of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude,
the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen great-
ness and of blighted fame. Thither have been carried, through
successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourn-
er following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the
captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of
JAMES THE SECOND. 563
senates, and tne ornaments of courts. Thither was borne,
before the window where Jane Grey was praying, the man-
gled corpse of Guilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of
Somerset, and Protector of the realm, reposes there by the
brother wliom he murdered. There has mouldered away the
headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Car-
dinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better
age and to have died in a better cause. There are laid John
Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral, and
Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Lord High Treasurer.
There, too, is another Essex, on whom nature and fortune had
lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valour, grace,
genius, royal favour, popular applause, conducted to an early
and ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs of the
great house of Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and
Philip, eleventh Earl of Arundel. Here and there, among the
thick graves of unquiet and aspiring statesmen, lie more delicate
fufferers; Margaret of Salisbury, the last of the proud name oi
Plantagenet ; and those two fair Queens who perished by the
jealous rage of Henry. Such was the dus!; with which the dust
of Monmouth mingled.*
Yet a few months, and the quiet village of Toddington, in
Bedfordshiie, witnessed a still sadder funeral. Near that vil-
lage stood an ancient and stately hall, the seat of the Went-
worths. The transept of the parish church had long been their
burial place. To that burial place, in the spring which followed
the death of Monmouth, was borne the cofrin of the young Bar-
oness Wentworth of Nettlestede. Her family reared a sump-
tuous mausoleum over her remains : but a less costly memorial
of her was long contemplated with far deeper interest. Her
name, carved by the hand of him whom she loved too well,
was, a few years ago, still discernible on a tree in the adjoining
park.
It was not by Lady Wentworth alone that the memory of
* I cannot refrain from expressing my disgust at the barbarous stupidity which
has transformed this most interesting little church into the likeness of a meeting-
house ill a manufacturing town.
564 HISTORY OP ENCfLAND,
Monmouth was cherished with idolatrous fondness. His hold
on the hearts of the people lasted till the generation which had
seen him had passed away. Ribands, buckles, and other trifling
articles of apparel which he had worn, were treasured np as
precious relics by those who had fought under him at Sedge-
moor. Old men who long survived him desired, when they
Were dying, that these trinkets might be buried with them.
One button of gold thread which narrowly escaped this fate may
still be seen at a house which overlooks the field of battle.
Nay. such was the devotion^ of the people to their unhappy
favourite that, in the face of the strongest evidence by which
the fact of a death was ever verified, many continued to cherish
a hope that he was still living, and that he would again appear
in arms. A person, it was said, who was remarkably like Mon-
mouth, had sacrificed himself to save the Protestant hero. The
vulgar long continued, at every important crisis, to whisper
that the time was at hand, and that King Monmouth would soon
show himself. In 1686, a knave who had pretended to be the
Duke, and had levied contributions in several villages of Wilt-
shire, was apprehended, and whipped from Newgate to Tyburn.
In 169-^, when England had long enjoyed constitutional freedom
under a new dynast}^, the son of an innkeeper passed himself on
the yeomanry of Sussex as their beloved Monmouth, and de
frauded many who were by no means of the lowest class. Five
hundred pounds were collected for him. The farmers provided
him with a horse. Their wives sent him baskets of chickens
and ducks, and were lavish, it was said, of favours of a more
tender kind ; for in gallantry at least, the counterfeit was a not
unwortliy representative of the original. When this impostor
was thrown into prison for his fraud, his followers maintained
him in luxury. Several of them appeared at the bar to coun-
tenance him when he was tried at the Horsham assizes. So
long did this delusion last that, when George the Third had
been some years on the English throne, Voltaire thought it
necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that the man in the
>ron mask was the Duke of Monmouth,*
*Ob8ervator. August 1, 1685; y^ mHum
^AMES THK SECOND. 563
It is, perhaps, a fact scarcely less remarkable that, to this
day, the inhabitants of some ])arts of the West of Eng-
land, when any bill affecting tlicir interest is before the
House of Lords, think themselves entitled to claim the help of
the Duke of Bucclcuch, the descendant of the unfortunate leader
for whom their ancestors bled.
The history of Monmouth would alone suffice to refute the
imputation of inconstancy which is so frequently thrown on
the common people. The common people are sometimes in-
constant ; for they are human beings. But that they are in-
constant as compared with the educated classes, with aristoc-
racies, or with princes, may be confidently denied. It would
be easy to name demagogues whose popularity has remained
undiminiidied v/hile sovereigns and parliaments have withdrawn
their coniidence from a long succession of statesmen. When
Swift had survived his faculties many years, the Irish populace
still continued to light bonfires on his birthday, in commemora-
tion of the services which they fancied that he had rendered to
his country when his mind was in full vigour. "While seven
administrations were raised to power and hurled from it in
consequence of court intrigues or of changes in the sentiments
of the higher classes of society, the profligate Wilkes retained
his hold -on the affections of a rabble wliom he pillaged and
ridiculed. Politicians, who, in 1807, liad sought to curry favour
phrey W -.nley, dated Aug. 25, IG98, in Iho Aubrey Collection; Voltaire, Diet.
Pliil. Tiiere are, in llic Pepysiau Colltretion, several ballads written after Mon-
mouth s death which represent liim as living, and predict his speedy retura. iwit
give two epecimens.
•* Thoii;r'i this is a dismal stor.v
Of the fall of • ly design,
Yet 1'-'' come a;^a!n ■ clory.
If Hive till cisIU;-mne>
for I'll nave a etronger army
And of ; raunitiou store."
n 5
" Then shall MouMOufa In hia irInH«»
Unto nis Knglisli frien^' ; appoon
And ill ttifle aU :ucU .'arlea
ABare --.iicd everywhere-
•• They'll sjc I was not BO C-graoea;
lo be takeii gathering pease.
Or in a cocU of h:ry iip braidcdi
■What ctrang etortc s now are the«« » *
566 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
with George the Tliird by defending Caroline of Brunswick,
were not ashamed, in 1820, to curry favour with George the
Fourth by persecuting her. But in 1820, as in 1807, the whole
body of working men was fanatically devoted to her cause. So
it was with Monmouth. In 1G80, he had been adored alike by
the gentry and by the peasantry of the West. In 1G85 he
came again. To the gentry he had become an object of aver-
sion : but by the peasantry he was still loved with a love strong
as death, with a love not to be extinguished by misfortunes or
faults, by the flight from Sedgemoor, by the letter from Ring-
wood, or by the tears and abject supplications at Whitehall.
The charge which may with justice be brought against the
common people is, not that they are inconstant, but that they
almost invariably choose their favourite so ill that their con-
stancy is a vice and not a virtue.
While the execution of ]\Ionmouth occupied the thoughts of
the Londoners, the counties which had risen against the govern-
ment were enduring all that a ferocious soldiery could inflict.
Feversham had been summo::3d to the court, where honours
and rewards which he little deserved awaited him. lie was
made a Knight of the Garter and Captain of the first and most
lucrative troop of Life Guards : but Court and City laughed at
his military exploits ; and the wit of Buckingham gave forth
its last feeble flash at the expense of the general who had won
a battle in bed.* Feversham left in command at Bridgewater
Colonel Percy Kirke, a military adventurer whose vices had
been developed by the worst of all schools, Tangier. Kirke
had during some years commanded the garrison of that towi:
and had been constantly employed in hostilities against tribea
of foreign barbarians, ignorant of the laws which regulate the
warfare of civilized and Christian nations. Within the ram-
parts of his fortress he was a despotic prince. The only check
on his tyranny was the fear of being called to account by a
distant and a careless government. He might therefore safely
proceed to the most audacious excesses of rapacity, licentious-
ness, and cruelty. He lived with boundless dissoluteness, and
* London Gazette, August 3, 1685 ; the Rattle of Sedgemoor, a Farce.
JAMES THE SECOND. 567
procured by extortion the me^ns of indulgence. No goods
could be sold till Kirke had had the refusal of them. No ques-
tion of right could be decided till Kirke had been bribed. Once,
merely from a malignant whiai, he staved all the wine in a
vintner's cellar. On another occasion he drove all the Jews
from Tangier. Two of them he sent to the Spanish Inquisition,
ivhich forthwith burned them. Under this iron domination
icarce a complaint was heard ; for hatred was effectually kept
down by terror. Two persons who had been refractory were
found murdered ; and it was universally believed that they liad
been slain by Kirke's order. When his soldiers displeased him
he flogged them with merciless severity : but he indemnified
them by permitting them to sleep on watch, to reel drunk about
the streets, to rob, beat, and insult the merchants and the
labourers.
When Tangier was abandoned, Kirke returned to England.
He still continued to command his old soldiers, who were
desi'gnated sometimes as the First Tangier Regiment, and some-
times as Queen Catharine's Regmient, As they had been levied
for the purpose of waging war on an infidel nation, they bore
on their flag a Christian emblem, the Paschal Lamb. In allu-
sion to this device, and with a bitterly ironical meaning, these
men, the rudest and most ferocious in the English army, were
called Kirke's Lambs. The regiment, now the second of the
line, still retains this ancient badge, which is however thrown
into the shade by decorations honourably earned in Egypt, in
Spain, and in the heart of Asia.*
Such was the captain and such the soldiers who were now
let loose on the people of Somersetshire. From Bridgewater
Kirke marched to Taunton. He was accompanied by two
carts filled with v/ounded rebels whose gashes had not been
dressed, and by a long drove of prisoners on foot, who were
chained two and two. Several of these he hanged as soon as
he reached Taunton, without the form of a trial. They were
not suffered even to take leave of their nearest relations. The
* Pepys's Diary, kept at Tangier ; Historical Reoordsof th« Second or Queen'*
Boyal Kegimeat of Foot.
568 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
signpost of the White Hart Inii served for a gallows. It is
said that the work of death went on in sight of the windows
where the officers of the Tangier regiment were carousing, and
that at every health a wretch was turned off. When the legs
of the dying man quivered in the last agony, the colonel ordered
the drums to strike up. He would give the rebels, he said,
music to their dancing. The tradition runs that one of the
captives was not even allowed the indulgence of a speedy death.
Twice he was suspended from the signpost, and twice cut
down. Twice he was asked if he repented of his treason ; and
twice he replied that, if the thing were to do again, he would
do it. Then he was tied up for the last time. So many dead
bodies were quartered that the executioner stood ankle deep in
blood. He was assisted by a poor man whose loyalty was sus-
pected, and who was compelled to ransom his own life by seeth-
ing the remains of his friends in pitch. The peasant who had
consented to perform this hideous office afterwards returned to
his plough. But a mark like that of Cain was upon him. He
was known through his village bv tlie horrible name of Tom
Boilman. The rustics loner continued to relate that, thouorh he
had. l)y his sinful and shameful deed, saved himself from the
vengeance of the Lambs, he had not escaped the vengeance of
a higher power. In a great storm he fled for shelter under an
oak, and was there struck dead by lightning.*
The number of those who were thus butchered cannot now
be ascertained. Nine were entered in the parish registers of
Taunton : but those registers contained the names of such only
as had Christian burial. Those who were hanged in chains, and
those whose heads and limbs were sent to the neighbouring
villages, must have been much more numerous. It was believed
in London, at the time, that Kirke put a hundred captives to
death during the week which followed the battle. f
Cruelty, however, was not this man's only passion. He
loved money ; and was no novice in the arts of extortion. A
♦ Bloody Assizes ; Burnet, i. G47 ; Lnttrell's Diary, Jtily 15, 1685 ; Locke's
Western Rebellion ; Toulniiii's Ilistoi y of Taunton, edited by Savage,
t Luttrell's Diary, July 15, lt;85 ; Toulmin's Hist, oi Taunton.
JAMES THE SECOND.
569
safe conduct might be bought of him for thirty or forty pounds;
and such a safe conduct, though of no value in law, enabled the
purchaser to pass the post of the Lambs without molestation, to
reach a seaport, and to fly to a foreign country. The ships
which were bound for New England were crowded at this junc-
ture with so many fugitives from Sedgemoor that there was
great danger lest the water and provisions should fail.*
Kirke was also, in his own coarse and ferocious way, a man
of pleasure; and nothing is more probable than that he employ-
ed his power for the purpose of gratifying his licentious appe-
tites. It was reported that he conquered the virtue of a beauti-
ful woman by promising to spare the life of one to whom she
was strongly attached, and that, after she had yielded, he show-
ed her suspended on the gallows the lifeless remains of him for
whose sake she had sacrificed her honour. This tale an impar-
tial judge must reject. It is unsupported by proof. The ear-
liest authority for it is a poem written by Pomfret. The respect-
able historians of that age, while they speak with just severity
of the crimes of Kirke, either omit all mention of this most
artrocious crime, or mention it as a thing rumoured but not prov-
ed. Those who tell the story tell it with such variations as de-
pr-ive it of all title to credit. Some lay the scene at Taunton,
some at Exeter. Some make the heroine of the tale a maiden,
some- a married woman. The relation for whom the shameful
ransom was paid is described by some as her father, by some as
her brother, and by some as her husband. Lastly the story is
one which, long before Kirke was born, had been told of many
other oppressors, and had become a favourite theme of novelists
and dramatists. Two politicians of the fifteenth century, Rhyn-
sault, the favorite of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and Oliver le
Dain, the favourite of Lewis the Eleventh of France, had been
accused of the same crime. Cintio had taken it for the subject
of a romance. Whetstone had made out of Cintio's narrative
the rude play of Promos and Cassandra; and Shakspeare had
borrowed from Whetstone the plot of the noble tragicomedy of
* OMmixcD, 703; Life snd Errors of Join Dunton, chap. vii.
570 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Measure for Measure. As Kirke was not the first, so he was
not the last, to whom this excess of wickedness was popularly
imputed. During the reaction which followed the Jacobin tyr-
anny in France, a very similar chai'ge was brought against
Joseph Lebon, one of the most odious agents of the Committee
of Public Safety, and, after enquiry, was admitted even by his
prosecutors to be unfounded.*
The government was dissatisfied with Kirke, not on account
of the barbarity with which he had treated his needy prisoners
but on account of the interested lenity which he had shown to
rich delinquents. t He was soon recalled from the West. A
less irregular and more cruel massacre was about to be perpe-
trated. The vengeance was deferred during some weeks. It
was thought desirable that the Western Circuit should not begin
till the other circuits had terminated. In the meantime the
gaols of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire were filled with thou-
sands of captives, The chief friend and protector of these un-
happy men in their extremity was one who abhorred their re-
ligious and political opinions, one whose order they hated,
and to whom they had done unprovoked wrong, Bishop Ken,
That good prelate used all his influence to soften the gaolers, and
retrenched from his own episcopal state that he might be able
to make some addition to the coarse and scanty fare of those
who had defaced his beloved Cathedral. His conduct on this
occasion was of a piece with his whole life. His intellect was in-
deed darkened by many superstitions and prejudices: but his
moral character, when impartially reviewed, sustains a compari-
son with any in ecclesiastical histoiy, and seems to approach,
* The silence of Whig writers so credulous and so malevolent as Oidmixon and
the compilers of the Western Martyrology would alone seem to me to settle the ques-
tion. It also deserves to be remarked that the story of Rhynsault is told by Steele in
the Spectator, No. 491. Surely it is hardly possible to believe that, if a crime exactly re-
sembling that of Rhynsault had been committed within living memory in England by
an officer of James the Second, Steele, who was indiscreetly and unseasonably for-
ward to display his'SMiiggism, would have made no allusion to that fact. For the case
of Lebon, see the Moniteur, 4 Messidor, Tan 3.
t Sunderland to Kirke. July 14 and "iS, 1685. "His Majesty," says Sunderland,
"commands me to signify to you his dislike of those proceedings, and desires you to
take care that no person concerned in the rebellion be at large." It is but just to add
that, in the same letter, Kirke is blamed for allowing his soldiers to live at free
quarter.
JAMES THE SECOND. 571
as near as human infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of
Christian virtue.*
His labour of love was of no long duration. A rapid and
effectual gaol delivery vpas at hand. Early in September,
Jeffreys, accompanied by four other judges, set out on that cir-
cuit of which the memory will last as long as our race and
language. The officers who commanded the troops in the dis-
tricts through which his course lay had orders to furnish him
with whatever militarj'- aid he might require. Kis ferocious
temper needed no spur; yet a spur was applied. The health
and spirits of the Lord Keeper had given away. He had been
deeply mortified by the coldness of the King and by the inso-
lence of the Chief Justice, and could find little consolation in
looking back on a life, not indeed blackened by any atrocious
crime, but sullied by cowardice, selfishness, and servility. So
deeply was the unhappy man humbled that, when he appeared
for the last time in Westminster Hall, he took with him a nose-
gay to hide his face, because, as he afterwards owned, he could
not bear the eyes of the bar and of the audience. The pros-
pect of his approaching end seems to have inspired him with
unwonted courage. He determined to dischai*ge his conscience,
requested an audience of the King, spoke earnestly of the dan-
gers inseparable from violent and arbitrary counsels, and con-
demned the lawless cruelties which the soldiers had committed
in Somersetshire. He soon afte« retired from London to die.
He breathed his last a few days after the Judges set out for
the West. It was immediately notified to Jeffreys that he
might expect the Great Seal as the reward of faithful and vig-
orous service.!
* I should be very glad if I could give credit to the popular story that Ken, imme-
diately nfter the battle of Sedgmoore, represented to the chiefs of the royal erniy the
illegality of military executions. He would, I doubt not, have exerted all his influ-
ence on' the side of law and'of mercy, if he had been present. But there is ro trust-
worthy evidence that he was then in the West at all. Indeed what we kn9w about
his proceedings at this time amounts very nearly to proof of an alibi. It is certain
from the Journals of the House of Lords that, on the Thursday before the battle, he
was at Westminster; It is equally certain that, on the Monday after the bt.ttle, he
was with Monmouth in the Tower ; and, in that age, a journey from London to Bridge-
water and back again was no lisht thing.
tNorth's Life of Guildford, 260, 2H3, 273; Mackintosh's View of the Reign of
?ames the Second, page 16, note; Letter of Jeffreys to Sunderlaad, September 5, l(J85i
572 HISTORY OF ENGLANP.
At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commis-
sion. Hampshire had not been the theatre of war; but many
of the vanquished rebels had, like their leader, fled thither.
Two of them, John Hickes, a Nonconformist divine, and Richard
Nelthorpe, a lawyer who had been outlawed for taking part in
the Rye House plot, had sought refuge at the house of Alice,
widow of John Lisle. John Lisle had sate in the Long Par-
liament and in the High Court of Justice, had been a com-
missioner of the Great Seal in the days of the Commonwealth,
and had been created a Lord by Cromwell. The titles given
by the Protector had not been recognized by any government
which had ruled England since the downfall of his house; but
they appear to have been often used in conversation, even by
Royalists. John Lisle's widow was therefore commonly known
as the Lady Alice. She was related to many respectable, and
to some noble, families; and she was generally esteemed even
by the Tory gentlemen of her country. For it was well known
to them that she had deeply regretted some violent acts in
which her husband had borne a part, that she had shed bitter
tears for Chai-les the Fii'st, and that she had protected and re-
lieved many Cavaliers in their distress. The same womanly
kindness, which had led her to befriend the Royalists in their
time of trouble, would not suffer her to refuse a meal and a hid-
ing place to the wretched men who now entreated her to pro-
tect them. She took them inio her house, set meat and drink
before them, and showed them whei'e they might take rest.
The next moi-ning her dwelling was surrounded by soldiers.
Strict search was made. Hickes was found concealed in the
malthouse, and Nelthorpe in the chimney. If Lady Alice
knew her efuests to have been concerned in the insurrection, she
was undoubtedly guilty of what, in strictness, was a capital
crime. For the law of principal and accessory, as respects high
treason, then was, and is to this day, in a state disgraceful to
English jurisprudence. In cases of felony, a distinction,
founded on justice and reason, is made between the principal
and the accessory after the fact. He who conceals from justice
one whom he knows to be a murderer is liable to punishment,
JAMES THE SECOND. 573
but not to the punishment of murder. He, on the other hand,
who shelters one whom he knows to be a traitor is, according to
all our jurists, guilty of high treason. It is unnecessary to
point out the absurdity and cruelty of a law which includes
under the same definition, and visits with the same penalty,
offenses lying at the opposite extremes of the scale of guilt.
The feeling which makes the most loyal subject shrink from
the thought of giving up to a shameful death the rebel who,
vanquished, hunted down, and in mortal agony, begs for a
morsel of bread and a cup of water, may be a weakness; but
it is sui-ely a weakness very nearly allied to virtue; a weakness
which, constituted as human beings are, we can hardly eradi-
cate fi'om the mind without eradicating many noble and benev-
olent sentiments. A wise and good ruler may not think it right
to sanction this weakness; but he will generally connive at it,
or punish it very tenderly. In no case will he treat it as a
crime of the blackest dye. Whether Flora Macdonald was
justified in concealing the attainted heir of the Stuarts, whether
a brave soldier of our own time was justified in assisting the
escape of Lavelette, are questions on which casuists may differ;
but to class such actions with the crimes of Guy Faux and
Fieschi is an outrage to humanity and common sense. Such,
however, is the classification of our law. It^is evident that
nothing but a lenient administration could make such a state of
the law endurable. And it is just to say that, during many
generations, no English government, save one, has treated with
rigour persons guilty merely of harbouring defeated and flying
insurgents. To women, especially, has been granted, by a kind
of tacit prescription, the right of indulging, in the midst of havoc
and vengeance, that compassion which is the most endearing of
all their charms. Since the beginning of the great civil war,
numerous rebels, some of them far more important than Hickes
or Nelthorpe, have been protected from the severity of victori-
ous governments by female adroitness and generosity. But no
English ruler who has been thus baffled, the savage and implac-
able James alone excepted, has had the barbarity even to think
of putting a lady to a cruel anjd shameful death for so venial
and amiable a transgression.
i>f4 HISTu«T OF F.TGLAND.
Odious as the law was, it was strained for the purpose of
destroying Alice Lisle. She could not, according to the doc-
trine laid down by the highest authority, be convicted till after
the conviction of the i*ebels whom she had harboured.* She
was, however, set to the bar before either Hickes or Nelthorpe
had been tried. It was no easy matter, in such a case, to
obtain a verdict for the crown. The witnesses prevaricated.
The jury, consisting of the principal gentlemen of Hampshire,
shi'ank from the thought of sending a fellow creature to the
stake for conduct which seemed deserving rather of praise
than of blame. Jeffreys was beside himself with fury. This
was the first case of treason on the circuit; and there seemed
to be a strong probability ihat his prey would escape him.
He stormed, cursed, and swore in language which no wellbred
man would have used at a race or a cockfight. One witness
named Dunne, partly from concern for Lady Alice, and partly
from fright at the threats and maledictions of the Chief Justice,
entirely lost his head, and at last stood silent. " Oh, how hax-d
the truth is," said Jeffreys, " to come oul: of a lying Pi-esby-
terian knave." The witness, after a pause of some minutes,
stammered a few unmeaning words. " Was there ever," ex-
claimed the judge, with an oath, "was there ever such a villain
on the face of the earth? Dost thou believe that there is a
God? Dost thoii believe in hell fire? Of all the witnesses that
I ever met with I never saw thy fellow." Still the poor man,
scared out of his senses, remained mute; and again Jeffreys
burst forth. " I hope, gentlemen of the jury, that you take
T-jotice of the horrible carriage of this fellow. How can one
Aelp abhorring both these men and their religion? A Turk is
a saint to such a fellow as this. A Pagan would be ashamed of
such villainy. Oh blessed Jesus! What a generation of vipers
do we live among!" "I cannot tell what to say, my Lord,"
faltered Dunne. The judge again broke forth into a volley of
oaths. " Was there ever," he cried, "such an impudent rascal?
Hold the candle to him that we may see his brazen face. You,
gentlemen, that are of counsel for the crown, see that an infor-
* See the preamble •! the Aet ef PsurlUnent rerMsiag her attainder.
JAMES THE SECOND. S7t
mation for perjury be preferred against this fellow." After th«
witnesses had been thus handled, the Lady Alice was called on
for her defence. She began by saying, what may possibly havo
been true, that though she knew Hickes to be in trouble when
she took him in, she did not know or suspect that ha had been
concerned in the rebellion. He was a divine, a man of peace.
It had, therefore, never occurred to her that he could have borne
arms against the government; and she had supposed that he
wished to conceal himself because warrants were out against him
for field preaching. The Chief Justice began to storm. " But
I will tell you. There is not one of those lying, snivelling,
canting Presbyterians but, one way or another, had a hand in
the rebellion. Presbytery has all manner of villany in it.
Nothing but Presbytery could have made Dunne such a rogue.
Show me a Presbyterian, and Til show thee a lying knave.
He summed up in the same style, declaimed during an hour
against Whigs and Dissenters, and reminded the jury that the
prisoner's husband had borne a part in the death of Charles the
First, a fact which had not been proved by any testimony, and
which, if it had been proved, would have been utterly irrelevant
to the issue. The jury retired, and remained long in consul-
tation. The judge grew impatient. He could not conceive, he
said, how, in so plain a case, they should even have left the box.
He sent a messenger to tell them that, if they did not instantly
return, he would adjourn the court and lock them up all night,
Thus put to the torture, they came, but came to say that they
doubted whether the charge had been made out. Jeffreys ex-
postulated with them vehemently, and, after another consulta-
tion, they gave a reluctant verdict of Guilty.
On the following morning sentence was pronounced. Jef-
freys gave directions that Alice Lisle should be burned alive
that very afternoon. This excess of barbarity moved the pity
and indignation even of the class which was most devoted to the
crown. The clergy of Winchester Cathedral remonstrated with
the Chief Justice, who, brutal as he was, was not mad enough
to risk a quarrel on such a subject with a body so much respect-
ed by the Tory party. He consented to put off the execution
576 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
five (lays. Duinng that time the friends of the prisoner besought
James to be merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her.
Fevershara, whose recent victory had increased his influence at
court, and who, it is said, had been bribed to take the compas-
sionate side, spoke in her favour. Clarendon, the King's
brother-in-law, pleaded her cause. But all was vain. The
utmost that could be obtained was that her sentence should be
commuted from burning to beheading. She was put to death
on a scaffold in the marketplace of Winchester, and underwent
her fate with serene courage.*
In Hampshire, Alice Lisle was the only victim; but, on the
day following her execution, Jeffreys reached Dorchester, the
principal town of the county in which Monmouth had landed;
and the judicial massacre began. The court was hung, by order
of the Chief Justice, with scarlet; and this innovation seemed
to the multitude to indicate a bloody purpose. It was also
rumored that, when the clergyman who preached the assize
sermon enforced the dut}'^ of mercy, the ferocious mouth of th(
Judge was distorted by an ominous grin. These things made
men augur ill of what was to follow.f
More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The
work seemed heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making
it light. He let it be understood that the only chance of obtain-
ing pardon or respite was to plead guilty. Twenty-nine persons,
who put themselves on their country, and were convicted, were
ordered to be tied up without delay. The remaining prisoners
pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and ninety-two received
sentence of death. The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire
amounted to seventy-foui*.
From Dorchester, Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil
war had barely grazed the frontier of Devonshire. Here,
therefore, comparatively few persons were capitally punished.
Somersetshire, the chief seat of the rebellion, had been reserved
* Trial of Alice Lisle in the Collection of State Trials ; Act of the First of William
and Mary for ami ulling and makuig void the Attainder of Alice Lisle, widow ; Burnet,
i, 649; Caveat against tlie Whigs.
t Bloody Assizes.
JAMES THE SECOND. 577
for thfe last and most fearful vengeauce. In this county two
hundred and thirty-three prisoners were in a few days hanged,
drawn, and quartered. At every spot where tv/o roads met, on
every marketplace, on the green of every large village which
had furnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering
in the wind, or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the
air, and made the traveller sick with horror. In many parishes
the peasantry could not assemble in the house of God without
leeing the ghastly face of a neighbour grinning at them over
the porch. The Chief Justice was ali himself. His spirits rose
higher and higher as the work went on. He laughed, shouted,
joked, and swore in such a way that many thought him drunk
from morning to night. But in him it was not easy to distin-
guish the madness produced by evil passions from the madness
produced by brandy. A prisoner affirmed that the witnesses
who appeared against him were not entitled to credit. One of
them, he said, was a Papist, and another a prostitute. " Tliou
impudent rebel," exclaimed the Judge, " to reflect on the King's
evidence! I see thee, villain, I see thee already with the halter
round thy neck." Another produced testimony that he was a
good Protestant. " Protestant ! " said Jeffreys ; " you mean
Presbyterian. I'll hold you a wager of it. I can smell a
Presbyterian forty miles." One wretched man moved the pity
even of bitter Tories. " My Lord," they said, " this poor crea-
ture is on the parish." " Do not trouble yourselves," said the
Judge, " I will ease the parish of the burden." It was not only
against the prisoners that his fury broke fortlu Gentlemen and
noblemen of high consideration and stainless loyalty, who ven
tured to bring to his notice any extenuating circumstance, wers
almost sure to receive what he called, in the coarse dialect
which he had learned in the pothouses of Whitechapel, a lick
with the rough side of his tongue. Lord Stawell, a Tory peer,
who could not conceal his horror at the remorseless manner in
which his poor neighbours were butchered, was punished by
having a corpse suspended in chains at his park gate.* In such
flpectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long told
* Locke's Western Rebellion.
37
578 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
over the cider by the Christmas fires of the farmers of Somer-
setshire, Withiu the last forty years, peasants, in some districts,
well knew the accursed spots, and passed them unwillingly after
sunset.*
Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all
his predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that
the number of persons whom he put to death in one month, and
in one shire, very much exceeded the number of all the political
offenders who have been put to death in our island since the
Revolution. The rebellions of 1715 and 1745 were of longer
duration, of wider extent,, and of more formidable aspect than
that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has not been gen-
erally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or after
the rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side
of clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added
together will appear to have been few indeed when compared
with those which disgraced the Bloody Assizes. The number
of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged on this circuit was three
hundred and twenty.!
Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers
had been generally odious. But they were, for the most part,
men of blameless life, and of high religious profession. They
were regarded by themselves, and by a large proportion of their
neighbours, not as wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with
blood the truth of the Protestant religion. Very few of the
convicts professed any repentance for what they had done.
Many, animated by the old Puritan spirit, met death, not merely
with fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain that the
ministers of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt
of rebellion and on the importance of priestly absolution. The
claim of the King to unbounded authority in things temporal,
and the claim of the clergy to the spiritual power of binding
and loosing, moved the bitter scorn^of the intrepid sectaries.
* This I can attest from my own childish recollections.
t Lord Lonsdale says seven hundred ; Burnet six hundred. I have followed
the list which the Judges sent to the Treasun-, and which may still he seen there
ia the letter book of 1685. See the Bloody Assizes ; Locke's Western Eebellion ;
the Panegyric on Lord Jeffreys ; Burnet, i. C48 ; Eachard, iii. 775; Oldmiion,
705.
JAMES THE SECOND. 579
Some of them composed hymns in the dungeon, and chaunted
them on the fatal sledge. Christ, they sang while they were
undressing for the butchery, would soon come to rescue Ziou
and to make war on Babylon, would set up his standard, would
blow his trumpet, and would requite his foes tenfold for all the
evil which had been inflicted on his servants. The dying words
of these men were noted down : their farewell letters were kept
as treasures ; and, in this way, with the help of some inventioii
and exaggeration, was formed a copious supplement to the
Marian martyrology.*
A few cases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes,
a retired officer of the parliamentary army, and one of those
zealots who would own no king but King Jesus, had been taken
at Sedgemoor. His arm had -been frightfully mangled and
shattered in the battle ; and, as no surgeon was at hand, the
stout old soldier amputated it himself. He w^as carried up to
London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make
no submission. " I am an aged man," he said ; " and what re-
mains to me of life is not worth a falsehood or a baseness. I
have always been a republican ; and I am so still." He was
sent back to the West and hanged. Tlie people remarked with
awe and wonder that the beasts which were to dras: him to the
gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubt-
ed not that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in
the way sword in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to
the inferior animals. " Stop, gentlemen," he cried : "let me
go on foot. There is more in this than you think. Remember
how the ass saw him whom the prophet could not see." He
walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a
smile, prayed fervently that God would hasten the downfall of
Antichrist and the deliverance of England, and went up the
ladder with an apology for mounting so awkwardly. " You
see," he said, " I have but one arm." f
* Some of the prayers, exhortations, and hymns of the sufferers will be found
in the Bloody Assizes.
t Bloody Assizes ; Locke's "Western Rebellion ; Lord Lonsdale's Memoirs ;
Account of the Battle of Sedgemoor In the Hardwicke Papers. The story in
the Life of James the Second, ii. 43, is not taken fro m the King's manuscripts,
and sufiioiently refutes itself.
580 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
Not less courageously died Christopher Battiscombe, a young
Templar of good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an
agreeable provincial town proud of its taste and refinement,
was regarded by all as the model of a fine gentleman. Great
interest was made to save him. It was believed througfh the
West of England that he was engaged to a young lady of gentle
blood, the sister of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at the
feet of Jeffreys to beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her
from him with a jest so hideous that to repeat it would be an
offence against decency and humanity. Her lover suffered at
Lyme piously and courageously.*
A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant
brothers, "William and Benjamin Hewling. They were young,
handsome, accomplished, and well connected. Their maternal
grandfather was named Kiffin. He was one of the first mer-
chants in London, and was generally considered as the head of
the Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewling
on tlie trial with characteristic brutality. " You have a grand-
father," he said, " who deserves to be hanged as richly as you."
The poor lad, who was only nineteen, suffered death with so
much meekness and fortitude, that an officer of the army who
attended the execution, and who had made himself remarkable
by rudeness and severity, was strangely melted, and said, " I
do not believe that my Lord Chief Justice himself could be
proof against this." Hopes were entertained that Benjamin
would be pardoned. One victim of tender years was surely
enough for one house to furnish. Even Jeffreys was, or pre-
tended to be, inclined to lenity. The truth was that one of
his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations, and whom,
therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated intercessors,
pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was allowed
for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner went to
Whitehall with a petition. Many courtiers wished her success ;
and Churchill, among whose numerous faults cruelty had no
place, obtained admittance for her. " I wish well to your suit
* Bloody Assizes ; Locke's "Western Kebellion ; Humble Petition of Widows
and Fatherless Children in the "West of England ; Panegyric on Lord Jetlreys.
JAMES THE SECOND. 581
with all my heart," he said, as they stood together in the
antechamber ; " but do not flatter yourself with hopes. This
marble," — and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece, — " is not
harder than the King." Tlie prediction proved true. James
was inexorable. Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage,
amidst lamentations in which the soldiers who kept guard round
the gallows could not refrain from joining.*
Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be
pitied than some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom
Jeffreys was unable to bring home the charge of high treason
were convicted of misdemeanours, and were sentenced to scourg-
ing not less terrible than that which Gates had undergone. A
woman for some idle words, such as had been uttered by half
the women in the districts where the war had raged, was con-
demned to be whipped through all the market towns in the
county of Dorset. She suffered part of her punishment before
Jeffreys returned to London ; but, when he was no longer in
the West, the gaolers, with the humane connivance of the magis-
trates, took on themselves the responsibility of sparing her any
further torture. A still more frightful sentence was passed on
a lad named Tutchin, who was tried for seditious words. He
was, as usual, interrupted in his defence by libaldry and scurril-
ity from the judgment seat. " You are a rebel ; and all your
family have been rebels since Adam. They tell me that you
are a poet. I'll cap verses with you. The sentence was that
the boy should be imprisoned seven years, and should, during
that period, be flogged through every market town in Dorset-
shire every year. The women in the galleries burst into tears.
The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. " My
Lord," said he, " the prisoner is very young. There are many
market towns ni our county. The sentence amounts to whip-
ping once a fortnight for seven years." " If he is a young man,"
♦ As to the Hewlings, I have followed Kiffin's Memoirs, and Mr. Hewling Lu-
Bon'8 narrative, which will be found in the second edition of the Hughes Cor-
respondence, vol. ii. Appendix. The accounts in Locke's Westt.n Rebellion and
in the Panegyric on Jeffrej's are full of errors. Great part of the account in
the Bloody Assizes was written by Kiffin, and agrees word for word with hia
Memoirs.
§82 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
said Jeffreys, " he is an old rogue. Ladies, you do not know the
villain as well as I do. The punishmeut is not half bad enough
for him. All the interest in England shall not alter it." Tutchin
in his despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity, that he
might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at this con-
juncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it seemed
highly improbable that the sentence would ever be executed, the
Chief Justice consented to remit it, in return for a bribe which re-
duced the prisoner to poverty. The temper of Tutchin, not orig-
inally very mild, was exasperated to madness by what he had
undergone. He lived to be known as one of the most acrimonious
and pertinacious enemies of the House of Stuart and of the
Tory party.*
The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was
eight hundi'ed and forty-one. These men, more wretched. than
their associates who suffered death, were distributed into gangs,
and bestowed on persons who enjoyed favour at court. The
conditions of the gift were that the convicts should be carried
beyond sea as slaves, that they sliould not be emancipated for
ten years, and that the place of their banishment should be some
West Indian island. This last article was studiously framed
for the purpose of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In
New England or New Jersey they would have found a popula-
tion kindly disposed to tliem and a climate not unfavourable to
to their health and vigour. It was therefore determined that
they should be sent to colonies where a Puritan could hope to
inspire litila sympathy, and where a labourer born in the tem-
perate zone could hope to enjoy little health. Such was the
state of the slave market that these bondmen, long as was the
passage, and sickly as they were likely to prove, were still very
valuable. It was estimated by Jeffreys that, on an average,
each of them, after all charges were paid, would be worth from
ten to fifteen pounds. There was therefore much angry com-
petition for grants. Some Tories in the "West conceived that
tliey had, by their exertions and sufferings during the insurrection,
gee Tutcbin's account of his own case in the Bloody AasizcB.
JAMES THE SECOND. 583
earned a right to share in the profits which had been eagerly
enatched up by the sycophauts of AVhitehall. The courtiers,
however, were victorious.*
The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes
who are now carried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from
the best information which is at jjrcsent accessible that more
than one fifth of those who were shipped were flung to the
sharks before the end of the voyage. The human cargoes were
stowed close in the holds of small vessels. So little space was
allowed that the wretches, many of whom were still tormented
by unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without
lying on one another. They were never suffered to go on deck.
The hatchway was constantly watched by sentinels armed with
hangers and blunderbusses. In the dungeon below all was
darkness, stench, lamentation, disease and death. Of ninety-
nine convicts who were carried out in one vessel, twenty-two
died before they reached Jamaica, although the voyage was per-
formed with unusual speed. The survivors when they arrived
at their house of bondage were mere skeletons. During some
weeks coarse biscuit and fetid water had been doled out to them
in such scanty measure that any one of them could easily have
consumed the ration which was assigned to five. They were,
therefore, in such a state that the merchant to whom they had
been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before selling
them.f
Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered
death, and of those more uufortunate men who were withering
under the tropical sun, was fought for and torn in pieces by
a crowd of greedy informers. By law a subject attainted of
treason forfeits all his substance ; and this law was enforced
after the Bloody Assizes with a rigour at once cruel aud ludic«
• Sunderland to Jeffreys, Sept. 14, 1685 ; Jeffreys to the King, Sept. 19, 1685,
in the State Paper Office.
t The best account of the sufferings of those rebels who were sentenced to
transportation is to be found in a very curious narrative written by John Coad,
an honest, Godfearing carpenter who joined Monmouth, was badly wounded at
Philip's Norton, was tried by Jeffreys, and was sent to Jamaica. The original
numuscript was kindly lent to me by Mr. Pliippard, to whom it belongs.
584 HISTORT OF ENGLAND.
rous. The brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of th^
labouring men whose corpses hung at the cross roads were
called upon by the agents of the Treasury to explain what had
become of a basket, of a goose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg
of cider, of a sack of beans, of a truss of hay.* "While the hum-
bler retainers of the government were pillaging the families of
the slaughtered peasants, the Chief Justice was fast accumulating
a fortune out of the plunder of a higher class of Whigs. He
traded largely in pardons. His most lucrative transaction of
this kind was with a gentleman named Edmund Prideaux, It
is certain that Prideaux had not been in arms against the gov-
ernment; and it is probable that his only crime was the wealth
which he had inherited from his father, an eminent lawyer who
had been high in office under the Protector. No exertions
were spared to make out a case for the crown. Mercy was of-
fered to some prisoners on condition that they would bear evi-
dence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay long in gaol,
and at length, overcome by fear of the gallows, consented to
pay fifteen thousand pounds for his liberation. This great sum
was received by Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate, to which
the people gave the name of Aceldama, from that accursed field
which was purchased with the price of innocent blood.f
He was ably assisted in the work of exertion by the crew
of parasites who were in the habit of drinking and laughing
with him. The office of these men was to drive hard bargains
with convicts under the strong terrors of death, and with
parents trembling for the lives of children. A portion of the
spoil was abandoned by Jeffreys to his agents. To" one of his
boon companions, it is said, he tossed a pardon for a rich traitor
across the table during a revel. It was not safe to have re-
course to any intercession except that of his creatures ; for he
guarded his profitable monopoly of mercy with jealous care. It
was even suspected that he sent some persons to the gibbet
* In the Treasury records of the autumn of 1C85 are several letters directing
eearch to be made for trifles of this sort.
t Commons' Journals, Oct. 9, Nov. 10, Dec 26, 1690 ; Oldmixon, 706. Pan*
gyic on Jeffreys,
JAMES THE SECOND. 585
solely because they had applied for the royal clemency through
channels independent of him.*
Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small
share of this traffic. The ladies of the Queen's household dis-
tinguished themselves preeminently by rapacity and hardheart-
edness. Part of the disgrace which they incurred falls on their
mistress : for it was solely on account of the relation in which
they stood to her that they were able to enrich themselves by
so odious a trade ; and there can be no question that she might
with a word or a look have restrained them. But in truth she en-
couraged tliem by her evil example, if not by her express ap-
probation. She seems to have been one of that large class of
persons who bear adversity better than prosperity. While her
husband was a subject and an exile, shut out from public em-
ployment, and in imminent danger of being deprived of his birth-
right, the suavity and humility of her manners conciliated the
kindness even of those who most abhorred her reliofion. But
when her good fortune came her good nature disappeared. The
meek and affable Duchess turned out an ungracious and haughty
Queen. t The misfortunes which she subsequently endured
have made her an object of some interest ; but that interest
would be not a little heightened if it could be shown that, in the
season of her greatness, she saved, or even tried to save, one
single victim from the most frightful proscription that England
has ever seen. Unhappily the only request that she is known
to have preferred touching the rebels was that a hundred of
those who were sentenced to transportation might be given to
her. J The profit which she cleared on the cargo, after making
large allowance for those who died of hunger and fever during
the passage, cannot be estimated at less than a thousand guineas.
We cannot wonder that her attendants should have imitated
her unprincely greediness and her unwomanly cruelty. They
* Life and Deatk of Lord Jeffreys ; Panegyric on Jeffreys ; Kiffln's Memoirs,
t Burnet, i 368; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4, 1684-5. July 13, 1686. In one of thil
satires of that time are these lines :
" When Duchess, she was gentle, mild, and civil ;
When Queen, she proved a raging furious devil."
t Sunderland to JefEreys, Sept. 14, 1685
586 . HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
exacted a thousand pounds from Roger Hoare, a merchant of
Bridgewater, who had contributed to the military chest of the
rebel army. But the prey on which they pounced most eagerly
was one which it might have been thought that even the most
iiugentle natures would have spared. Already some of the girls
who had presented the standard to Monmouth at Taunton had
cruelly expiated their offence. One of them had been thrown
into prison where an infectious malady was raging. She had
sickened and died there. Another had presented herself at the bar
before Jeffreys to beg for mercy. " Take her, gaoler," vociferated
the Judge, with one of those frowns which had often struck terror
into stouter hearts than hers. She burst into tears, drew her
hood over her face, followed the gaoler out of the court, fell ill
of fright, and in a few hours was a corpse. Most of the young
ladies, however, who had walked in the procession were still alive.
Some of them Avere under ten years of age. All had acted
under the orders of their schoolmistress, without knowing that
they were committing a crime. The Queen's maids of honour
asked the royal permission to wring money out of the parents
of the poor children ; and the permission was granted. An or-
der was sent down to Ta^intou that all these little girls should
be seized and imprisoned. Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe,
the Tory member for Bridgewater, was requested to undertake
the office of exacting the ransom. He was charged to declare
in strong language that the maids of honour would not endure
delay, that they were determined to prosecute to outlawry, unless
a reasonable sum were forthcoming, and that by a reason-
able sum was meant seven thousand pounds. Warre excused
himself from taking any part in a transaction so scandalous.
The maids of honour then requested William Penn to act for
them ; and Penn accepted the commission. Y6t it should seem
that a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity which he had often
shown about taking off his hat would not have been altogether
owt of place on this occasion. He probably silenced the remon-
strances of his conscience by repeating to himself that none of
the money which he extorted would go into his own pocket ;
that if he i-efused to be the agent of the ladies they would find
JAMES THE SECOND. 587
agents less humane ; that by complying he should increase his
influence at the court, and that his influence at the court had
already enabled him, and still might enable him, to render
great services to his oppressed brethren. The maids of honour
were at last forced to content themselves with less than a
third part of what they had demanded.*
♦ Locke's Western Rebellion ; Toulmin's History of Taunton, edited by
(i.i^rage ; Letter of the Duke of Somerset to Sir F. Warre ; Letter of Sunderland
to.Penn, Feb. 13, 1685-6, from the State Paper Office, in the Mackintosh Collec-
tioii. (1848.)
Ihv letter of Sunderland is as follows :—
" Whitehall, Feb. 13, 1685-6.
"Mx Penne,
" Her Majesty's Maids of Honour having acquainted me that they desigu
to empKj you and Mr. Walden iu making a composition with the Relations of
the Maids >f Taunton for ihe high Misdemeanour they have been guilty of, I do
at their request hereby let you know that His Majesty has been pleased to give
their Fines to the said Maids of Honour, and therefore recommend it to Mr. Wal-
den and you to make the most advantageous composition you can in their behalf.
"lam, Sir,
" Your humble servant,
'• Sunderland."
That the perstji to whom this letter was addressed was William Penn the
Quaker was not dov bted by Sir James Mackintosh who first brought it to light,
or, as far as I am aware, by any oth^r person, till after the publication of the
first part of this History. It has since been confidently asserted that the letter
was addressed to a certain George Penne, who appears from an old account-
book lately discovered to have been concerned in a negotiation for the ransom
of one of Monmouth's followers, named Azariah Piuney.
If I thought that I had committed an error, I should, I hope, have the honesty
to acknowledge it. But, after full consideration, I am satisfied that Sunder-
land's letter was addressed to W^illiam Penn.
Much has been said aboi. tthe way ^.n which the name is spelt. The Qiiak r,
we are told, was not Mr. Peano, but Mr. Pe. -. I feci assured that no person
conversant with the \ - ; h; I anuscripts of the seventeenth century will
attach any importance to thic r^-ume . It is notorious that a proper name was
then thought to be well spelt if Vue sound were preserved, x'o go no further than
the persons, who, in Penn's time, held the Great Seal, one of them is sometimes
Hyde and sometimes Hide : another is Jefferies, Jeffries, Jeffereys, and Jeffreys :
a third is Somers, Sommers, and Summers : a fourth is Wright and Wrighte ;
and a fifth is Cowper and Cooper. Tlie Quaker's name was spelt in three ways.
He, and his father the Admiral before him, invariably, as far as I have observed,
spelt it Penn ; but most people spelt It Pen ; and there were some who adhered
to the ancient form, Penne. For example, William the father is Penne in a let-
ter from Disbrowe to Thurloe, dated on the 7th of December, 1654 ; and William
the son is Penne in a newsletter of the 22nd of September, 1688, printed in the
Ellis Correspondence. In Richard Ward's Life and Letters of Henry More,
printed in 1710, the name of the Quaker will be found spelt in all the three ways,
Penn in the index, Pen in page 197, and Penne in page 311. The name is Penne
In the Commission which the Admiral carried out with him on his expedition to
588 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
No English sovereign has ever given stronger proof of a
cruel nature than James the Second. Yet his cruelty was not
more odious than his mercy. Or perhaps it may be more cor-
the West Indies. Burchett, who became Secretary to the Admiralty soon aftef
the Revolution, and remained iu office long after the accession of the House of
Hanover, always, in his Naval History, wrote the name Penne. Surely it cannot
be thought strange that an old-fashioned spelling, in which the Secretary of the
Admiralty persisted so late as 1720, should have been used at the office of tlie
Secretary of State in 168G. I am quite confident that, if the letter which we are
considering had been of a different kind, if Mr. Penne had been informed that,
in consequence of his earnest intercession, the King had been graciously pleased
to grant a free pardon to the Taunton girls, and if I had attempted to deprive the
Quaker of the credit of that intercession on the ground that his name was not
Penne, the very persons who now complain so bitterly that I am unjust to his
memory would have complained quite as bitterly, and, I must say, with much
more reason.
I think myself, therefore, perfectly justified in considering the names, Penn
and Penne, as the same. To which, then, of the two persons who bore that name,
George or William, is it probable that the letter of the Secretary of State was
addressed ?
George was evidently an adventurer of a very low class. All that we learn
about him from the papers of the Piuney family is that he was employed in the
purchase of a pardon for the younger son of a dissenting minister. The whole
sum which appears to have passed through George's hands on this occasion was
sixty-five pounds. His commission on the transaction must therefore have been
Email. The only other information which we have about him, is that he, some
time later, applied to the government for a favour which was very far from being
an honour. In England the Groom Porter of the Palace had a jurisdiction over
games of chance, and made some very dirty gain by issuing lott3ry tickets and
licensing hazard tables. George appears to have petitioned for a similar priv-
ilege in the American colonies.
William Pemi was, during the reign of James the Second, the most active and
powerful solicitor about the Court. I will quote the words of his admirer
Grose. " Quum autem Pennus tanta gratia pluiimum apud regem valeret, et
per id perplures sibi amicos acquireret, ilium omnes, etiam qui modo aliqua no-
tltia erant conjuncti, quoties aliquid a rege postulandum agendumve apud regem
esset, adire, ambire, orare, ut eos apud regem adjuvaret." He was overwhelmed
by busuiess of this kind, "obnitus negotiationibus curationibusque." His house
and the approaches to it were every day blocked up by crowds of persons who
came to request his good offices ; " domus ac vestibula quotidie r^jferta clientium
ct supplicantium." From the Fountainhall papers it appears that his influence
■was felt even in the highlands of Scotland. We learn from liimself that, at ibis
time, he was always toiling for others, that he was a daily suitor at Whitehall,
and that, if he had chosen to sell his influence, he could, in little more than three
years, have put twenty thousand pounds into his pocket, and obtained a hundrea
thousand more for the improvement of the colony of which he was proprietor.
Such was the position of these two men. WTiich of them, then, was the more
likely to be employed in the matter to which Sunderland's letter related ? Was
It George or William, an agent of the lowest or of the highest class ? The per-
sons interested were ladies of rank and fashion, resident at the palace, where
George would hardly have been admitted into an outer roorc.. but where William
was every day in the presence chamber and was frequently called into the closet.
JAMES THE SECOND. 589
rect to say that his mercy and his cruelty were such that each
reflects infamy on the other. Our horror at the fate of the sim-
ple clowns, the young lads, the delicate women, to whom he was
The greatest nobles in the kingdom were zealous and active in the cause of their
fair friends, nobles with whom William lived iu habits of familiar intercourse,
but who would hardly have thought George fit company for their grooms. The
sum in question was seven thousand pounds, a sum not large when compared
with the masses of wealth with which William had constantly to deal, but more
than a hundred times as large as the only ransom which is known to have passed
through the hands of George. These considerations would suffice to raise a
strong presumption that Sunderland's letter was addressed- to William, and not
to George : but there is a still stronger argument behind.
It is mo.'?t important to observe that the person to whom this letter was ad-
dressed was not the first person whom the Maids of Honour had requested to act
for them. They applied to him because another person to whom they had pre-
viously applied, had, after some correspondence, declined the office. From their
first application we learn with certainty what sort of person they wished to
employ. If their first application had been made to some obscure pettifogger or
needy gambler, we should be warranted in believing that the Penne to whom
their second application was made was George. If, on the other hand, their first
application was made to a gentleman of the highest consideration, we can hardly
be wrong in saying that the Penne to whom their second application was made
must have been William. To whom, then, was their first application made? It
was to Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, a Baronet and a Member of Parlia-
ment. The letters are still extant in which the Duke of Somerset, the proud
Duke, not a man very dkely to have corresponded with George Penne, pressed
Sir Francis to undertake the commission. The latest of those letters is dated
about three weeks before Sunderland's letter to Mr. Penne. Somerset tells Sir
Francis that the town clerk of Bridgewater, whose name, I may remark in pass-
ing, is spelt sometimes Bird and sometimes Birde, had offered his services, but
that those services had beeii declined. It is clear, therefore, that the Maids of
Honour were d*sirous to have an agent of high station and character. And they
were right. For the sum which they demanded was so large that no ordinai-y
jobber could safely be entrusted with the care of their interests.
As Sir Francis Warre excused himself from undertaking the negotiation, it
became necessary for the Maids of Honour and their advisers to choose somebody
who might supply his place ; and they chose Penne. Which of the two Pennes,
then, must have been their choice, George, a petty broker to whom a percentage
on sixty-five pounds was an object, and whose highest ambition was to derive
an infamous livelihood from cards and dice, or William, not inferior in social
position to any commoner in the kingdom ? Is it possible to believe that the
ladies, who. in January, employed the Duke of Somerset to procure for them an
agent in the fi-st rank of the English gentry, and who did not think an attorney,
though occupying a respectable post in a respectable corporation, good enough
for their purpose, would, in February, have resolved to trust everything to a
fellow who was as much below Bird as Bird was below Warre ?
But, it is said, Sunderland's letter is dry and distant ; and ho never would
have written in such a style to William Penn with whom he was on friendly
terms. Can it be necessary for me to reply that the official communicationis
which a Minister of State makes to his dearest friends and nearest relations are
lis cold and formal as those which he makes to strangers ? Will it be contended
that the General Wellesley, to whom the Marquis Wellesloy, when Governor of
590 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
inexorably severe, is increased when we find to whom and for
what considerations he granted his pardon.
The rule by which a prince ought, after a rebellion, to be
guided in selecting rebels for iDunishment is perfectly obvious.
The ringleaders, the men of rank, fortune, and education, whose
power and whcse artifices have led the multitude into error, are
the proper objects of severity. The deluded populace, when
once the slaughter on the field of battle is over, can scarcely be
treated too leniently. This rule, so evidently agreeable to jus-
tice and humanity, was not only not observed : it was inverted.
While those who ought to have been spared were slaughtered
by hundreds, the few who might with propriety have been left
to the utmost rigour of the law wei'e spared. This eccentric
clemency has perplexed some writers, and has drawn forth lu-
dicrous eulogies from others. It was neither at all mysterious,
nor at all praiseworthy. It may be distinctly traced in every
case either to a sordid or to a malignant motive, either to thirst
for money or to thirst for blood.
India, addressed so many letters beginning with " Sir," and ending with " I have
the honour to be your obedient servant," cannot possibly have been his Lordship's
brother Arthur ?
But, it is said. Oldmixon tells a different story. According to him, a Popish
lawyer named Brent, and a subordinate jobber, named Crane, were the agents in
the matter of the Taunton girls. Now it is notorious that of all our historians
Oldmixon is the least trustworthy. His most positive assertion would be of no
value when opposed to such evidence as is furnished by Sunderland's letter. But
Oldmixon asserts nothing positively. Not only does he not assert positively
that Brent and Crime acted for the Maids of Honour ; but he does not even assert
positively that the Maids of Honour were at all concerned. He goes no further
than " It was said," and ' It was reported-" It is plain, therefore, that he was
very imperfectly informed. I do not think it impossible, however, that there
may have been some foundation for the rumour which he mentions. We liave
seen that one busy lawyer, named Bird, volunteered to look after the interest of
the Maids of Honour, and that they were forced to tell him that they did not
want his services. Other persons, and among them the two whom Oldmixon
names, may have tried to thrust themselves into so lucrative a job, and may, by
pretending to interest at Court, have succeeded in obtaining a little money
from terrified families. But nothing can be more clear than that the authorised
agent of the Maids of Honour was the l\Ir. Penne, to whom the Secretary of State
wrote ; and I firmly believe that Mr. Penno to have been William the Quaker.
If it be said that it is incredible that so good a man would have been con-
cerned in so bad an affair, I can only answer that this affair was very far indeed
from being the worst in which he was concerned.
For these reasons I leave the text, and shall leave it exactly as it originally
stood. (1857.)
JAMES THE SECOND. SU'i
In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance.
His parts and knowledge, the rank which he had inherited in
the state, and the high command which he had borne in the
rebel army, would have pointed him out to a Just government
as a much fitter object of punishment than Alice Lisle, than
William Hewllng, than any of the hundreds of ignorant peasants
whose skulls and quarters were exposed in Somersetshire. But
Grey's estate was large and was strictly entaled. He had only
a life interest in his property ; and he could forfeit no more
interest than he had. If he died, his lands at once devolved on
the next heir. If he were pardoned, he would be able to pay a
large ransou. He was therefore suffered to redeem himself by
giving a bond for forty thousand pounds to the Lord Treasurer,
and smaller sums to other courtiers.*
Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the
same rank which had been held by Grey in the West of Eng-
land. That Cochrane should be forgiven by a prince vindictive
beyond all example, seemed incredible. But Cochrane was
the younger son of a rich family ; it was therefore only by
sparing him that money could be made out of him. His father,
Lord Dnndoiiald, offered a bribe of five thousand pounds to the
priests of the royal hous hold ; and a pardon was granted.f
Samuel Storey, a noted power of sedition, who had been
Commissary to the rebel army, and who had inflamed the
ignorant populace of Somersetshire by vehement harangues in
which James had been described as an incendiary and a poisoner,
was admitted to mercy. For Storey was able to give important
assistance to Jeffreys in wringing fifteen thousand pounds out
of Prideaux.l
None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than
Wade, Goodenougb, and Ferguson. These three chiefs of the
rebellion had fled together from the field of Sedgemoor, and
had reached the coast in safety. But they had found a frigate
* Burnet, i. 646, and Speaker Onslow's note; Clarendon to Rochester, May 8,
^^^^- ■ t Burnet, i. 634.
X Calamy's Memoirs ; Commons' Journals, December 26, 1690; Sunderland to
tJeflEreys, September 14 1685 ; Privy Council Book, February 26, 1685^
592 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
cruising near the spot where they had hoped to embark. They
had then separated. Wade and Goodenough were soon dis-
covered and brought up to London. Deeply as they had been
implicated in the Rye House plot, conspicuous as they had been
among the chiefs of the Western insurrection, they were suffer-
ed to live, because rhey had it in their power to give informa-
tion which enabled the King to slaughter and plunder some
persons whom he hated, but to whom he had never yet been
able to bring home any crime.*
How Ferguson escaped was, and still is, a mystery. Of all
the enemies of the government he was, without doubt, the
most deeply criminal. He was the original author of the plot
for assassinating the royal brothers. He had written that
Declaration which, for insolence, malignity, and mendacity,
stands unrivalled even among the libels of those stormy times.
He had instigated Monmouth first to invade the kingdom, and
then to usurp the crown. It was reasonable to expect that a
strict search would be made for the archtraitor, as he was often
called ; and such a search a man of so singular an aspect and
dialect could scarcely have eluded. It was confidently reported
in the coffee houses of London that Ferguson was taken ; and
this report found credit with men who had excellent opportuni-
ties of knowing the truth. The next thing that was heard of
him was that he was safe on the Continent. It was strongly
suspected that he had been in constant communication with the
government against which he was constantly plotting, that he
had, while urging his associates to every excess of rashness,
sent to "Whitehall just so much information about their proceed-
ings as might suffice to save his own neck, and that therefore
orders had been given to let him escape. f
* Lansdowne MS. 1152 ; Haii. MS. 6845 ; London Gazette, July 20, 1685.
t Many writers have asserted, wiJiout the slightest foundation, that a pardon
was granted to Ferguson by James. Some have been so absurd as to cite this
imaginary pardon, which, if it were real, would prove only that Ferguson was a
court spy, in proof of the magnanimity and benignity of the prince who beheaded
Alice Lisle and burned Elizabeth Gaunt. Ferguson was not only not specially
pardoned, but was excluded by name from the general pardon published in the
following spring. (London Gazette, March 15,1685-6,) If, as the public suspected
and as seems probable, indulgence was shown to him, it waa indulgence of whlcb
JAMK3 TH* SECONB 598
And now Jeffreys had done his worK, and returned to claim
his reward. Ho arrived at Windsor from the West, leaving
carnage, mourn hi g, and terror behind him. The hatred with
which he was regarded by the people of Somersetshire has no
parallel in our history. It was not to be quenched by time or
by political changes, was long transmitted from generation to
generation, and raged fiercely against his innocent progeny.
When he had been many years dead, when his name and title
were extinct, his granddaughter, the Countess of Pomfret,
travelling along the wesieru road, was insulted l)y the populace,
and found that she could not safely venture herself among the
descendants of those who had witnessed the Bloody Assizes.*
But at the Court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was
a judge after his master's own heart. James had watched the
circuit with interest and delight. In his drawingroom and at
Ids table he had frequently talked of the havoc which was
naking among his disaffected subjects with a glee at Avhich the
oreigu ministers stood agtiast. With his own hand he had
penned accounts of what ho facetiously called his Lord Chief
Justice's campaign in the West. Some hundreds of rebels, His
Majesty wrote to the Hague, had been condemned. Some of
them had been hanged : more should be hanged ; and the rest
should be sent to the plantations. It was to no purpose that
Ken wrote to implore mercy for the misguided people, and
described with pathetic eloquence the frightful state of his
diocese. He complained that it was impossible to walk along
the highways without seeing some terrible spectacle, and that
the whole air of Somersetshire was tainted with death. The
King read, and remained, according to the saying of Churchill,
hard as the marble chimneypieces of Whitehall. At Windsor
fames was, not without reason, ashamed, and which was, as far as possible, kepS
»ecret. The reports whi."h were current in London at the time are mentioned ia
*he Obserrator, Aiig. 1, 1685.
Sir John Reresby, who ought to have been well informed, positively affirm*
that Ferguson was taken three days after the battle of Sedgemoor. But Sir
John was certainly wrong as to the date, and may therefore have been vrong M
to the whole story. From the London Gazette, and from Goodenough's con«
fession (Lansdowne JIS. 1152), it is clear th it, a fortnight aftt-r the battle, Fep
guson had not been caught, and was supposed to be still lurking in England.
• Granger's Diographical History.
S8
594 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
the great seal of England was put into the hands of Jeffreys,
and in the next London Gazette it was solemnly not.".ied that
this honour was the reward of the many eminent and faithful
services which he had rendered to the crown.*
At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with
horror of the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked
King attempted to vindicate themselves by throwing the blame
on each other. Jeffreys, in the Tower, protested that, in his
utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyond his master's express
orders, nay, that he had fallen short of them. James, at Saint
Germain's would willingly have had it believed that his own
inclinations had been on the side of clemency, and that unmerited
obloquy had been brought on him by the violence of his minister.
But neither of these hardhearted men must be absolved at the
expense of the other. The plea set up for James can be proved
under his own hand to be false in fact. The plea, of Jeffreys,
even if it be true in fact, is utterly worthless.
The slaughter in the West was, over. The slaughter in
Ivondon was about to begin. The government was peculiarly
desirous to find victims among the great Whig merchants of the
City. They had, in the last reign, been a formidable part of
the strength of the opposition, 'ihey were wealthy ; and their
wealth was not, like that of many noblemen and country gentle-
men, protected by entail against forfeiture. In the case of Grey,
and of men situated like him, it was impossible to gratify
cruelty and rapacity at once ; but a rich trader might be both
hanged and plundered. The commercial grandees, howeA^er,
though in general hostile to Popery and to arbitrary power, bad
yet been too scrupulous or too timid to incur the guilt of high
treason. One of the most considerable among them was Henry
Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the old charter of
the Cit}', and had filled the office of Sheriff when the question
of the Exclusion Bill occupied the public mind. In po itics he
was a Whig : his religious opinions leaned towards Presbyteri-
anism : but his temper was cautious and moderate. It is not
* Buniet, i. 648 ; James to the Prince of Or.ange, Sept. 10, and 24, 1685 ; Lord
LoiisdaU's Memoirs ; Loudon Gazette, Oct. 1 1685.
JAmSS THE SECONl>, 595
proved hy trustworthy evidence that he ever approached the
verge of treason, lie had, indeed, when Sheriff, been very un-
willing to employ as his deputy a man so violent and unprinci-
pled as Goodenough. When the Rye House plot was discovered,
great hopes were entertained at Whitehall that Cornish would
appear to have been concerned : but these hopes were disap
pointed. One of the conspirators, indeed, John Rumsey, was
ready to swear anything : but a single witness was not sufficient ;
and no second witness could be found. More than two years
had since elapsed. Cornish thought himself safe ; but the eye
of the tyrant was upon him. Goodenough, terrified by the near
prospect of death, and still harbouring malice on account of the
unfavourable opinion which had always been entertained of him
by his old master, consented to supply the testimony which had
hitherto been wanting. Cornish was arrested while transacting
business on the Exchange, was hurried to gaol, was kept there
some days in solitary confinement, and was brought altogether
unprepared to the bar of the Old Bailey. The case against him
rested wholly on the evidence of Rumsey and Goodenough.
Both were, by their own confession accomplices in the
plot with which they charged the prisoner. Both were im-
pelled by the strongest pressure of hope and fear to criminate
him. Evidence was produced which proved that Goodenough
was also under the influence of personal enmity. Rumsey's
story was inconsistent with the story which he had told when
he appeared as a witness against Lord Russell. But these
things were urged in vain. On the bench sate three judges who
had been with Jeffreys in the West ; and it was remarked by
those who watched their deportment that they had come back
from the carnage of Taunton in a fierce and excited state. It ia
indeed but too true that the taste for blood is a taste which even
men not naturally cruel may, by habit, speedily acquire. The bar
and the bench united to browbeat the unfortunate Whig. The
jury, named by a courtly Sheriff,readily found a verdict of Guilty;
and, in spite of the indignant murmurs of the public, Cornish
suffered death within ten days after he had been arrested. That
no circumstance of degradation might be wanting, the gibbet
596 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
was set up where King Street meets Cheapside, in sight of the
bouse where he had loug lived iu general respect, of the Ex-
change where his credit had always stood high, and of the
Guildhall where he had distinguished himself as a popular leader.
He died with courage and with many pious exprsssions, but
showed, by look and gesture, such strong resentment at the
barbarity and injustice with which he had been treated, that his
enemies spread a caiumnions ^epori oojucerjQiiig iiim. He was
drunk, they said, or out of bis mind, when he was turned off.
William Pemi, however, who stood near the gallows, and whose
jprejudices were all on the side of the government, afterwards
laid that he could see in Cornish's deportment nothing but the
natural indignation of an innocent man slain under the forms of
law. The head of the mtirdered magistrate was placed ovet
the GmldhaU.*
Black as this case was, it was not the blackest which dis-
graced the sessions of that autumn at the Old Bailey. Among
the persons concerned in the Rye House plot was a man named
James Burton. By his own confession he had been present
when the design of assassination was discussed by his accom-
plices. When the conspiracy was detected, a reward was
offered for his apprehension. He was saved from death by an
ancient matron of the Baptist persuasion, named Elizabeth
Gaunt. This woman, with the peculiar manners and phrase-
ology which then distinguished her sect, had a large charity.
Her life was passed in relieving the unhappy of all religious
denominations, and she was well known as a constant visitor ox
the gaols. Her political and theological opinions, as well as
her compassionate disposition, led her to do everything in her
power for Burton. She procured a boat which took him to
Gravesend, where he got on board of a ship bound for Amster-
dam. At the moment of parting she put into his hand a sum of
money which, for her means, was very large. Burton, afte:-"
living some time in exile, returned to England v/itb Monmouth,
fought at Sedgemoor, fled to London, and took refuge in the
' := Trial of Comish in the Collection of State Trials ; Sir J. Hawles'3 Eemarlcs
on Mr. Condsh's Trial : Burnet, i. 651 ; Blood v Assizes • StsA. 1. Qui. and Mar,
JAMES THE SECOND. 5^7
house of John Fernley, a barber in Whitechaple. Fernley
was very poor. He was besieged by creditors. He knew that
a reWard of a hundred pounds had been offered by the govern-
ment for the apprehension of Burton. But the honest man
was incapable of betraying one who, in extreme peril, had come
under the shadow of his roof. Unhappily it was soon noised
abroad that the anger of James was more strongly excited
against those who harboured rebels than against the rebels
themselves. He had publicly declared that of all forms of
treason the hiding of traitors from his vengeance was the most
unpardonable. Burton knew this. He delivered himself up to
the government; and he gave information against Fernley and
Elizabeth Gaunt. They were brought to trial. The villain
whose life they had preserved had the heart and the forehead
to appear as the principal witness against them. They were
convicted. Fernley was sentenced to the gallows, Elizabeth
Gaunt to the stake. Even after all the horrors of that year,
many thought it impossible that these judgments should be
carried into execution. But the King was without pity. Fern-
ley was hanged. Elizabeth Gaunt was burned alive at Tyburn
on the same day on which Cornish suffered death in Cheapside.
She left a paper written, indeed, in no graceful style, yet such
as was read by many thousands with compassion and horror.
"My fault," she said, " was one which a prince might well have
forgiven. I did but relieve a poor family; and lo! I must die
for it." She complained of the insolence of the judges, of the
ferocity of the gaoler, and of the tyranny of him, the great one
of all, to whose pleasure she and so many other victims had
been sacrificed. In so far as they had injured herself, she
forgave them: but, in that they were implacable enemies of
that good cause which would yet revive and flourish, she left
them to the judgment of the King of Kings. To the last she
preserved a tranquil courage, which reminded the spectators of
the most heroic deaths of which they had read in Fox, William
Penn, for whom exhibitions which humane men generally avoid
seem to have had a strong attraction, hastened from Cheapside,
where he had seen Cornish hanged, to Tyburn, in order to see
598 HISTORY OP ENGLAND.
Elizabeth Gaunt burned. He afterwards related that, when
she calmly disposed the straw about her in such a manner as to
shorten her sufferings, all the bystanders burst into tears. It
was much noticed that, w^iile the foulest judicial murder -sphich
had disgraced even those times was perpetrating, a tempest
burst forth, such as had not been known since that great hurri-
cane which had raged round the deathbed of Oliver. The op-
pressed Puritans reckoned up, not without a gloomy satisfaction,
the houses which had been blown down, and the ships which had
been cast away, and derived some consolation from thinking that
heaven was bearing awful testimony against the iniquity which
afflicted the earth. Since that terrible day no woman has suf-
fered death in England for any political offence.*
It was not thought that Goodenough had yet earned his
pardon. The government was bent on destroying a victim of
no high rank, a surgeon in the Ji<^y, named Bateman. He had
attended Shaftesbury professionally, and had been a zealous
Exclusionist. He may possibly have been privy to the Whig
plot ; but it is certain that he had not been one of the leading
conspirators ; for, in the great mass of depositions published by
the government, his name occurs only once, and then not in
connection with any crime bordering on liigh treason. From
his indictment, and from the scanty account which remains of
his trial, it seems clear that he was not even accused of partici-
pating in the design of murdering the royal brothers. The
malignity with which so obscure a man, guilty of so slight an
offence, was hunted down, while traitors far more criminal and
far more eminent were allowed to ransom themselves by giving
evidence against him, seemed to require explanation ; and a
disgraceful explanation was found. When Gates, after his
scourging, was carried into Newgate insensible, and, as all
thought, in the last agony, he had been bled and his wounds
had been dressed by Bateman. This was an offence not to be
forgiven. Bateman was arrested and indicted. The witnesses
* Trials of Femley and Elizabeth Gaunt, in the Collection of State Trials ;
Burnet, i. $49 ; Bloody Assizes ; Sir J. Bramston's Memoirs ; Luttrell's Diary,
Oct. 23, 1685.
JAMES THE SFOOND. 599
igainst him were men of infamous character, men, too, who were
swearing for their own lives. None of them had yet got his
pardon ; and it was a popular saj'ing, that they fished for prey,
like tame cormorants, with ropes round their necks. The pris-
oner, stupefied by illness, was unable to articulate, or to under-
stand what passed. His son and daughter stood by him at the
bar. They read as well as they could some notes which he had
set down, and examined hi . witnesses. It was to little purpose.
He was convicted, hanged, and quartered. *"
Never, not even under the tyranny of Laud, had the con-
dition of the Puritans been so deplorable as at that time. Never
had spies been so actively employed in detecting congregations.
Never had magistrates, grand jurors, rectors and churchwardens
been so much on the alert. Many Dissenters were cited before
the ecclesiastical courts. Others found it necessary to purchase
the connivance of the agents of the government by presents of
hogsheads of wine, and of gloves stuffed with guineas. It was im-
possible for the separatists to pray together without precautions,
such as are employed by coiners and receivers of stolen goods.
The places of meeting were frequently changed. Worship was
performed sometimes just befoi'e break of day and sometimes at
dead of night. Round the building where the little flock
was gathered sentinels were posted to give the alarm if a
stranger drew near. The minister in disguise was introduced
through the garden and the back yard. In some houses there
were trap doors through which, in case of danger, he might
descend. Where Nonconformists lived next door to each otner,
the walls were often broken open, and secret passages were
made from dwelling to dwelling. No psalm was sung; and
many contrivances were used to prevent the voice of the preacher,
in his moments of fervour, from being heard beyond the walls.
Tet, with all this care, it was often found impossible to elude
ihe vigilance of informers. In the suburbs of London, especial-
Cy, the law was enforced with the utmost rigour. Several opu
• T'ateman's Trial in the Collection of State Trials ; Sir John Hawles's Re-
marks. It is worth while to compare Thomas Lee's evidence on this occasion
Wtb his confession previously published by authority.
''00 HISTORY OF ENGI.AND.
lent gentlemen were accused of holding conventicles. Their
houses were strictly searched, and distresses were levied to the
amount of many thousands of poun<is. The fiercer and bolder
sectaries, thus driven from the shelter of roofs, met in the open
air, and determined to repel force by force. A Middlesex justice
who had learned that a nightly prayer meeting was held in a
f^ravel pit about two miles from London, took with him a strong
body of constables, broke in upon the assembl}-, and seized tho
preacher. But the congregation, which consisted of about two
hundred men, soon rescued their pastor, and put the magisti-ate and
his officers to flight.* This, however, was no ordinary occurrence.
In general the Puritan spirit seemed to be more effectually cowed
at this conjuncture than at any moment before or since. The
Tory pamphleteers boasted that not one fanatic dared to move
tongue or pen in defence of his religious opinions. Dissenting
ministers, however blameless in life, however eminent for learn-
ing and abilities, could not venture to walk the streets for fear
of outrages, which were not only not repressed, but encouraged,
by those whose duty it was to preserve the peace. Some divines
of great fame were in prison. Among these was Richard Bax-
ter. Others, who had, during a quarter of a century, borne up
against oppression, now lost heart, and quitted the kingdom.
Among these was John Howe. Great numbers of persons who
had been accustomed to frequent conventicles repaired to the
parish churches. It was remarked that the schismatics who had
been terrified into this show of conformity might easily be dis-
tinguished by the difficulty which they had in finding out the
collect, and by the awkward manner in which they bowed at the
name of Jesus-f
Through many years the autumn of 1685 was remembered
• Van Citters, Oct. 1685.
t Neal's History of the Puritans, Calamy's Account of the ejected Ministers,
and the Nonoonforniists' Memorial, contain abundant proofs of the severity of
Uiis persecution Howe's farewell letter to his flock will be found in the interest-
ing life of that great man, by Mr. Rogers. Howe complains that he could not
7enture to show himself in the streets of London, and that his health had sufEere(}
from want of air and exercise. But tne most vivid picture of the distress of the
Nonconformists is furnished by their deadly enemy, Lestrange, in the Observa.
tors of September and October, 1685.
JAMES THE SECONIi. 601
iiy the Nonconformists as a time of misery and terror. Yet
in that aatumn misht be discerned the first faint indications of a
great turn of fortune ; and before eighteen months had elapsed,
the intolerant King and the intolerant Church were eagerly bid-
ding against each other fo-r the support of the party which boti-
had so deeply injured.
OF YOL I.
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